HOW TO MAKE A GRAPHIC HEAVY WEBSITE LOAD QUICKER

There are several options to make the graphics on your website smaller.

1. The best option is to use your graphics program to optimize the images for web. In Photoshop, there is a save option called "Save As for Web" and make sure you save the new optimized images into a new folder so if you over optimize them you have a backup. Around 50% optimization is a pretty good setting, though it really depends on the image itself. Most images editors have some sort of optimization tool.

2. Cut the largest image display size down. 600 x 800 pixels is large enough for an artists or photographers website. 300 x 400 pixels is quite large enough for product photos. An image displayed on a standard webpage is usually no larger then 200 x 250.

3. On the thumbnail page, make sure the thumbnail pictures are the exact size of the thumbnail and not the full sized image constrained by image dimensions. With many CMS websites you are only able to upload the large image, and the CMS just resizes images so you have no choice. Our CMS was specifically designed for Artists and Photographers, so although you only upload the largest size image, the program resizes the image into two images; the full sized image and the thumbnail.

4. If you can’t change your CMS and it only uploads the large image, you would be best to cut the number of thumbnails showing on the page to 10 or 12; that should cut down the loading time.

CanzDesign has a lot of experience with making images smaller for web; we do image optimization fairly cheaply.

Depending on how many images you have; you can email or ftp them to us, after you have contacted us with details of what you would like done and we have agreed upon a price. We will also sharpen the images; as resizing images often makes them appear slightly fuzzy without proper sharpening.