Mon - April 21, 2003

Using photos and graphics to make your Weblog more interesting


Intelligent use of photos and graphics can make a Weblog more attractive and readable - a few simple rules can help new Webloggers stay out of trouble while adding interest

One of the drawbacks of the most common Weblog formats is that they are what newspaper editors would call 'gray': there's a lot of print and not much else.

Most Weblogs offset this by offering colorful templates and including lots of white space. That's fine as far as it goes, but the opportunity exists to make a Weblog more interesting, and more readable, by using pictures and graphics.

The picture here tells a story: I put it on my Weblog on election day last fall. It didn't really require many words. I just put the sticker on my scanner (and scanners are very inexpensive these days - $89 new and much cheaper on eBay) and in a minute or 2 I had an eloquent, and colorful commentary on my Weblog, scanned in a very good shareware program called VueScan.

Using pictures badly can be worse than not using them at all, so here's a few tips:

- Use pictures that tell a story: the best is a single, clear, tightly cropped photo that says it all. Sometimes it requires 2 or 3 photos, and that can be OK (especially for a how-to article) but remember that most readers are using a modem, and photos increase download times.

-Size pictures appropriately: you don't want to give readers eyestrain, but you don't want them to get bored waiting for pixels, either. 300 to 400 pixels is a good 'long' dimension for photos on a Weblog, especially if there will be more than one.

-Include 'height' and 'width' tags in the photo HTML: this way the browser can show the text parts of your page while photos continue to download. Readers are less likely to get bored and leave if they can see parts of you page while waiting for pix.

-Run photos that include people. Almost every ad you'll see has people in it, and the reason is that many studies show that people are are more likely to look at pictures of people than other objects.

-Be careful about copyright: photos you find on the Web might be copyrighted, and if you use one without permission, you might wind up getting a 'nastygram' from lawyers, or, worse, your ISP will - and your account might be closed. When in doubt, ask.

-If you enjoy taking pictures, consider running a photo Weblog: there are many, including a blogging service that specializes in photo Weblogs.

Mac OS X users have a great free tool on their hard drive - iPhoto, which will export photos to any size, and even make 'thumbnail' pages out of collections of photos. It's particularly easy to use with mac.com, but also works with any other ISP or blog site (the great thing about HTML and other open standards).

Lots of other tools exist as well: Windows users will like Photoshop Album, which brings iPhoto-like tools to Windows machines. There's also the grandaddy of image editors Adobe Photoshop. It's great, but expensive and takes some time to learn. You might also want to consider Adobe Elements, which is a kind of Photoshop 'lite'.

Other good tools include GIMP - an Open Source image editor available on many platforms including OS X and a ton of small shareware apps for various image jobs. One of my faves is ImageWell, a small, very fast app that crops and resizes photos before FTPing them to your blog.

Pictures will increase download times, so it's not necessary to post a photo for every article. Newspapers usually include photos with every 3rd or 5th article, and that's not a bad rule of thumb. If you find your blog has become slow to download because of numerous photos, consider selecting the option to publish fewer days at a time.

In a future article, we'll go into some more advanced topics like editing photos for interest, choosing color spaces and compression for quick downloads and some net-related stuff like what to do about 'hijacking'...
Posted: April 21, 2003 12:55   Chris Gulker on publishing   Web   Email Comments

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