Everything to do with using your own website to advertise your rental property. Design, usability, hosting, getting listed on the search engines, optimising your site, pay-per-click, etc, etc.
I've been following this site with interest and have taken loads of information on board prior to setting up my own web site.
I am now starting to do just that and have a question about the size of photos I will be importing. I am sure I read somewhere on this site about minimising photos to ensure they load up quickly on viewers screens (or something like that), but I've tried a search and can't locate the thread on this.
Can anyone help please - there seems to be so much expertise here that I'm sure someone will have a fairly simple answer for a non techy person like me.
Here's a freeware (but rules exist for commercial use - see the site) program that allows you to view many types of graphics (images) and convert/resize them to other formats.
Paulo - thanks for the welcome and the link - it was what I was actually looking for so I'm going to have a practice with some photos I have using Photoshop and see what happens - will let you know.
Charles - thanks for the freeware info, my husband Chris and I will check this out later, its always good to get recommendations like this.
Another good free image compression tool is jpegwizard.com
Good luck if you are using Photoshop. It's a fantastic bit of software, the industry leader in many fields, but it's one hell of a tool to learn if you are new to image resizing and compression.
Personally I would try it out but if it get's too much go for something simpler. Also be careful when outputting images as jpegs as sometimes photoshop outputs them in a peculiar format that can only be read by Photoshop.
Photoshop is very powerful and for our purposes we'd only use a small fraction of its potential. But if you already have it, it's also pretty easy to use just for the basics: resizing images; reducing the dpi to 72; adjusting brightness, contrast and colours; sharpening the image (Filter > Unsharp mask); and finding the best balance between size and quality (using the 'Save for Web' function).
I also like the fact that you can record a set of actions - for instance I put a drop shadow behind my pictures so they stand out from the page. Applying that drop shadow to each picture individually is a little time-consuming, and makes my wrist ache. With Photoshop you can record the actions you take to apply the drop shadow, and then 'play back' those actions for all the other pictures.
For those of you who don't have photo software, I came across this online one today www.creatingonline.com/online_image_editor/ It won't let you do much photo manipulation etc. but you can at least resize images which make all the difference to page load times.
Sorry, in my ignorance I misled you about the package I am using, I said Photoshop but its actually PhotoPlus.
To be exact this time this is what we are using:-
Internet Design Suite - Serif WebPlus 8
Image creation and editing - Serif PhotoPlus 7
Anyway, following the info I got over the last couple of days from this site I have worked on my photos in Photoplus 7 and found that it has a 'Save for the Web' facility where you can look at versions of your picture side by side and try different methods of optimising to see which result suits you best. This is the same facility that Paulo had found in the software he uses.
Its taking me some time to learn about Photoplus 7 but I am very pleased with the results so far. I'm sure I will be back with new questions very soon as our website progresses - all very exciting!!
It does increase the file size, but you can then bring it down with the Save for Web function. I think it's worth it for the effect, a drop shadow really makes a picture stand out.
paolo wrote:It does increase the file size, but you can then bring it down with the Save for Web function. I think it's worth it for the effect, a drop shadow really makes a picture stand out.
Crikey! I haven't got the foggiest idea what you are talking about.I've probably got tons of "drop shadows" if I knew what they were!Quite a lot of other droopy bits too
It's a command that exists in any advanced (or moderately advanced) graphics program that makes an image look as though it is casting a shadow on a background.
It does increase the file size somewhat, but I agree with Paolo that it's well worth it; even if the person viewing it doesn't consciously notice the drop shadow, it literally and figuratively gives the page a sense of depth.
