Images are essential to attracting potential customers, but they can damage your business when mismanaged. Avoid losing clients by understanding resolution and compression basics.

Poor image quality and slow load times can work against you. Are the images on your website distorted? About 46 percent of people say the top criteria for deciding if a company is credible is good visual design. Are your file sizes hampering load times? You lose 53 percent of mobile visitors when your page takes longer than three seconds to load.

Resizing

The height by the width measurement of the image is called the resolution. For example, Instagram uses a resolution of 1080 pixels x 1350 pixels for their portrait images. If your picture falls outside the allowed resolution, Instagram will force it into an acceptable size, which can cause stretching or blurring. Use editing software to make sure that your files are the right resolution before putting them in front of customers.

Now that your pictures are looking good, the next step is addressing load times. High-quality images have a significant impact, but large files drastically affect wait times.

Compressing

You don't want to sacrifice quality, so you need to use compression. Editing software can find reoccurring arrangements of colored pixels in an image and save the pattern. When loading, that pattern populates throughout the file, instead of transferring each redundant instance. You maintain most of your image quality and shorten download speeds.

Editing Options

To properly resize and compress images, you can choose from an array of editing tools. Photoshop is an industry favorite and available for $9.99 per month. GNU Image Manipulation Program, or GIMP, is a popular alternative and is a free, open-source program.

Use this understanding to make sure your content is looking its best, and give viewers the confidence they need to become customers. Contact us now to learn more about putting your best image out there.

Difference Between Resizing and Compressing Images

• Explain the difference between resizing an image and compressing an image.
• Preferably recommend some tools that offer one or both needs.

Photo Editing

• Photoshop $9.99/m Photography Plan
• GIMP open-source program
• Browser-based solutions

Akamai Technologies, Inc.

• A 100-millisecond delay in website load time can hurt conversion rates by 7 percent
• A two-second delay in web page load time increase bounce rates by 103 percent
• 53 percent of mobile site visitors will leave a page that takes longer than three seconds to load

Stanford Persuasive Technologies Lab

• 46.1% of people say a website’s design is the top criteria for deciding if a company is credible or not. So it’s extremely important that your design looks professional

Instagram

• Will automatically resize photos not between the measurements 320 and 1080.

Did you know that uncompressed or incorrectly sized image files on your website can lead to a decrease in sales? Here we’ll explain what image resizing and compression are, how to optimize them, and how to make more money doing so.

When your images look bad, your credibility suffers. 46.1 percent of people say the top criteria for deciding if a company is credible or not is good website design.

Resizing

Image size is the measurement of an image in pixels. If your image is not optimized, your images may shift your website in an undesired way, or social media apps may resize your image to fit within their parameters, causing an image to look distorted or blurry. This distortion happens because the same amount of image is stretched across a larger number of pixels. Software can be used to change the size of an image, by adding or subtracting pixels.

It’s important to be aware of your image resolution because some services or browsers don’t work well with images that are too large or small. Say you are launching a new product, and want to start a social media campaign to gain attention. If the high quality image you post to Instagram is outside the accepted resoution, Instagram will automatically resize it to fit within their acceptable parameters.

The last thing you want is to launch your new marketing material to Instagram and have it resize all you pictures because they were the wrong resolution.

While this is measuring an image size, the next step is addressing the image file size.

Your images look great! There’s only one problem. Those high-quality images are taking forever to load. It’s worth it for those sharp pictures, right? Actually, a mere 100-millisecond delay in website load time can hurt conversion rates by 7 percent, according to an Akamai Technologies study.

Compressing

Website loading times are drastically affected by large image files, but you don’t want to lose any quality along the way. This is where image encoding comes in. Compression takes two basic forms, lossless and lossy. Lossless works by identifying strings of similar patterns in an image, and saving the pattern once, but making note of where all the instances occur. This results in maintaing most of your image quality, while still shedding file size, aloowing for quicker loads and getting those users to hang around.

Lossy compression takes areas of similar color, and blends them together. While things can quickly get out of hand, and suddenly you have a picture with large blocky edges, you are able to adjust how much compression takes place.

Image compression is the process of encoding or converting an image file in such a way that it consumes less space than the original file. It is a type of compression technique that reduces the size of an image file without affecting or degrading its quality to a greater extent.

Open Source/Online and Paid Options

To properly resize and compress your image you can use a number of image editing tools, from Photoshop, which is available for $9.99 per month, to GIMP, a free, open-source image editing program. Even the classic stand-by Microsoft Paint has an image resizing capabilities.

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Did you know that missized images or large image files on your website can lead to a decrease in sales? Here we'll explain what image resizing and compression are, how to do them right, and how to make more money doing so.

When your images are off, your bottom line suffers. 46.1 percent of people say the top criteria for deciding if a company is credible or not is good website design.

Resizing

Image size is the measurement of an image in pixels. The height by the width measurement of the image is called the resolution. For example, Instagram uses a resolution of 1080 x 1350 for their portrait images. If your image falls outside the accepted resolution, Instagram will automatically resize it. This can cause distortion or blurriness as the image is stretched or pulled to fit the new size. This is why it is important to use photo editing software to make sure that your files are the right size before sending them into the world.

The next step is addressing the image file size.

The images on your website look great, but there's a problem: those high-quality images are taking forever to load. It's worth it for those sharp pictures, right? Actually, a 100-millisecond delay in website load time can hurt conversion rates by 7 percent, according to a study from Akamai Technologies.

Compressing

Website loading times are drastically affected by large image files. You don't want to lose any quality along the way, so this is where image encoding comes in. Compression works by identifying strings of similar patterns in an image, saving the model once, but making a note of where all the instances occur. This results in maintaining most of your image quality, while still shedding file size, allowing for quicker loads and keeping potential customers on your site.

Open Source/Online and Paid Options

To properly resize and compress your image you can use image editing tools. Photoshop, an industry favorite, is available for $9.99 per month. GIMP, a free, open-source image editing program. Even the classic stand-by Microsoft Paint has an image resizing capabilities.

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Images are essential to drawing the attention of potential customers, but they can damage your business when mismanaged. You can avoid losing customers by understanding image resolution and compression basics.

Images go a long way to driving people toward your conversion goals, but poor resolution and slow load times can count against you. Are the images on your website distorted? About 46 percent of people say the top criteria for deciding if a company is credible is good visual design. Are your file sizes slowing load times? You lose 53 percent of mobile visitors when your page takes longer than three seconds to load.

Resizing

The height by the width measurement of the image is called the resolution. For example, Instagram uses a resolution of 1080 x 1350 for their portrait images. If your image falls outside the accepted resolution, Instagram will automatically force it into an acceptable size, which can cause stretching or blurring. Use editing software to make sure that your files are the right resolution before putting them in front of customers.

Now that your pictures are looking good, the next step is addressing load times. High-quality images have a big effect on visitors, but wait times are drastically affected by large files

Compressing

You don't want to sacrifice quality, so this is where to use compression. The process works by identifying patterns in an image, only saving that pattern once, and making note of each instance. When loading, the image presents the one pattern to be multiplied, instead of transferring each instance individually. This maintains most of your image quality, while still shedding file size, and allowing for quicker loads.

Open Source/Online and Paid Options

To properly resize and compress your images, you can choose from an array of editing tools. Photoshop is an industry favorite, and affordable at $9.99 per month. GIMP is a popular alternative and is a free, open-source program.

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