Resizing and Cropping Images

It is best practise to use photo / images in your website that are already set to the correct dimensions.

This may involve cropping the original image and will often involve making the photo much smaller than the original.

Why Crop?

Many people do not realise they can just use a proportion of an original image. It may be possible (depending on the size of the original image) to cut out the desired part of the photo and discard the rest. For example ...

Thumbnail Of Original Photo	The Final Selection

Why resize?

Digital cameras take large-sized images, great for prints, but bad when you are putting the images in your website, they will take a longer time to load and your viewers may not appreciate the wait.

Besides, it looks better!

The other main reason for cropping and resizing, is it looks better on your site. If you have images of various sizes, they will just look odd and unappealing to your viewers. Eg, compare ...

with ...

Our photos are just examples but you get the idea. Try to keep your images and layout aesthetically pleasing.

The Next Step

If you do not have photo-editing software, there are many free online resources. Some you can use via your Internet browser, so there's no software to download and install, making life really easy. A couple we have tried and rather like are www.fixpicture.org for resizing and www.resizr.com which will resize and crop.

Please note: we have no affiliation or association with these websites, we just think they are pretty cool free resources available online that are worth a look, we suggest you use these at your own discretion.

These 2 websites are great for one-at-a-time images, but if you have several to do, you may want a batch converter. You may also prefer to actually download and install a program onto your own computer rather than use an online program. We do suggest you browse the Internet and pick an application that suits your needs because there are just so many to choose from it's impossible for us to recommend just one that suits everyone. However, just Google it and you'll find a massive amount of totally free programs around.

If you're in any doubt, we are always happy to help you find the program that suits you, please contact us and we can discuss your needs and help in any way we can. Alternatively, if you really don't want to dabble with image manipulation, we are happy to to do all the work for you for a small a fee. We have the latest software, including batch converters so, generally speaking, it'll be a quick job and will usually only cost from around £10 - £20 but will of course depend upon your requirements.