Digital Photography and Web Development - Part 2
... and Web Development
Decent imagery can raise a website from the ordinary to the exceptional. From a client's perspective, it can elevate the perceived profile of their business and confer professional level status upon their products or services. This is probably more important to an SME (Small to Medium Enterprise) who must compete with established web presences, especially when offering products of a similar nature in a competitive or saturated market.
It can also mean clinching a deal for the developer when they illustrate a strong level of professionalism through use of crisp imagery.
Promotional Shot on Cake Shop WebsiteClean imagery is important wherever staple, moreover, fresh foodstuffs are concerned. In the UK, Marks & Spencer spends millions annually on TV commercials marketing its fresh produce counter - although I believe they could learn a thing or two about online image quality.
Another area where alluring photography is paramount is the promotion of prestige, status or luxury items. Billions are spent on marketing motor vehicles by the automotive industry. Aspirational acquisition to confer peer group status or just plain old lust underlies many purchases. Avanti Sports & Prestige's website opens into a courtyard with a Jaguar XK gracing the gravel. The message is clear: buy into this lifestyle.
The image occupies almost the entire page. The minimalist supporting text is the company slogan and a strapline below the photo qualifying the buying decision.
Image Challenges
But there is a potential problem with an image such as this: download time. The challenge is determining an acceptable level of compression without sacrificing image quality. The Jaguar image weighs-in at over 50 kilobytes. While this may be deemed negligible on a broadband connection, modem users will suffer as, at best, they must wait over 8 seconds for the image to load [(57,698Kb x 8) / 56,000 bps = 8.26]. But there's also the additional weights of the navigational tabs, the markup supporting files, and inherent web latency... and there's a 12 second wait for the page to finish downloading. Start placing multiple weighty images on a page and, unless you've got good reason to do so, you could lose visitors.
A photography or art site, however, would be justified in erring towards image fidelity rather than adopting a weight-loss program. Visitors to such sites are anticipating decent graphics and would be of a mindset to accept - even demand - high quality artwork irrespective of their web connection speed. They've already bought into expectation levels: high quality at the expense of slow delivery.
Assessing Image Quality
Judging an acceptability threshold is by its very nature a subjective process involving comparative analysis; take the highest quality original then process it at varying levels of compression to achieve a cut-off point that somebody is happy with. Yet that approval will certainly vary dependant on individual appreciation incorporating physiological aspects like eyesight and external contributory factors such as viewing conditions like ambient lighting, monitor type and size, and display quality.
Examine the images opposite. Appreciable deterioration sets in at around the 50% level, the percentile value being a relative quality level.
Best CompressionI have used xat.com's JPEG Optimizer for a number of years and it still delights me with its compression capabilities and ease of use. I tend to run at 70% quality levels unless I'm optimising a large image such as a masthead, when I'll tweak selective areas of the image at varying compression levels. Selective compression is handy when, for instance, you're manipulating out of focus backgrounds which lend themselves to greater compression levels. There's also a feature to add further compressibility with negligible visible impact on the image. The final image, left, was created at 70% quality with added compression and has a measly 2,640 bytes weight, and opens to a larger example which perhaps better illustrates what JPEG Optimizer is capable of achieving.
But why go to the expense of buying a digital camera and manipulating your own images when search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN and image directories like Picsearch offer searchable directories of millions of images? Because most of these are subject to copyright, either in the UK or internationally. Very, very few are royalty- or copyright-free. And the penalties for infringement can be quite severe, particularly when law firms generate a healthy revenue prosecuting unwitting offenders.
Stock Photography
Of course, these are numerous stock photography sites on the Web. One of the best known is iStockphoto. They have a huge collection of royalty-free images downloadable at extremely reasonable fees, most of which are of excellent quality and come in a range of sizes. Another is Alamy - but I find their rates and conditions prohibitive for general web use. One image I considered using was, upon cost querying, about £500 per annum to lease. Okay, so I may have enjoyed exclusivity but at a cost to the client of more than one of our basic Exclusive Website builds.
Possibly a Petunia?
Gibbous Moon
