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Perhaps one of the biggest mistakes web page designers make is to misuse or overuse graphic images on web pages. Designers become so enthusiastic about using new technology that they tend to focus on “look what we can make for you” rather than a web page’s functionality.

Web page graphics must serve a function. If a graphic image’s only function is “to look cool,” you are unnecessarily increasing the download time of your web pages. “Looking cool” can ultimately cost you more money and make you lose potential customers.

The following list is a summary of the types of graphic images that are acceptable on a web page:

Navigation buttons – Used to help visitors navigate your web site. If designed well, these buttons can be much easier to read and find than text links.

Image maps – Also used to help visitors navigate your web site. If designed well, image maps greatly add to the visual appeal of a web page but can considerably increase the page’s download time.

Logo – Used for your corporate or business identity. Logos increase brand name recognition and add visual appeal to any document or web page.

Bullet points – Used to draw your visitors’ eyes to the main points of your document. Also used to break up a web page full of paragraphs.

Mastheads – Also known as a title graphic. Main function is to let your visitors know which web page they are on. Adding clip art or an illustration to a masthead adds more visual appeal.

Divider lines or horizontal rules – Commonly used to separate footers, categories within a single web page, and FAQ questions and answers.

Background images – Used to enhance the visual appeal of a web page and make a web site easier to navigate. One of the most common background images is a sidebar which usually contains the links to the other pages in your site.

Headings (text graphic) – Commonly used to preserve a typeface that many people do not have on their computers.

Photos – Commonly used to make your web pages seem more personal and more inviting. Visitors’ eyes are naturally drawn to photos of people. An absolute necessity to showcase products on certain e-commerce sites.

All graphic images on your web site should match in colour, typeface, and special effects. For example, the text in all of your navigation buttons should use the same typeface and have the same special effects on them (such as a drop shadow). Your navigation buttons, mastheads, bullet points, and divider lines look best if they are designed using one of the colours in your logo.

For a truly professional-looking web site, the minimum set of graphics on web pages should be a set of navigational graphics, a logo, bullet points, and set of mastheads. If this set of graphics does not significantly increase a page’s download time, then you can add other graphic images to enhance your site. The general rule is to keep web page size between 40-60K. If you are a graphic designer, photographer, architect, or programmer, a 75K web page will still give a relatively fast download time on a 28.8 Kbps modem.

Any extra graphic images on your web pages should serve a function that is directly related to your business. For example, on a web site, you can have illustrations serve multiple functions:

If a design firm has professional illustrators in its staff, they should showcase this talent in some form throughout the web site.

Illustrations can also serve a navigational function. In some web sites, you can tell which section of a web site you are in based on the illustration shown.

A talented web graphic designer can design graphic images which download quickly and look good. Graphic images should be sized down without losing the integrity of the graphic image.

Remember, graphic images are primarily used to enhance a web pages function. If graphic images considerably increase your web pages’ download time, you will have to either size down the graphic images, replace them with smaller images, or replace them with the HTML default bullets, horizontal rules, or coloured heading text

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Imagine one evening while you try to put order in the old attic, amidst the dark and the dust gathered by the years, you discover an old photo album, last centuryâ??s early version of a home multimedia databaseâ?¦A photo album, containing mostly black & white photos of family elders â??occasions like weddings, gatherings, celebrations, trips around the world, full on sentimental value, and even â?? why not â?? historical value. After all, at day end, everyoneâ??s own history is a part of the worldâ??s history â?? seeing it from a philosophical point of view.

But unfortunately -as it happens with old technology storage media – time leaves its trace on the photos. For instance visible marks on the surface, dust and scratches and discolouring and fading are constantly populating the surface of each of your valuable photos: humid, photo-hungry germs are feeding their appetite starting from each photos edges, slowly but steadily progressing towards an irreversible victory, turning history into oblivion.

Unlessâ?¦ Oh, yes, using magic technology, a perceptive eye and a steady hand can reinstate the photo-historical status-quo, eliminate or correct any side-effects, any signs or scars this battle of time has left-over. And the good thing is that there is no need for expensive technology, nor rocket science is needed: Any good old image editing application with a scanner will do – and in case you feel nostalgic about old storage media types, a printer with photo paper will complement the task. So letâ??s say, you have the photos, you have the technologyâ?¦ What next? How do you proceed, quickly and efficiently enough to restore any kind of printed images? Are there some tricks you should have in mind, which can help towards this goal?

Well, the answer is yes and no. Despite the power tools we have these days even in our home computers (with Adobe Photoshop on Windows and Mac, as well as Gimp on Linux as primary examples) capable of easily performing a huge number of impressive digital photo tasks, restoration of old photos is still closely related to a users aptitude and artistic eye, as much as in his good knowledge and effective use of the application tools.

For example, in Photoshop there are embedded filters, which automatically remove small dust and scratches: some clever image recognition algorithm works there, that recognises unwanted elements by identifying irregular fluctuations in the bitmapâ??s pixel colour depth mapping. But this works only relatively well, as the underlying algorithm is not lossless: the more strongly the filter is applied, the more the loss of the image quality in terms of sharpness and details. Furthermore, it is strongly dependent on the image contents. Dust, scratches and other elements are more easily removed from the photoâ??s uniform shaded areas, i.e. when photos are picturing elements like walls, surfaces, sky, clouds etc. than from, say, a landscape with lots of details, a patterned canvas or a photos that contains a number of people.

As for the use of tools like the powerful Adobe Photoshopâ??s Clone Stamp, or the newer Spot Healing Brush, which allows sampling and copying to pixel level, when it comes to heavy damaged images, the userâ??s intuition is the only serious tool to consider. For example, it could be the case that an image is so much damaged, that parts of it are literally missing â?? ok, if it is a landscape with flowers, sampling will work well, but when the damaged part contains elements of a particular form, like peoples faces or other body parts, interior design or architectural elements, then copying, sampling and spot healing is not enough. Sometimes the user would have to re-create these elements; identifying and copying similar details from somewhere else in the picture could be also possible, but most of the times angles and light shades would be different. And especially when the damaged areas are affecting elements like peoples faces, hands, animals etc. or even everyday objects like chairs, or clothes with special details like shoes etc., the restoring task is even more difficult: these objects that would need recreation, have aesthetics that are well integrated within our visual perception of â??how things should look likeâ??.

When the desired result is an image aesthetically correct and therefore usable in many ways, there is no magical recipe into which tools in what order and what functions the restorer should apply when working on the task. More so when the task is to put colour in black and white photos, especially with people on them which involves large areas of skin. A correct skin colour is something that all professional photographers and image editors are looking for, especially when images are going to be printed. Putting colour in a black & white image is one of the most difficult tasks a digital image restorer will have to perform. Imagination and creative intuition as well as experience and advanced knowledge of the tools available are strongly required in order to achieve sometimes a just-bearable result. As there is a very fine step easy to be crossed before a beautiful face pictured in black & white is turned to a pink, red or yellow dull alien one, such is the fine line that can differentiate a good photo restoration from inadequate attempts sold as expertise.

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When discussion takes place about how to achieve better organic website rankings on the major search engines, rarely will you hear anyone suggesting that your websites images are an opportunity to help you achieve this goal.

The reason for this is because search engines like Google, Yahoo & MSN experience the same problem as visually impaired users of your website and that is that they cannot recognise or “see” your images.

However there is a way (SEO Software) in which you can make the images that you have on your website work for you to increase your website ranking and drive traffic to your website.

What exactly is the ALT image attribute?

ALT image attributes are places in the HTML code of your website where you can enter the description of a text or graphic on that page. When you run your cursor over an image or graphic of a website, a panel of text will appear just below your cursor and this is the ALT image attribute at work.

The secret to increasing your websites relevancy for a particular search query and boost your website ranking is to optimize the ALT Attribute for each image or graphic on your site because although search engines cannot index any images or graphics from your site, they CAN index the test in your ALT image attribute which can therefore contribute to your websites relevancy for a particular search query.

How to best optimize the ALT image attribute.

You will want the text to include one or two keywords which you are targeting a high ranking for on that particular page. Do not stuff the text with all of your keywords as this could trigger the search engines to recognize this text as SPAM and you may even cause a drop in rankings rather and a boost.

You also want to remember that your website must be user friendly so creating a long caption of keywords does nothing in terms of telling the reader what the image is all about and it also does nothing to help those of your readers who are visually impaired and use text-voice software to read the caption.

Let’s take for example a fictional florist who is targeting the keyword “wedding bouquets”. They have an image of a bouquet on their web page. A good text caption for this image would be:

“One of our spring wedding bouquets”

This incorporates the keyword and accurately describes the image together.

These days certain keywords for different industries are highly competitive and in an arena such as that you should not loose any opportunity to help your site rank well for certain keywords and this includes not neglecting your images. So use the information above to rank better for your keywords and drive more targeted traffic to your website today!

SEO Software

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Software developers are burning the midnight oil to come out with fancier tools and packages almost each passing day. Nowhere is the pace of innovations so rapid as in the field of graphics. In fact, one cannot imagine life without graphic designs these days. They seem to be omnipresent,whether in the movies or banners, letterheads, brochures, Website or on online profiles, to mention only a few places. Sexy graphics and sexy images has in fact become the staple on which the entire advertising world seems to be revolving these days. You cannot possibly imagine promoting a product or a service without this combination.

Typically graphics is widely used in the creation of promotional materials for magazines, newspapers, web design and logo, to mention a few businesses. Needless to say someone creating these sexy graphics and sexy images has to be a creative person. A good graphic designer should also be good at planning, visualizing and analyzing too. They also need to have a good understanding of how to make graphics or images communicate to the people. There is nothing like graphics to get the message across. Color, animation, photography and illustrations put together have captured the imagination of almost every person on this planet.

The Internet is perhaps one place where you are sure to find graphics and images in plenty. In fact, web designers use all sorts of combinations of sexy graphics and sexy images all the time to attract online visitors. If you are someone who is actively into online social networking, then you must have surely come across online profiles of people where graphics and images have been creatively used. In fact, you will find thousands of such profiles over social networking sites.

If you are someone who is thinking of jumping into the social networking bandwagon, then the first thing that you need to create is your online profile. With thousands of profiles vying for the attention of online visitors, how do you ensure that your profile stands out ? The answer lies in using sexy graphics and sexy images. Communication that is done through the visual effect definitely is found to be more effective when compared to written communication. This is where graphics and images score over mere text.

Another place where sexy graphics and sexy images play a big role in enhancing the overall aesthetics is on your vehicles. Whether it is your SUV , truck or favorite car, graphics coupled with images are enough to express your creativity , as well as your personality. When it comes to graphics on cars, there are endless possibilities for you to choose from. While women may like shapes such as that of animals , tapestry patterns, natural scenery or insect stickers, men would generally go for extreme designs such as racing theme decals and flame decals. Graphics and images also look great on motorcycles too. In fact, one cannot imagine a bike these days without them. Such is their popularity among bikers.

The major reason why sexy graphics and sexy images have become so popular is that they are easy to create these days.Sophisticated software technology has ensured much more user friendly graphic designing tools nowadays.If you find that creating new graphic designs is a cumbersome process, then you can go in for readymade designs also. You can find plenty of them if you were to hop online nowadays. The printers that are available these days are capable of printing high resolution images. What is required is a little bit of effort, patience and creativity on your part. Whether it is your car , your online social networking site profile or a simple business card, remember you can always make them special with sexy images and graphics.

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The rapid pace at which the software field is progressing is amazing. Almost every passing day we see new software products being launched. Take animation and graphics for example. You just cannot imagine a promotional campaign these days without sexy graphics and sexy images. From a small thing such as a business card to brochures and online profiles, you can see the influence of graphics almost everywhere. Nowhere is the impact of graphics and images seen more than in the field of advertising. Almost every ad these days makes use of these elements in order to push products or services nowadays.

Sexy graphics and sexy images are being used both by the print as well as the electronic media. For magazines , websites and newspapers, they seem to be the staple diet on which they feed upon. Whatever the media, there is a lot of creativity that goes into coming out with attractive graphics. This process is totally dependent on the creativity of the graphics designer. They have to first of all visualize and use their imagination to come out with attractive designs that would go well with promotional campaigns. Apart from being good at design , they also need to be good marketers, who know how to send the message across.

The advent of the Internet has had its dramatic impact on the field of graphics. They are a lot easier to find these days, thanks to the Internet. A simple online search is all that you need to do in order to find sites where sexy graphics and sexy images have been used to enhance their visual appeal. Social networking sites are perhaps one category of websites which are heavily dependent on graphics and images. Profiles of people over social networking sites are almost always designed using graphics.

If you are someone who wants to join the social networking brigade, then you must be wondering as to how to create an online profile that would be different from the others? With thousands of profiles on these sites, there is one way in which you can make your profile stand out. It is by using sexy graphics and sexy images. An attractively designed profile using these two important elements is sure to make your profile stand out. They would do a lot better when it comes to attracting online visitors, over profiles which have only text as their major component.

Vehicles are another medium for display of sexy graphics and sexy images. In fact, these days you cannot imagine a car or a pickup van or a SUV without some kind of attractive graphics. They are as much a show of your attitude , as they are a means of making your vehicle look more attractive. You can choose from a variety of designs when it comes to graphics for your cars. While men generally prefer the racing theme, women are known to go in for something softer. Of course, bikers have always been fond of graphics for a long time now. They are enough to make a bike extra special.

One reason that we are seeing a lot more sexy graphics and sexy images these days is again , because of the advances in technology. They are a lot easier to create nowadays. There is much more user friendly software available, using which almost anyone can create great looking graphics nowadays. Readymade graphic templates too are easily available these days. Printing technology too has advanced at a rapid pace and today taking prints of high resolution images is hardly a difficult task. All that it requires is your imagination and you could be creating a masterpiece, all on your own.

Get into http://www.layoutsparks.com/1/21786/Adriana-Lima-t5-Style.html to find the real need of having such images to improve the aspect of attraction!

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What Is Image Optimization?

In layman’s terms, image optimization means reducing the size of your images so that they can be quickly displayed on the web. However, it is also important to consider the quality of the images. While you want to reduce the size of the file, it is important to do so in a way that still delivers an acceptable image quality. Balancing visual aesthetics and efficient loading is the true challenge of image optimization.

Why Optimize Images for the Web?

When your web page loads very quickly, users are more likely to return. Load time is a major factor that influences the popularity of a web site. Image files make up the largest pieces of data on most pages. For this reason, image optimization is a vital factor in reducing your site’s load time. A web page with optimized images will attract more repeat visitors.

While many users have high speed internet connections, others still use dial-up services. Well optimized images load very quickly over a dial-up connection. You want to choose images that enhance your web presence without discouraging users with a slower internet service.

Are Photos from My Digital Camera Ready for the Web?

Most digital cameras do not record photographs in a web-ready format, they are print ready ready. While each camera can record images under a variety of file settings, most will export them in a format that is far too large for web display. The same may be true of many images that you might purchase on the web.

However, most photo editing programs will allow you to save image files in a format that is ideally compressed for web display. You may also be able to edit the image by resolution or file size. These programs are useful tools when optimizing images for the web.

We recommend purchasing a program like Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. In Photoshop you have a “Save for Web” button, that will export your image in an optimized version. You’re also able to crop or resize your images.

You can use our built-in Image Optimizer, this program is located in the Image Manager.

Understanding the Metrics Involved in Image Optimization

In order to optimize your image, it is important to understand the key data points that can be changed to reduce the file’s load time. This process involves changing the image’s size and quality.

An image’s quality is often measured in a certain number of dots per inch. This is the image’s resolution. Basically, the “DPI” measurement indicates the number of dots used in each inch of the image. A higher DPI indicates a better picture quality. However, this increase in quality also makes the file larger. For a print application, 300 DPI is considered a professional industry standard. However, this is too large for web use. A web-optimized image should not exceed 72 DPI. On the screen of your monitor you can not visually detect the difference between 72 DPI and 300 DPI, because the monitors screen resolution is 72 DPI.

An image also has dimensions that determine its size on the page. Some image editing programs refer to this as the canvas size. The canvas size can be measured in inches or pixels. It will usually be described in the same terminology as your monitor’s display resolution. This helps you understand the image’s relative size on the page. For example, a web-ready image might have a width of 300 pixels and a height of 400 pixels. Most high quality digital cameras produce images in sizes that are far too large for web application. The built-in Image Optimizer or your photo editing program will be able to adjust these dimensions.

The image file size also has a specific measurement. Web-ready images will be measured in kB. Your camera may produce images that are several megabytes in size. A medium image file size is about 30kb’s. Consider this when deciding how small your image files need to be.

In Conclusion

Image optimization is the process of fine-tuning your images to provide for a quick load time without sacrificing too much quality. The Image Optimizer and photo editing programs such as Photoshop can help you compress your files for optimal display on your web page. So a measure to shot for is 200 to 400 pixels wide or high and about 30kb’s in file size.

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I can draw allsorts of images using my tablet and I have created numerous for where I am working now, I enjoy making them so I was wondering if anybody wanted any done for them? Nothing rude though! All I ask is that you credit me!

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SignsUS.com takes a look at how to find images for your new signage, online!

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