Optimizing Images the e-z Way
Q -What's the number 1 reason your web pages load slowly?
A -Graphics which are too large (and maybe too many on one page)
Several have images which are around 100k (ugh!)
A few students have images which are over 400k each. (ugh, groan and click off!)
Long range, the best plan is to take the photoshop class and the Designing Graphics for the web class to learn to optimize your images (you learn a lot of other good tricks also, along the way).
But short range, here's an easy way to reduce their size (you may want to do this even with your "small" size images)
(The size I'm talking about is not the pixel width and height. It's the file size which you see when you look at the file info on your hard drive or on student).
- Go to ZD Net's Developers Web Site and use their online helper called GifBot
http://www.netmechanic.com/cobrands/zdnet/gifbot/
- When you get to the page, enter the url of an image which you have in your web directory
(Example: student.santarosa.edu/~username/bigimage.gif)
- Click the 'Optimize' button...
- Wait..... (be patient!!!)
Eventually you will get a new web page which shows your original image and ten or so optimized versions of the same image. You can just copy them all from the page and save them back to your local drive, or look them over and copy only the one or two that you want to use (your original image is still in your web directory. The program makes a copy to use)
What you will find is that there is always a trade-off point. As you scan down the versions you will reach one and groan as the quality of the images begins to degrade. BUT, before you get to the unacceptable one, you will probably agree that the first several optimized samples are just about as good as the original, but they will be anywhere from 85% to 40% smaller in physical size (it varies with the image)
This isn't the only service like this on the web. Look around. You may find one you like better.
But whether you use this or another one, I strongly recommend that if you don't know how to do it yourself, you let these tools help you get those images optimized!