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Graphics for web sites are increasingly important as broad-band services become wide spread. This improved performance makes it possible to include high resolution photos of products on your site.

However, 53% of U.S. home users still browse the web with dial-up modems, and the base-line for speed is a 28.8k baud modem. You don't want visitors leaving because they get tired of waiting for the page to load. That is why "thumbnail" images which link to larger images are still so prevalent, and will be for the foreseeable future.

Here is an example of thumbnails that link to different size photographs of the same image. Click on each photo image below to see the full size photograph image.

The 640x480 photo image matches the lowest resolution monitors currently available, and is suitable for most commercial Internet applications today.

The 800x600 photo image is the maximum suitable for on-line viewing with most web browsers. Many versions of browsers will automatically shrink these images to fit within the browser window when the screen resolution is set to 800x600, so look for "expansion arrows" if the image does not fill your screen.

Note: The 2272x1704 photo image will be very slow to load in dial-up connections. This is the original size JPG photograph of a 4 megapixel digital image and should be used when printing photographs, making photographic prints for catalogs, brochures, etc. It is not intended for Internet usage due to the slow load times for many PC's.

However, digital photos vary widely in data size, depending upon the amount of information in the image. A photo with a lot of items in the background can be twice the size of the same photo that has the background "painted" out in one solid color. So in many cases, an 800x600 photo image is perfectly acceptable as far as download time is concerned.

I generally use black backgrounds for orchids so the colors in the flowers stand out, but any color can be applied to a photo background to match the color scheme of the web page. The color can be picked off the web page so the background blends in with the page, or it can picked from one of the colors in the flower itself to accentuate a certain hue. That all depends upon your personal preference.

The 160x120 JPG "thumbnail" photo images shown below on this screen are one example, but any size that suits your application can be used. GIF thumbnails are also available that are smaller in size and load more quickly in a browser, but the image quality is not as clear. However, GIF images have an advantage in that they can be constructed with "transparent backgrounds" so that only the flower appears on the web page, no matter what the background contains. In either case, the thumbnail image can be linked to a full size image. A comparison of the two thumbnail image types is shown here:

One issue with thumbnails is the quality of the image when it is re-sized from the original. The best results occur when the pixels divide "evenly" from the large image to the thumbnail. If the total number of pixels in a large image do not divide evenly with the total number of pixels in the thumbnail (in any dimension), the re-sizing software must decide which way to "shift" a pixel during the re-sizing process. This results in a "blurring" of the image and a reduction in the overall image quality of the thumbnail.

The easiest way that I have found is to work "backwards" from the size of the thumbnail image. For example: if the thumbnail is to be 147 pixels x 110 pixels, then the original image size needs to be an even multiple of that size (such as 2058 x 1540). If even one dimension of the original is not an even multiple, the image will be blurred in that direction. It may not be apparent by itself, but when compared to an evenly divided image, the resulting difference of the thumbnail can be dramatic.

Each image should be created from the best, high resolution photo obtainable, rather than a faded image that is so poorly scanned and filled with scratches that it looks like it was taken in the 1800's. Or, one that is so small that people brush their nose against the computer monitor, straining to see what that dot on the screen really is.

Please contact me for details on purchasing the rights to use an image, or for permission to use an image for non-commercial purposes.