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I'm helping a freind with her website, and she has a lot of photos. What is the recommended size of thumbnails and photos that open in another window? Since she has a large amount of photos, would it be better to store the majority of these photos in an off site photo album such as Photobucket? Thanks so much for any suggestions or thoughts.
Don't store them on another server if you can avoid it. Those are free, so I guess that's good for you if you don't have the space, in which case you should do it, but if you do have the space/bandwidth, and photos really don't take up THAT much, unless you're on a bad free hosting account, etc., I'd recommend hosting them on your server.
A thumbnail should be very fast to load, probably under 10kb, and I'd say a standard size is 100x100, or something near that. But it's up to you or her, based on what looks good. This isn't a rule or a question about how something works-- just what looks good. The thumbnail should be large enough to tell what it is, but not something fun to look at-- they'll click it if they want to see more.
The full image should be as large as needed. Keep it small if you don't want someone stealing the image and using it, if it's something like that, or if it's something you're offering for sale. If you're putting it out there for wallpaper or for people to save and look at, make it as big as possible. Don't put a raw file up, and compress some, but no reason to keep it too small. Certainly 1000px in either direction is very large for a full view, in most cases, so something like 400-600px in one direction would be a "standard", or at least vague average.
Anyway, what is it, who are you showing, are the visitors on dialup? Friends? Family? Customers? And in the end just do whatever looks good.
Thanks so much Daniel :),
My friend does custom quilting, dress making and alterations as well as custom framing. The photos are pictures of fabric and projects she has completed. Internet speeds vary greatly here, everything from dialup to high speed wireless. Right now it will be an online portfolio but eventually she does want to add a shopping cart.
Thanks so much for the info (again), I'll wait and see how many photos we can fit on her site first before deciding whether or not to go to Photobucket. :)
take care,
FYI, just to remind.
Start out with your largest image and work DOWN. I am surprised by the amount of people that still try and enlarge images from smaller qualities. Pixelated images are a big no no.
Also, since I am assuming pics are of whole quilts, might I suggest you thumbnail a piece of the fabric instead of the whole quilt project. As you thumbnail, details will get lost on really large subjects such as a quilt so instead, perhaps your friend can highlight a particularly interesting design on the quilt so it stands out in the thumbnail (but keep the entire project pic for the big pic)