After yesterday’s illuminating discussion about images, I thought it might be interesting to look at the format of the image files I use at A Scenic Route.
The format I end up using the most is the JPEG which stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group, the name of the committee that created this and other still picture coding standards.
This format is considered optimal for photographic images with rich/high colors, and since that’s what I’m going for, it’s become my favorite format.
One thing to remember when posting images is to decrease the size, not only to save space in the media gallery, but to decrease the load time of the blog page. Keeping the images crisp and bright while allowing the page load quickly is an art form all its own, and is known as JPEG optimization. I’m still working on that part!
What kind of image formats do you use on your blog? Have you ever given up on a blog page because it takes too long to load? (Hopefully not mine!)
(Here’s your link back to the A to Z Challenge Sign Up list.)
I didn’t know waht JPEG meant before this, thanks for the education. My computer is really slow, so I will absolutely give up on anything that takes too long to load.
Yeah, me too. Videos are the ultimate show stopper for me and those flash animations don’t work either. I guess I need to think about a new computer, even though I love my Mac just the way it is!
I’m fairly certain that all of the files I’ve loaded to my blog are JPEGs…they’re just so nice and versatile. 😀
WordPress does upload a variety of formats, but JPEG always looks nice, and seems to be the most prevalent format out there. 🙂
I never knew what JPEG stood for, either. I’ve given up on blogs that took forever to load (not yours, but it has happened a couple of times this week as I visit new ones for A-Z), but it never occurred to me that the reason might be that they contained large files. I honestly don’t pay any attention at all to the size of the files I’m uploading. Guess I should!
I was just glad I figured out how to get images up on my blog, and now I’ve learned that I need to consider how big they are!
I always use JPEGs. If someone sends me a PNG file, I convert it. And 72dpi is all you need online.
Thanks, Alex. That’s good to know. 🙂
Wow – if I ever got a tattoo (not likely) that J is what I’d get 🙂
I loved how this J turned out. It makes me smile just to look at it! 🙂
I have seen a few bloggers with spectacular alpha art. I wish there’d be a an “after A to Z” blogging event where all you bloggers would do a post that showed all the alphas in a stream. I would love it!!
In any event, I know where to find your letters when I want to see them again 🙂
I had so much fun with these letters! After this month is over, I’m thinking of creating a separate page with all my A to Z posts for easy reference. 🙂
Love that idea, there are sooooooooooo pretty
I love JPEG! I tried PNG once and nope. It looked awful. But that’s another (very long) story. My biggest struggle right now is figuring out how to make sure my images look crisp on Amazon. Sometimes it looks like they’re pixelating slightly, and I can’t figure out why. :/
Oh, and RGB to CMYK conversion, too. Struggling there, and those images on Amazon for my print books are *definitely* sup-par. Not sure how to solve that, either. :/ :/
There is so much to learn when it comes to image manipulation! I’m afraid to even go there, but it sure makes me appreciate a nice crisp picture.
Honestly, until now, I never worried much about how my stuff looks to others. Blush. I figure if it works on a Kindle, my office iMac, and my home PC it pretty much works everywhere else. JPEG is the best.
Sounds like you have things covered on all of your devices, Nancy. Once I had a blog post come out with all kinds of little symbols dragging along the bottom when viewed on a PC, but not on my Mac. Fortunately, a sharp-eyed follower of mine alerted me to the issue, and I was able to fix it right away. So, I’m always curious what my stuff might look like on other devices.
I mostly use JPG and the only time I had trouble uploading was when I had computer problems and everything was slow.. Some of the images I used for the challenge were PND and they were fine as well.
I have a few images in other formats as well, and they load fine. JPEG seems to be the most popular though. 🙂
Kirsten, right you are I believe the security agents and their moods play into the airport alot! When you leave a comment, I click on your name which takes me to your blogpsot profile page, then I click on the title to your blogspot then I click a 3rd time to get here to your actual blog. If you leave your name and url (in the drop down box on most blogs), people will come directly here with one click vs 3. I never knew what JPEG actually stood for, but they are the format I always use. My camera takes 5,000 x something almost as large and so I decease my photo’s to about 1,000 x whatever the equivalent is in one program, then I use a 2nd program to crop sometimes even more when trying to get closer to something. I used to go to the trouble of doing the html tagging thing with photo’s but have since quit doing that, seems when blogspot changed formats it wasn’t necessary? Not sure I totallly understand what you mean about optimization?
Hi Sandy,
Thanks for your tip. I had a lot of trouble with blogger, so I did that workaround. I will definitely try to leave my name and url and see if that works better.
Optimization is used to reduce a website’s load time while preserving the image’s appearance. It is something I want to start considering going forward, because I certainly don’t want people to give up on me due to long load times.
Especially after clicking three times to get here! 😉
I’m glad you persevered and visited A Scenic Route. 🙂
I learned something new today! Well, actually several. Thank you! I’ve signed up for your email list. So glad I found this blog (thanks A to Z). When I visited yesterday, I was in a hurry, but today I came back to explore. A plethora of information is here. 🙂
I’m so glad you’re finding some useful stuff here. 🙂
And I know what you mean about being in a hurry! I’ve discovered so many cool blogs with A to Z and I’m looking forward to exploring them more thoroughly once the challenge is over.