How to Prepare Photo Content for Your Website (Essential 5 Tips)

April 21, 2020 Emily Peilan

What is the number one thing that will make or break your website? Your photos!

If you’re working with a Web Designer, he or she will most likely ask you for your photo content and expect you to know what you need to do!

Either way, you’ll most likely have to organise and prepare your own photo content. Here are my top 5 tips for preparing photo content…

Pssst... thinking about creating a website but not sure where to start?

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1. Can I use photos taken on my phone?

Your website will be device responsive, meaning page and image sizes will change according to the size of the device screen.

While a photo taken on a cell phone might look okay on a smaller screen, it runs the risk of looking pixelated when viewed on a larger desktop screen, which will then detract from the overall aesthetic quality of your website.

As a general rule of thumb, I suggest straying away from photos taken on a cell phone. The best images are those taken with a DSLR camera.

Source: Unsplash

2. What size should my images be?

Ideally, when you hand your photo content over to your web designer, the photos have already been compressed. You can do this for free and very quickly on a few softwares such as: TinyPNG and Bulk Resize Photos.

I highly recommend you to run your images through a compressor tool (eg. I use TinyPNG), because it will help your web page speed load much faster and thus, rank more favourably on Search Engines like Google.

These Photo/File Compressors significantly reduces the file size of your photos (by up to 95%!), without compromising on the image quality on the webpage. I often have photos that are over 20MB and TinyPNG effortlessly compresses them down to around 1MB or less!

3. What if I don’t have any images, can I just use any one I like from the internet?

Ahhh red flag!! Please, please, please don’t ever do this! Every photo is licensed under Copyright Law from the moment a person presses the shutter. So every photo you see on Google belongs to someone and the last thing we want is his/her lawyer sending you a bill.

If you’re struggling to find high quality images for your website, here are a few options:

   1st: Grab a camera (or buy one) and take some
   2nd: Hire a photographer to take some for you
   3rd: Use copyright free images found online
   4th: Purchase Stock photos

Photo by Brooke Lark | Unsplash

4. What are Copyright Free Photos? Where can I find them? And are they really free?

Copyright free photos are created by amazing artists who share their work and allow anyone to use them, without paying or crediting the image source.

There are many sites and platforms, which offer Copyright Free Photography and yes… they are completely free! But it would be super nice if you credited the artist somewhere on your website!

My personal favourite is Unsplash because the quality is incredible, the gallery is extremely diverse, AND it integrates beautifully with Squarespace! Kaboompics is another great site for free stock photography with high quality images and a more feminine style.

5. Are Stock photos worth paying for then?

Paid Stock Photography are generally taken by professional photographers, while the free ones tend to have a lower barrier to entry (if at all). The paid platforms also have a much more extensive gallery so there will be more to choose from.

While I love Unsplash, I do find myself turning to Paid Stock Photography more and more, just because it’s also more unique and targeted (plus there’s less chance that people will use the same images as you).

Here are my top favourite Paid Stock Photography Sites:

Photo by Karolina Grabowska | Kaboompics