Need advice on preparing images for the web?

[Mandy73]

Although I'm not completely new to post processing I think it's time to learn the proper techniques rather than guessing. I've had a search around but can't find any info of substance. I still use Photoshop Elements 3 (strapped for cash). Here's my questions:

I shoot in jpeg and when I open the image it's set at a default of 72 dpi,is this ok? I know it's a bad thing to change this, but I wonder how such a small dpi might effect my images?

I would like to build more of a presence on the web by building my portfolio more like on my Flickr account. So I'd like some advice on how to best prepare my images to be displayed on the web?

At the moment I crop and straighten if necessary, make colour adjustments if necessary and use unsharp mask a little... when I resize I do it via pixels but what size is best?

What does your images need to be hi-res mean?

I have a feeling I've probably asked too much in one go, any help is much appreciated or a nudge in the right direction if I'm missing an obvious tutorial?

Many Thanks

[OsmosisStudios]

72 dpi is what most monitors display at, so it's fine. Some of the new, expensive, ones run into the 100-125 range, but generally there isnt a huge difference.

If youre preparing for the web, keep in mind that what you see in PSE isn't likely to be what you see in a browser. Internet browsers are notorious for using different colour spaces, gamma levels and so on, so you may end up with some images looking a bit dull.

If you're re-sizing for web, re-size using pixels. Everything out there is done in pixels, especially websites, so using that will be the easiest for you Just make sure that it resizes properly (ie maintains the ratio)

"hi-res" online can vary In my mind its 900x600 px, as that's the largest im really willing to go before I start getting paranoid. Some people will tell you the image has to be at least 1080 on the smallest side (HD video sized), but that leaves you with some rather large images.

[inkista]

The color space that most web browsers use is sRGB. If you're not shooting in sRGB (say, you have the camera set to Adobe RGB--which is a larger color space), you want to make sure that whatever JPEG you save out is using sRGB--this is the #1 reason that a lot of folks complain about their pictures looking duller when they've been uploaded to Flickr. (Well, not Mac users on Safari, since Safari can handle color profiles....)

Also, depending on what kind of Flickr account you have (Pro vs. free), you'll probably want to resize your images prior to uploading to save on bandwidth (hopefully, your uploader does this for you, but....)

Learn about the effect that compression can have on your images. Every time you save an edited JPEG file, you are re-compressing it and every time you use a JPEG compression scheme, you lose data. If you don't do all your editing all at once, and save in between steps, you may want to shoot in RAW, and only save out as JPEG for final delivery, or take the JPEG you shot, save it TIFF or PSD, and then do all your editing, before compressing it out as JPEG again, minimizing the amount of data loss (most RAW formats, btw, are just TIFF+metadata features). You'll also want to experiment a bit with how the amount of compression you use gives you a tradeoff of quality vs. file size.

[Mandy73]

@OsmosisStudios - aaahh so the 72dpi is the monitor display, it's all starting to fit into place...

@inkista - I'm pretty sure my 450D is set already to sRGB but I'll check. It's interesting what you say about the jpegs, I've been meaning to try shooting in RAW for a while but I'd put it off because I've only got the RAW software that came with the camera and I haven't looked at it properly yet. No excuse really just fear of the unknown!!!

Thanks for the help

[OsmosisStudios]

Of note, though: even when saved to sRGB, you WILL see a difference if youre looking at them side-by-side. Even with Safari. Safari reads the colour space but applies it's own (often erroneous) formatting to it.

[DannyF1966]

I don't know anything about colour space or stuff like that, but when I put photos on my site I crop and resize them to 800*532 (that's the closest to the native resolution of the camera). Mostly I resize the pic down to that size, but for one or two pics I've just taken an 800*532 crop from the full-size image.

I'm not building up a portfolio to start a business or anythign like that, just dumping some pics on a photoblog site so I can share with friends and family.

Dan