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Sharing Digital Photos

Getting Your Digital Photos Ready For Sharing
by: Valerie Goettsch

One of the main reasons people buy digital cameras is so they can share their photos with others. Even if you are just going to print your photos for yourself, you will want them to look their best. Here are some tips on getting your images ready for sharing or printing.

1. ORGANIZE YOUR PHOTOS

Delete the ones you don't like or those that are near duplicates of others. No sense in clogging up your hard drive or CDs with junk. Use a good photo management software program like ACDSEE 7, Adobe Photoshop Album 2.0 or Jasc Paint Shop Photo Album 5 to view, organize and name your images. These programs also let you batch rename so you can give more descriptive file names to a group of photos at the same time. You can add key words and tags to make finding your photos easier. Be detailed in your photo descriptions, not just "John and Laurie." You'll probably have hundreds of photos of your kids and it will be harder to find the one you're looking for. Better to say "John and Laurie waterskiing on Lake Powell, May 2004."

2. BACK UP YOUR ORIGINALS

Mistakes can happen. It is a good idea to back up all your images to a CD before you start editing or changing them. That way you always have the original to go back to if you accidentally save over an image or made changes to a photo that you later decide you don't like. CDs hold lots of photos, making it cheap insurance.

3. ROTATE IMAGES

Trying to look at a sideways photo is annoying. Use your photo management or editing software to rotate photos as needed. And if you have any images that are a little crooked, you can fix that using your editing software. Most photo editors have an automatic "straighten" function, or you can manually rotate the image a few degrees to straighten the horizon line.

4. REMOVE RED-EYE

Even with your digital camera's auto red-eye reduction function, your subject's eyes may still have red-eye. Use your photo editing software to remove it. Zoom in on the eyes and it will be easier for you to correct the red-eye. I've tried a number of red-eye correction tools and find that the one that comes with ACDSEE 7's photo editor is among the best. It zeros in just on the red eye and doesn't darken the surrounding eye area like some other software does.

5. CROP YOUR PHOTOS

Crop out unnecessary or distracting backgrounds and focus in on your subject. Most photo editing programs will keep the aspect ratio, so when you draw a box around the area you want to focus on it will crop it as 4x6 or whatever you have specified. That way you won't end up with an odd size photo. Ofoto, the online photo printer (now called Kodak EasyShare Gallery), also has a very good cropping tool for maintaining the proper print size. It comes with its free photo editor.

6. ADJUST LIGHTING AND CONTRAST

Some of your photos may have come out washed out or too dark. You can automatically adjust the color, brightness and contrast of your photos. The better programs like Photoshop Album 2.0, Jasc and ACDSEE also have tools for making manual adjustments for fine-tuning. Be careful not to overdo it, though, or your picture could come out grainy.

7. PREPARE TO SHARE

There are a number of ways to share your images. Several programs, like Roxio Photo Suite 7, ACDSEE7, Photoshop Album and Paint Shop Photo Album allow you to create digital photo albums or slide shows, complete with music, transitions and captions. You can burn them to CD or resize and optimize for emailing directly from the program.

Online photo services such as PhotoWorks, Shutterfly, Snapfish and Kodak EasyShare Gallery (Ofoto) also let you share your photos on line, for free. You simply upload your images to their server into your own photo albums and add captions if you wish. Then email your friends with a link to your albums. With most of the online services your photos stay on their servers as long as you have an account with them, for free. Signing up for an account is free, you only pay for photos you choose to purchase.

For hardcore photo sharers, there are also dedicated photo sharing applications such as PiXPO v1.5.0, which lets you share photos right off your hard drive. This is a peer to peer software application that allows you to connect directly with your friends and family to share and view pictures online with no uploads. Unlike traditional photo sharing services, you have unlimited storage and you don't have to upload your photos to a distant server or wait for friends to log onto some photo sharing site. The application is easy to install and use and it's inexpensive, around $30. PC Magazine rated it an Editor's Choice in their January 3, 2005 issue.

About The Author Valerie Goettsch publishes the digital photography website http://www.digitalphotos101.com featuring reviews of photo editing and album software and digital photo printing services. info@digitalphotos101.com

http://www.articlecity.com

Cheap Web Hosting - When Cheaper is Better

Cheap Web Hosting - When Cheaper is Better
by: Bob Frazer

Anyone who has ever shopped for web hosting knows that you can spend anywhere from nothing up to several hundred dollars to host your web site. So what’s the difference? Well often times if you’re talking about typical shared web hosting in the $6 to $20 range – nothing. That’s right – nothing! Nothing that is, except good old fashioned marketing and hype!

We compared standard features on 5 well known shared hosting accounts to see exactly what you get for your money – and the results may surprise you. What we really care about in our test is probably what you would care about as a small business owner looking for hosting for a basic site: adequate disk space, ample email accounts, and reasonable bandwidth. We looked over all the other bells and whistles – but weren’t really willing to pay loads extra for them. We were also looking for a short term contract (monthly or quarterly) – not a year or two commitment.

Upscale

Verio’s Bronze Plan - http://hosting.verio.com/index.php/unixwin_bronze.html

Monthly Price (including set up fees) - $24.95 per month + free setup

Basic Specs – 250 MB of diskspace, 7.5 GB of bandwidth, and 20 email accounts

Extra’s – Web design software, free domain pointing, Urchin web stats, free chat software

Our take – If this were 1998 I might consider paying $24.95 for a package like this…oh wait, it’s 2004.

Mid Tier

Interland’s b100 Account - http://www.interland.com/shared/bluehalo/?package=b100

Monthly Price (including set up fees) - $12.95 per month + free setup

Basic Specs – 250 MB of diskspace, 10 GB of bandwidth, and 30 email accounts

Extra’s – WebTrends web stats, access to log files, firewall protection

Our take – This is one of the biggest brands in hosting and their prices have been reduced of late. Still pretty expensive compared to aggressive lower priced competitors.

SuperbHosting’s U Power Service - http://www.superbhosting.net/upower.php

Monthly Price (including set up fees) - $12.50 per month + free setup

Basic Specs – 1000 MB of diskspace, 50 GB of bandwidth, and 250 email accounts

Extra’s – Free domain, 30-day money back guarantee, daily data backups, free search engine submission, no content restrictions

Our take – Another well known hosting service that seems to offer considerably more value in the mid-tier than other companies.

Cheap Hosting

IPowerWeb - http://www.ipowerweb.com/products/webhosting/index.html

Monthly Price (including set up fees) - $9.95 per month + $30 setup

Basic Specs – 800 MB of diskspace, 40 GB of bandwidth, and 400 email accounts

Extra’s – $50 Google AdWords credit, money back guarantee, SSL included, unlimited email forwarding

Our take – Often thought of as the low priced hosting leader. Their plans really shine when signing up for an annual account where the price drops to $7.95 per month.

HostSave Standard Hosting - http://www.hostsave.com/hosting/plan_features.htm

Monthly Price (including set up fees) - $8.95 per month + free setup

Basic Specs – 1000 MB of diskspace, 100 GB of bandwidth, and 500 email accounts

Extra’s – Free MySQL database, catch-all email address, PERL v5, log file access

Our take – This looks like the best deal for our basic needs. They have a big brand name and all the features we need plus the MySQL database thrown in.

Conclusions

You can pay a lot for basic shared web hosting – you can also get it on the cheap. While certain specialty features might justify paying a premium, our analysis suggests that you can probably get the same specs – maybe even better specs – without paying more money. So for our hard earned bucks, cheaper is definitely better!

About The Author Bob Frazer Author: Cheap Hosting Directory .com Date: 5/2/2004 Email: info@cheaphostingdirectory.com CheapHostingDirectory.Com is a resource for webmasters and consumers looking to find a web hosting company or a quality expiring domain names with traffic. CHD is part of the TechPad Agency network of web hosting related sites, visit www.thetechpad.com for more information.

http://www.articlecity.com

Email Newsletter Format: HTML or Text?

Email Newsletter Format: HTML or Text
by: Mario Sanchez

An email newsletter is probably the most effective way to communicate with your target audience. One of the main considerations before you create and deliver an email newsletter is what format to use: HTML or Text.

Until a few years ago, some email programs couldn't handle HTML. Nowadays that is not an issue, since most email programs are HTML compatible: AOL versions 6 and higher, Internet Explorer versions 4 and higher, Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express, Eudora, Yahoo Mail, and Hotmail all support HTML. HTML email newsletters can easily be managed and sent using services like Constant Contact or Vertical Response.

Using HTML for your newsletter can be a plus from a usability perspective. Studies conducted by usability guru Jakob Nielsen show that most people prefer HTML newsletters because their enhanced layout makes articles easier to read (provided that the design of the HTML newsletter is clean and simple). The same design guidelines recommended for web pages also apply to HTML email newsletters.

However, HTML newsletters are often confused with unwanted advertising, since HTML is the format of choice for marketers trying to sell their wares and services through email messages. For this reason, text email newsletters are still popular, since their plain, no frills look helps differentiate them from advertising.

Text is also the format of choice for those who use a free service (like Topica or Yahoo! Groups) to administer their mailing lists and deliver their email newsletters, since these free services usually don't support HTML. If you use text, remember that you won't be able to use formatting tags, such as bold or underline, and that you must create hyperlinks by adding the prefix http:// before the URL (or the prefix mailto: before the email address, if you want to create an email link).

The approach I prefer is a hybrid between HTML and text. I compose my email messages in HTML, but using only text. HTML allows me to use simple formatting tags like bold, underline and italics, and a nice, screen-friendly font. I use a lot of white space to facilitate scanning, and include only a summary of each article, with a link to the full article (which is hosted on my website), since most users don't like to read long articles in the body of email messages.

My email newsletters, therefore, are similar to the table of contents of a magazine, in the sense that they give readers a broad overview of the current edition's content, and tell them where to find it if they are inclined to read further.

This hybrid format is never mistaken for advertising, is easy to read and scan, and loads fast. Furthermore, by offering links to the full articles, your users will be encouraged to visit your website, where they can have access to more information and learn about your products and services.

About The Author Mario Sanchez is a Miami based freelance writer who focuses on Internet marketing and web design topics. He publishes The Internet Digest ( http://www.theinternetdigest.net ), a growing collection of web design and Internet marketing articles, tips and resources. You can freely reprint his weekly articles in your website, ezine, or ebook.

http://www.articlecity.com

Dreamweaver vs FrontPage

Dreamweaver vs FrontPage
by: Oleg Lazarenko

There are two major WYSIWYG(What You See Is What You Get) editors available for beginners. These are: Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia Dreamweaver. So the question is which one is better?

This article is not intended to humiliate Dreamweaver or FrontPage editors. I just attempted to analyze both programs from different points, based on Internet research, experience of other users and my years of html coding experience.

To say honest I am not the fan both of them. In our production we regularly use AceHtmlPro but the fact is that many of our customers DO use either FrontPage or Dreamweaver and that's the reason our employee have to be familiar with both. Writing the article I have talked to our stuff and did some research about both editors and I came up with the facts I'd like to share with you.

Pluses and minuses of MS FrontPage:

1. FrontPage as all Microsoft product has so many templates and ready to use solutions that you cannot admit it is easier for beginner to start using FrontPage to build his first website. You can create simple website personal or business with several clicks and all you will need to do next is to enter your text and pictures instead of used by FrontPage by default.

2. The good news is FrontPage html pages look exactly as they appear in MS Explorer and the bad news is that they look perfect ONLY in MS Explorer. However you may program FrontPage to get rid of nasty tags but I believe it requires some hand coding to adjust pages to Netscape or Opera. Another good news for FrontPage users: about 93% of all internet clients use MS Explorer 5 and higher.

3. As Microsoft application FrontPage is better with ASP pages, which are standard for Windows based hosting and windows based programming.

4. MS FrontPage perfectly interacts with other MS Office products. For example you can easily cut and paste some chart from MS Excel into FrontPage working area.

5. By default MS FrontPage uses table with the fixed width and sometimes it can be a problem to make it display tables with percentage width.

Pluses and minuses of Macromedia Dreamweaver:

1. You can build your own templates and use them to edit hundreds of pages of your website with one single click. Although Dreamweaver adds some comment tags to html file to distinguish editable and non-editable areas and I read in one forum that people experience some troubles applying template to more then 700 pages as they ran out of memory but I had never chance to test that.

2. Pages done with Dreamweaver usually have less trash in coding. They look almost perfect with Netscape, Opera and MS Explorer.

3. Dreamweaver doing amazing thing with SSI files and other server side include technology. Php code looks much nicer however with ASP scripts FrontPage still better.

4. Dreamweaver is much better interacts with other macromedia products.

5. Both editors in most cases display CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) correctly. But if you enter style attribute twice in Dreamweaver for it will definitely ruin your page and you will be able preview your page partly before this error. FrontPage however handles such mistakes easily.

There are many others pluses and minuses in both editors if I wrote about al of them I should probably start a book rather then single article, but those I have mention I heard most about.

My idea is that MS FrontPage is ideal for beginners as it provides so much help and templates, then you should move to Dreamweaver when you feel yourself more comfortable with the html code and finally, if you are serious about web design, you should reach the hand coding level as it still best way for coding pages. It gives you the freedom of using tags and styles, as you want them to use. Do not forget however validate you hand coding, or code generated with FrontPage or Dreamweaver. You will be surprised if you knew how many errors produced during coding starting from broken links to invalid tag attributes.

About The Author Oleg Lazarenko Production manager of Metamorphosis Website Design Studio - Custom design, Website Templates, Web design Articles and Tutorials. http://www.metamorphozis.com You may reprint this tutorial for free as long as the content, About the Author sections and all links remain unchanged.

http://www.articlecity.com

Offline Website Marketing Techniques

Creative Offline Website Marketing Techniques
by: Adam Senour

Although the vast majority of website traffic is the direct result of search engines, there are many offline marketing techniques that can be used to draw customers to your website. The examples listed below are but a few ways in which you can market your online presence to an offline audience in an inexpensive manner. Some of the examples listed below even can be implemented at no extra cost!

Some of these ideas are fairly common, but some are rather unique and I personally have only ever seen them employed once, twice, or at most 3 times.

But why would I want to do this? I already deal with these people offline.

Most businesses are not open 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year. Most websites, however, are available on a 24/7/365 basis.

Many people, especially those with busy lifestyles, tend to use the Internet during non-business hours. To give a few examples: business owners will often check their emails and visit suppliers' websites later in the evening; and consumers looking to make a high-value purchase, such as a car or house, will often research their purchases online in advance well into the wee hours of the night.

Some of these techniques will also generate new clients as well; the possibility exists that you will attract a client whom you have had no prior dealings with.

If you employ some of the offline marketing techniques listed below, it could very well be your site and company that they deal with first!

Include your website and email address on your business cards and other print marketing material. While this may seem rather obvious, most businesses do not elect to do so, and it usually ends up costing them potential revenue and profits as a result. Let people know you have a method where you can be reached and information on your company's products and services can be found at any time.

Use your company vehicle as a "billboard". Automotive decals are a relatively inexpensive way to advertise your company's services. Depending on what you want, decals can cost anywhere from approx. $20-$200 CDN, and will last until you choose to remove them from your car or truck. The best part is that every time you want to reach a new target market for your advertisement, all you have to do is drive!

Note: there are more expensive decals available, but these are usually combinations of text and artwork. The text portions of the decals tend to be minimal in cost, as they are the simpler elements.

Ask potential offline advertising suppliers for an "ad study". Some advertising suppliers have a method whereby they will offer the advertiser a sample advertisement or placement as a form of an "effectiveness" study. In exchange, the advertiser agrees to reveal the full results of his/her marketing campaign to the supplier. This isn't something that very many companies do, but the few that do are generally suppliers worth dealing with.

Incorporate your website into face-to-face conversations and telephone calls. Your customer may be looking for a specific product or service which may be outlined on your website. Guide your customer to that page and let them read the information over, being prepared to answer and ask any questions that may arise from said information.

More Ideas

Press releases. If you have a new product or service, create a "media" section for your website that outlines its details and promote the hyperlink via press release to various mass media.

PR Web is an great resource for mass-broadcasting a press release to thousands of newspaper, magazine, radio, TV, and similar media managers---and it's free!

Promotional clothing. If your business has "uniforms" or "staff shirts", then including your website hyperlink on these items is a great way to promote your business at no extra charge.

Microsoft takes this concept one step further; every time a user successfully completes their OEM System Builder exam, they ship the user a free Microsoft t-shirt via UPS with nothing except for the Microsoft OEM website URL on the back.

Another creative use of this concept is provided by ADAM Web Design client Regional Shows, who used their online logo on the jersey of a kids' baseball team as a form of sponsorship.

Other promotional items. Pens, mouse pads, coffee mugs, baseball caps, and other such promotional items are great places to include a company website hyperlink.

Outdoor signage/signboards. Catch the attention of people who are driving by your place of business with your website URL along with your company name, phone, fax, and common email (if any). They may be driving by and not have time to stop in and visit your business, but they may visit your website when they have the time to do so to gather more information.

Note: be sure to check with your local municipality to ensure that outdoor signage is in compliance with its by-laws. Some cities and towns do not allow exterior property signage.

A Tattoo. A tattoo? As strange as this may seem, this is something that can be very effective. Body modifications have the unique property of being able to attract the human eye to them, and a website URL tends to stick in one's mind as being a rather unique idea for a tattoo. A friend of mine, when she ran a small personal site, used to promote it in exactly this manner.

These ideas should give you a starting point for future offline advertising creativity, as well as give you some ways to see a return on your website investment with very little time, effort or money. Good luck!

About The Author Adam Senour is the owner of ADAM Web Design, a leading web design and development company in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

http://www.articlecity.com

Creating Your Own HTML Email Templates in Outlook

Creating Your Own HTML Email Templates in Outlook
by: GlobalFusion If you want HTML Emails in Outlook to look the way YOU want, and your designing them in DreamWeaver - Heres How:

Step 1

When in Outlook (Pro), Go to the Tool | Options Menu.

Step 2

Click on the Mail Format Tab along the top of the current dialog box.

Step 3

Under 'Stationary and Fonts', Click on the Stationary Picker Button.

Step 4

Click the New.. Button.

Step 5

Enter any unique name (not an existing stationary name), then select (by clicking) the Use this file as a template radio button, then click Browse.

Step 6

In the Browse Dialog box, locate your HTML file.

Outlook will then create its own copy of that file which it stores under:

x:\Documents and Settings\Username\Application Data\Microsoft\Stationery

If you wish to make 'instant' changes to your stationary, just edit and save this file, and outlook will reference the new file.

If plain old HTML is a bit too boring for your email templates, or you just want greater control of your elements - you CAN use CSS.

The only thing you need to remember, is that your CSS needs to be in the same HTML file.

For an Example of using CSS in Email Templates - visit: http://www.globalfusion.com.au/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4

Thats it!

Enjoy your New HTML Email Template!

About The Author Adam Roper is the founder of GlobalFusion - a Multimedia & Web Development firm based in Sydney, Australia that designs everything from websites to DVDs and Multimedia Kiosks. If you have questions about creating HTML Email Templates or want someone else to do the design work for you, visit our website at: http://www.globalfusion.com.au or shoot us at: info@globalfusion.com.au

http://www.articlecity.com

Royalty Free Music

Working with Royalty Free Music
by: Alan Steward

When creating Multi-Media Content, Flash or Video Clips for a client's web site or CD Rom Project, the last thing you want is to get him in trouble with the law. If there's a need for music in a project, using royalty free music is essential.

Here are some general music tips that you may find useful:

1) Finding the right kind of music

There are hundreds of choices when it comes to royalty free music and making the right decision can be hard. After all, most TV production companies have music supervisors on staff whose only job it is to select appropriate music for projects. Selecting music is an art in itself. In general, you will find that your clients would prefer to use something they heard on the radio, something from their favorite album etc. Unfortunately, that's copyrighted stuff and licensing an N Sync song for your next 'how to' video or CD-Rom may cost you a fortune. What you want to do is find buyout music that sounds similar to today's popular music. It's a little harder to find than your typical 'canned' music. A lot royalty free music may sound like music from a 70's sitcom or worse, a cheap porno flick.

A good place to check out is http://www.buyoutmusictracks.com All their tracks are created by established record producers with grammy and gold record credits so you get music that sounds as up-to-date as what you may hear on the radio.

Our tip: Always use music that sounds just a little more energetic than you think you may need. You may listen to the music over and over while you're putting together your project while the end user may only hear it a few times.

2) Less is not more in production music

When you are looking for background music for a project, choose music with some impact. I know it is supposed to be background music but if you choose high energy tracks, your whole project will leave more of an impression. Listen to a sampling of today's TV commercials and you'll find that most of them use very powerful music. You want your work to create an impact and keep viewer's attention and a strong, powerful soundtrack can do that.

3) When 'legal' music is not legal

The usage license on your buyout music CD may be very liberal but it is not a license to steal. You can use royalty free music on all of your projects and as you have the legal right to use the music, your customers can be assured not to get into legal troubles.

However, that license is only extended to you, the purchaser. You cannot transfer that license by copying your CD and giving it to somebody else or by selling the CD. This may be news to you but there's no such thing as a 'used buyout music CD' If you don't purchase the music from the producers of the music, it won't be legal still. So, next time you browse Ebay for royalty free music, make sure you are buying a new CD, not a used one or it will be useless to you.

4) You get what you pay for

While we're on the topic of Ebay: You may find offers for entire 4 or 6 CD libraries for $75 or other ridiculously low prices on Ebay. The truth is, these CDs may not even be worth that low price.

One good quality royalty free music CD will cost you between $29 and $69 (some even more) If it's less than that, here's what you are likely to get:

1. Discontinued titles that have been around for 10, 20 or more and not only sound dated but may also have already found its way unto hundreds or thousands of other projects during the years to make your own project sound dated.
2. Homegrown CDs that are created in somebody's bedroom studio. You can easily recognize these CDs as they usually don't have any 'real' instruments on it, only synthesized stuff. You can clearly hear the difference between those CDs and something produced in a real studio with real musicians. Our tip: Check out http://www.buyoutmusictracks.com for music. Each of their CDs is only $29.95 and each title contains between 30 and 48 real studio recorded tracks.

5) CD or Download?

With the event of high speed internet, you don't really have to wait anymore to receive your Royalty Free Music CD in the mail. If you need tracks fast, you can now download buyout music from the net. You can choose only the tracks you need and get to use them within minutes. Single downloadable tracks usually cost a little more money per track than buying a whole CD. On the other hand, you don't have to buy a whole CD if you only need one or two tracks.

My advice, if you are buying music to 'keep on the shelf' for future projects and for your customers to choose from, buy physical CDs. If you need just one or two 'perfect' tracks or if you are on a deadline, downloadable purchases may be perfect for you. I don't know if I have to mention it, but purchasing a Mariah Carey track from Itunes or Napster for a buck does not entitle you to use the music. You have to download your music from a buyout music company so the track is licensed to you.

6) Make your own

You may think, 'are you crazy? I'm not a musician' You don't have to be a music genius anymore these days. Programs like Acid and Apple's Garageband allow you to create original music by using 'loops' Loops are pre-made musical chunks of drums, bass, guitar, strings, whatever, that you can put together like a mosaic to create your own music soundtrack.

The advantage is clear. By creating your own music with a loops program you can make absolutely sure that nobody else is using the exact same music on their project. This will give you 'original' music at Buyout Music Prices. All you need is a good musical ear and a couple of loops CDs to get you started. You can find lots of loops CDs and more info at http://www.acidmusicloops.com Their Groove Construction Kits are a great way to get started with music loops. And here's the best news, you can download the Acid program for free. Just visit http://www.musicleads.net/articles/freestuff.html for free (and legal) downloads of Acid, Protools and many other great music and sound tools.

I hope that these tips were useful to you. You are free to use or re-print this article in your newsletter, ezine, or on your web site.

About The Author Alan Steward - www.musicleads.net Alan Steward is a producer and engineer with many credits in the Music, Video and Television production world.

http://www.articlecity.com

Optimize your Photos

Optimize your Photos for the Web
by: Kelly Paal

It doesn’t matter if your emailing photos of your grandson or putting images of your latest product on your online store. Too many people don’t consider optimizing their photos for the web. We’ve all been on too many web pages where it seemed that the photos would never load, and sometimes they didn’t. So here are some steps to make sure that your photos show up on your site.

1. Always have a back up original format copy of your image. Never alter the original. Believe me you will regret it.

2. Crop to size. Make sure that you crop out any extra information that isn’t needed. Remember the larger the photo the longer it takes to load or send.

3. Resize to reduce pixels. There should be an option to resize according to pixels. You’re going to want the largest size to be no more than 250 pixels or you can reduce the dpi to no more than 96.

4.Reduce the color palette. Many images have millions of colors so the first thing that you need to do is reduce the colors to 256. You will lose some depth with this.

5. Save the file in a standard format. JPEG is the most common for photos and you can compress the image with a JPEG for further reduction in file size. It’s not unusual to see GIF or PNG as well.

Remember that with a 56k connection a 150k file will take 20 seconds to load. If you’re creating a web page every photo that you add will add to the time it takes to download all of the images. If you keep the images small in size the smaller resolution will not be as obvious.

About The Author Copyright 2004 Kelly Paal Kelly Paal is a Freelance Nature and Landscape Photographer, exhibiting nationally and internationally. Recently she started her own business Kelly Paal Photography (www.kellypaalphotography.com). She has an educational background in photography, business, and commercial art. She enjoys applying graphic design and photography principles to her web design.

http://www.articlecity.com

Image Formats

Image Formats-GIF, JPEG, BMP
by: Stephen Hames

When browsing the internet you are likely to come across many different image formats. However, the most common formats are: CompuServe GIF, JPEG, and Bitmaps.

CompuServe GIF

GIF stands for Graphic Interchange Format and was standardized by CompuServe in 1987. The very first GIF format was GIF87a and saves images at 8 pits-per-pixel with a colour level of 256. Then in 1989 CompuServe updated the GIF format to include animation, transparency, and interlacing, which was called GIF89a. Apart from animation, transparency, and interlacing there is little difference between to two.

JPEG

The JPEG image format was developed by Joint Photographic Experts Group. JPEG's best feature is the compression, you can compact the image file to make it the size smaller (bytes). The problem with this format is that there is a trade-off details detail and size. Generally its best to save JPEG's at 50% compression.

Bitmaps

Bitmaps was invented by Microsoft (everyone's favourite company). The Bitmap format saves your image pixel for pixel, in other words, what ever you see on the screen before you save is what you see when you open the image again. The only drawback is that the file sizes can be extremely large, which may result in longer download/upload times

About The Author Stephen Hames I run and operate a web template website called SJH Designs, http://www.sjh-designs.co.uk

http://www.articlecity.com

How to Sell your Website

How to Sell your Website
by: Matt Dobinson

There are hundreds and thousands of websites on the internet today being bought and sold and there are many places you can sell your website such as ebay and website brokers. Though this article we will explore each of these possibilities in greater details.

Ebay - Selling a website on ebay can perfect for some and completely useless for others. As most people know ebay, it gets millions of hits every minute from people looking for everything from hair nets to race cars. For starters this is a great way to get word out that your website is for sale. It has lots of people viewing your ads but keep in mind your competition is feirce as so many people post sites for sale on ebay. To sell your website on ebay it has to stand out from the rest.

Forums - Forums tend to be a great place to sell websites. They tend to ask alot more questions about statistics and revenue than most other places but if you have a quality site you can sometimes get alot more for it buy selling your website in forums. Good forums for this include sitepoint.com, geekvillage.com and webhostingtalk.com.

Website Brokers - Website brokers normally go out and try to get you the best possible price for your website. They tend to have contacts in the industry and will get into contact with people you can't or dont even know exist. They generally charge a fee of around 10%-15%. There are a few websites around where you can post your website up to brokers - kind of like a cross between ebay and a brokers firm.

Sell to your visitors - A commonly used technique to get a good profit from the sale of your website is to post a 'site for sale' link or image on the frontpage of the site for sale. This targets the audience to people interested in the topic of the site. But be warned not all of these people are or want to be webmasters.

Personal Contact - If you have a low budget, selling your website though your personal contact can be very rewarding. This takes everyone else out of the equation and you pay no broker fees or ad fees. If you plan on selling your website this way make sure you know enough people who would be intrested in the site.

Website Checklist

Before you get to putting up website for sale ads and hiring a site broker, there are a few things you will need. Firstly, find out in detail your statistics. This including unique visitors per day or month, bandwidth used per month and current and past revenue for the website. Most people who are in the industry will ask for the pagerank of the website too. You can find out your page rank by downloading the google toolbar and re-visiting your website. A pagerank is considered by most webmasters as being a large factor.

About The Author Matt Dobinson is the owner of PageBrokers.com - A website dedicated to buying and selling websites online for the best possible price.. He also runs WebmasterFreebie.com - an online community for webmasters.

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