Week 2 Reflections

ow...the readings about all of the resolution, color, fonts and scanner stuff seemed to be pretty heavy to me. It's kinda makin' my head ache but I'm gonna hang in there. I think it will get better once I actually start to mess around with the pics, adjusting the sizes and messin' with the resolution numbers - I certainly hope so anyway. I should probably start messin' around with resolution stuff outside of class so it can start to stick. It's actually more involved than I thought it was gonna be.

Anywho - to answer the questions that are on the syllabus: Many people take a digital pic and then attach it to an e-mail to a friend, add it to their blog or their personal web space without making any changes. Is this a good idea? What are some changes that should be made to images to make them web ready?

This is not a good idea -because everyone does not have the similar computer settings (monitor resolution, pixel resolution and monitor size), graphics can be very tricky to translate from one computer to another - the following things need to be changed/considered before sending out a digital pic to an e-mail or to a web space:

1) Resolution - pixels per inch should be set to 72 so that the file will be small - this will help the image to be displayed more easily

2) Colors - there are only 216 colors that are commonly recognized, across the board, to all computers. When other colors are used outside of these colors, there is a risk that the colors may not be recognized, resulting in color/graphic distortion. So - to prevent this it is important to know how to access and use browser safe colors - these are swatches and palettes of colors that are undoubtedly safe to use universally. Cool websites such as Colormix.com and lynda.com allow you to create and select colors of your choice.

3) Type - the goal is to make sure that all information is both readable and legible (easy to read and easy to recognize. To achieve this for, use a sans serif type font not below 8 or above 18, long lines of text and excessive use of bold, italics and CAPS should be avoided, and attempts should be made to contrast between the background and the actual text on the page.

4) Size/Compression - compression (making the file smaller) ensures that the files is easily transferred and stored so that it will not take a long time to transfer/load on a web page- may compromise the quality of the graphic depending on how you choose to compress (cropping does not effect quality but reducing the KBs will)

5) File format - it's important to know what type of format to save your file under (TIFF, JPEG, JPG depending on the file) - this is to preserve quality of the graphic as well as to make sure that the file does not take up too much space on the web when page is being loaded for viewer

WHOA.