Imagery Part 1: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Ever wondered why an image you've uploaded to your site looks out of focus or slightly fuzzy like this...

...rather than like this image?

On the web images should be uploaded at their actual size (100%) in RGB colour mode, not sized-down or sized-up, this is the best practice for maximum quality imagery.

If you have to re-size an image and you don't have photo editing software it's always best to size-down an image rather than size-up (you can do this in the IGLOO editor).

The web works using pixels, images online are just small squares of colour that when seen at a distance (and at 100%) become a sharp clear image. When you increase or decrease the size of an image beyond its actual size the pixels have to compensate for missing data and therefore can look out of focus or broken down.

The bad example above is what an image would look like when the size is increased considerably. You can actually see large areas of like coloured pixels where missing data was made up. When an image is decreased in size data is being taken away rather than being created from nothing.

Acceptable file formats for the web are:

.gif
.jpg
.png
.bmp