• DIY build from scratch- you’re building your website by creating individual web pages using some type of web page building tool like Expression Web, iWeb, or Dreamweaver and HTML.

• Professional web designer or developer- you work with a skilled web designer or developer create your website for you.

• Turnkey web builder service- you use some kind of service like Big Cartel or the website builder software provided by many web hosts to develop your website.

• Open source e-commerce or web software- you’re building your website using free or low-cost web building systems like Wordpress, Joomla, or Zen Cart.

Now after being online since 1996 and using all of these methods to build a variety of websites, my recommendation for building your own website is to use the free open source blogging software, Wordpress.

Why Wordpress? Because Wordpress has some pretty impressive options and features that make it a great choice.

1. Wordpress is free to install and use- Unlike some of the other paid software and services like Big Cartel, you can install and use Wordpress to build your website for free. Well, almost for free, you still have to pay for the hosting account that you install Wordpress on. But you can get good reliable hosting for $12 or less per month. Now compare that to some services that charge $20, $30, or $50 or more per month, $12 or less is a pretty good deal.

Plus, there are a lot of hosting services that allow you to run more than one website on one account. Since Wordpress is free, you can use multiple installations of Wordpress to run multiple websites all for the same $12 or less per month. If you have the need to run more than one website this is a definite plus.

Finally, you can easily transfer your Wordpress website from one host to another without losing the design of your website or any functionality which can be a problem when using a third party web building service.

You can read the rest of the article by signing up for the Crafted Webmaster Newsletter for free here: http://www.craftedweb.com/subscribe.html. If you subscribe now, you can get my free audio download, “10 Steps to Getting More Traffic on Your Website” and get 10 powerful tips on how to increase traffic to your art website.

• How do I get started?
• Do I need someone to help me?
• What kind of equipment and software do I need?
• Do I need to learn web design?
• Do I need to learn HTML?
• Do I have to know how to program?
• How long is it going to take me?

I’ve been designing websites since 1996. I’ve made more websites that I can remember and made more mistakes that I would like to remember. And one of the best methods that I’ve run across to create your own website that’s low cost, easy to maintain, and is flexible enough to handle any kind of website you can think of is by using Wordpress.

Now if you have a blog, you’re probably familiar with Wordpress. It’s the free open source blogging software that allows you to host and maintain your own blog. Millions of bloggers use Wordpress…in fact this blog uses Wordpress. But, you can use it for more than just blogging. You can use Wordpress to build a website, an ecommerce store, and online portfolio, or just about any kind of site you can think of.

So to illustrate how easy it is to use Wordpress to set up and maintain a website, I’ve decided to do my first ever webinar called, “Easy Website Building with Wordpress” on Tuesday, June 22nd at 8:00 p.m. (EST). On this webinar you can watch me show you:

• how you can easily install Wordpress on your website…even if you don’t have any technical skills
• how you can transform Wordpress from a blog to a fully functioning website…you can easily run your blog and your website at the same time
• some of the killer plug-ins and resources you’ll need in order to make the most out of Wordpress
• how you can easily make changes to your website, add pages, and even change the entire look of your website with just a few clicks!

By the way, did I mention that this webinar is free?

So if you’re interested in learning more about Wordpress and how it’s a great website building tool, please join me at 8 p.m. EST on Tuesday, June 22nd. You can find out more information about the webinar by clicking here.

The webinar should last for about 60 to 70 minutes…plus it will be recorded so if you have the leave the event early or if you can’t make the event at all, you can watch the replay later. The seat are limited, and since this is a free webinar the seats tend to fill up fast, so you should reserve your spot soon.

1. cost- how much will it cost you to build and maintain?
2. maintenance- who and how are you going to keep your website running?
3. control- who has the ultimate control over your website?

Now there are a number of different ways you can build a website, but you need to make your decision with those three points in mind. So let’s go down some of the most common site building options and the pros and cons of each.

DIY- build from scratch- you’re building your website by creating individual web pages using some type of web page building tool like Expression Web, iWeb, or Dreamweaver and HTML.

• Pros- if you’re doing the work yourself, then the cost of building and maintaining the website is fairly low. You’re mainly paying for the cost of the software, the domain name, and hosting. If you know what you’re doing, you have complete control over how your website looks. Plus you can do the maintenance yourself.
• Cons- You have to know what you’re doing. This method has a pretty steep learning curve and can be time consuming if you’re a beginner. You’ll need to know how to use the tools, learn at least some basic HTML, and web design. Plus, if your design skills are limited, then your website may not look as professional as it could be.

You can read the rest of the article by signing up for the Crafted Webmaster Newsletter for free here: http://www.craftedweb.com/subscribe.html. If you subscribe now, you can get my free audio download, “10 Steps to Getting More Traffic on Your Website” and get 10 powerful tips on how to increase traffic to your art website.

When you’re building your own website, there are several things that you need to you take into consideration before you begin:

1. Cost (development and maintenance)- the cost of building a website is always high on the list of worries for artists looking to build their own website. The cost varies from site to site depending on what kind of features the website will have, whether you’re getting a professional designer to set up your site, and whether you’re going to have the ability to sell directly from your website. Calculating an exact cost for an “average” website is difficult until you take some of those factors in consideration.

Also, most people only consider just the costs associated with getting a website up and running. It’s also important to factor in costs associated with keeping the website up and running. Depending on what method or service you use to build your website, what you spend on keeping your website running may actually cost more than the initial set up.

You can read the rest of the article by signing up for the Crafted Webmaster Newsletter for free here: http://www.craftedweb.com/subscribe.html. If you subscribe now, you can get my free audio download, “10 Steps to Getting More Traffic on Your Website” and get 10 powerful tips on how to increase traffic to your art website.

I’m looking to set up my own website, but I don’t know how much it should cost per month or who I should set me website up with. Any ideas?

M. Ferrer

I answered a question similar to thisin the Etsy forums yesterday, so here’s what I had to say.

Hi there,

The price of web hosting varies from company to company and it also depends on how big your website is and what extra services comes with your host. On average, if you’re planning on putting up a plain old website or Wordpress blog, or maybe a web store using Zen Cart or OScommerce, you should pay no more than $15 per month for hosting. Any good web host should offer a package for this price that gives you more than what you would need. I use two hosting companies for all of my websites: Hostgator and Bluehost. I’ve been using them for a couple of years now and I haven’t had any issues with them. They both run about $10 per month.

If you’re looking for a web host that will also include ecommerce capabilities, say they also give you an easy way to build your website without knowing HTML or provide shopping cart services, you can expect the monthly price to be higher. A service like Big Cartel will run you anywhere between $10 to $20 per month depending on how many items you’re selling. If you’re going to use a service like that, be sure to shop around for the best features and price.

You should also avoid web hosts that are too cheap, like in the $2 to $5 range. These hosting services tend to be rather unreliable and you run the risk of your website running very slow or not at all. So beware!

Hope this helps!
Nicolette

Do you have a burning question about websites or promoting yourself online? Click on the “Ask a Question” tab at the top of the page and send me your question. I’ll send you an answer to your question personally.

If you’re thinking about creating your own ecommerce website to sell your crafts or artwork online, listen to both episodes to get some information on how to start the process. They’re both about 15 minutes each, so you don’t need a whole lot of time to listen:

• Building an Online Store on Your Art Website
• Building an Online Store on Your Art Website- pt 2

In addition to the shows, there’s also a free ebook available that offers a great checklist of what you need to look for when you’re looking around for a shopping cart. You can download it for free here.

1. Know exactly what you want to get accomplished- One of the things that can cost you time and money when you’re hiring a graphic designer is that you contact them before you have a clear idea of what you want to get accomplished. A lot of artists think that if they just hire an expert, they’ll be able to tell them what to do. While an expert designer can build and wonderful looking website, but they can’t necessarily tell you what the business goals of your website should be. They can tell you that a dark blue background will look more soothing and professional than a bright patterned background, but they can’t tell you what art pieces you should sell on your site…or whether you should sell on your website.

Decisions like what the purpose of your website should be, what the goals of your ad promotion should be, or what kind of feeling you want your blog banner to convey has to come from you. You’re the business owner and you know better than anyone else in the world what you’re trying to accomplish with your business overall. You can’t outsource the vision for your business to a designer or any other person.

2. Get recommendations- The best way to find a graphic artist or web designer is to get recommendations from someone that you really trust that has hired them before. Friends, colleagues, family members, or mentors that have websites or has had the occasion to use the services of a graphic designer will be more than happy to recommend a good one if they were pleased with their work.

3. Do your homework- Even if you find a designer that was previously vetted by a friend, family member, or mentor, you still need to do your homework. That means that you want to check out the designers’ previous work. You want to ask them questions about projects that they’ve worked on before. You also want to get an idea of how much they charge and how busy they are.

4. Start small- If you’re working with someone new, try starting off with a small project…like designing a blog header or an online ad. This will give you a chance to see how this person works and if you can trust them to do bigger jobs like redesigning a brochure or building your website. You also want to make sure that whatever project you start them off on is not a mission critical rush job. Rush jobs put an extra level of pressure that you don’t need to deal with when you evaluating a new designer…plus you’ll likely get charged more on rush jobs.

5. Look towards the long term- One mistake that a lot of people make is trying to find someone for just right now. They look for the cheapest person they can find that can get the job done as quickly as they can and the relationship pretty much ends after the project is done, for better or for worse. I’ve been on both sides of the client/designer relationship and I can tell you that you’ll get a better quality and value for your work if you approach the hiring of your designer as the beginning of a long term relationship rather than as a one-shot deal. Remember that designers are small business people too and a repeat client is always a higher value to them than a one-time client. If the designer gets the sense that they can expect more jobs from you in the future, then they’ll be more likely to do great work. And the benefit for you is that you’ll have someone that you can turn to in future to help you out when you happen to blow up something on your website or when you have that rush job that you don’t have time to accomplish.

Also, look for someone who’s fairly flexible that has a wide range of skills that you may be useful to you in the future. A graphic designer that’s also well versed in designing for the web and building websites is a lot more useful that someone who strictly designs for print or vice versa.

So what do you think? What are your tips for finding a great graphic or web designer. Leave your tips and stories in the comments section!

P.S. Some time back, I did a telephone interview on how to find a web designer with marketing expert, Connie Green. You can listen to an excerpt of the interview here.

Now why am I bringing up this story? I write a lot about on this blog how there are a lot of things that you can do yourself. I get questions from readers on how to do this on Photoshop or how to tweak that page in Dreamweaver and I answer them as best I can. But at a certain point, you have to think to yourself, “Is it really worth doing everything myself?”. You can learn to build a website, but is that the best use of your time? You can cobble together a web banner for that blog ad you bought or for your Etsy store, but is it going to be the most effective banner possible?

Now I’m also web designer as well as a jewelry designer, so I might be a bit biased, but I’ve seen plenty of cases where my client would have been better off hiring someone to install that piece of software or to build that website or to design that ebook cover in the first place because the results were disastrous. I’m not saying that it’s not worth you learning how to do some things yourself. I’m saying that you need to know when it’s not worth it. Such as:

1. You’re in a hurry and you need it done well and quickly
2. You have no knowledge how to do something and really no interest in learning
3. You need to get something done and you’re already only sleep 5 hours a night because you’ve got so many other things to do.
4. You have just enough knowledge to be really dangerous and it’s a really big deal if you try to do it and mess it up

Now of course hiring someone to do something whether it’s building a website or designing a graphic banner, means spending money…which we really don’t like to do…especially when the market is tight. But getting help doesn’t have to be expensive and it doesn’t have to be an ordeal to find a good person. And in the end it can be worth the money. For about $30 Luann got a brand new banner. She also saved hours of time and frustration. And I imagine that that was worth more than the $30.

Tomorrow, I’ll give you some tips on how to find help without breaking the bank or going crazy.

• Do you need to learn HTML?
• Is your site making your visitors’ eyes bleed?
• htmlPlayground- an online HTML tool
• Tools for Maintaining Your Web Site
• In Pursuit of the Perfect Website
• Why Does My Website Look Different?: Ask a Question Reply
• WYSIWYG Website Editors Reviewed
• Learn HTML On My Own or Take Classes? : Ask a Question Reply
• Web Design: How many clicks does it take?
• Why simple is better for your craft website
• 10 Costly Mistakes When Creating Your Website

Although we all have our favorite web browsers, whether it’s Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, whatever, remember that it’s a good idea to make sure that our websites look good in as many as possible. Remember that there may be some differences in how some browsers display your website, so you should try to check this out instead of waiting for someone to tell you that your website is broken when they look at it using Internet Explorer. I wrote about the importance of this in response to a reader question a while back. You can check that post out here.

Another thing to remember is that web browsers aren’t solely just for computers anymore. If you’re one of the lucky ducks that has an iPhone or a cell phone or a Blackberry in which you can surf the web with, then you’ll know that websites also need to be designed to that they look good for people using mobile devices to surf the web. If you want to see what your browser would look like on an iPhone, you can go to Testiphone.com, type your web address and find out.

If you are planning to take the plunge and create your own website or if you want to give your existing site a facelift, take a look at this great article that I found through the Daily Blog Tips blog before you get started. It’s a list of 10 Assumptions that people make when developing their websites that can end up becoming costly mistakes. Some of these assumptions include:

• Assumption #1: People will know how to find your website
• Assumption #2: People know what you sell
• Assumption #3 : Everything will go as planned
• Assumption #7: People know how to buy (this is huge!)
• Assumption #9: People will contact customer service if they have a question or problem
• Assumption #10: People will come back (I covered this point in past newsletters)

Dang, I almost posted the whole list…but the rest of it just as good. You can check out the article here.

But not everyone has the time and patience to read through a manual on web design and HTML, so for you multimedia learners out there, Mashable has compiled a list of 10 Video Tutorials for Learning Basic Web Design Skills. So if you’re the type that learns better by watching than reading, you want to check out some of these videos!

I am so new at this, but I want to learn how to do web sites. I am getting the feeling that learning HTML might be essential. I was going to buy Dreamweaver, but it looks like I should learn code as well. My question is: Can I learn that on my own or should I take some college courses (local Junior College)? Thanks

There’s a lot of ways that someone can learn HTML…here’s what I wrote to Carol…

Hi Carol,

I must admit that I’m an old school web designer. I learned to design websites by hand before there were tools like Expression Web and Dreamweaver, so coding in HTML is like second nature to me. That being said, strictly speaking you don’t have to know how to code in HTML to create a website using a tool like Dreamweaver. But a good working knowledge of HTML will certainly be beneficial because you’ll know what the program is doing to your page behind the scenes.

Now basic HTML is not a very difficult thing to learn, and how you learn it is really dependent on how you learn best. If you’re good studying things by yourself, you can get a good reference book like Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML or Sams Teach Yourself HTML & XHTML in 24 Hours and teach yourself. And while you’re at it you should probably also get a good reference book on Dreamweaver as well, like Dreamweaver CS3: The Missing Manual.

There’s also some online resources that can help you out as well. Web Design from Scratch has a good basic HTML tutorial that you can look at.

If you prefer the multimedia approach, Lynda also has some video training for HTML as well.

If after looking at some of these online resources and the reference books, you feel that you need some one-on-one direction or you feel that you learn better in the classroom environment, you can certainly take some classes at the local junior college. They’ll be able to get you pointed in the right direction and you’ll also have some feedback if you get stuck.

I hope this helps you some…if you have any more questions, please feel free to ask!

Do you have a burning question about websites or promoting yourself online? Click on the “Ask a Question” tab at the top of the page and send me your question. I’ll send you an answer to your question personally.

So! As I alluded to yesterday, I’m in the midst of doing a major overhaul of my jewelry website Mixed Media Designs.com…I’m hoping to relaunch it sometime around June 16th. So I’m doing a series of videos documenting the before and after my website overhaul.

Here is the first video of the series where I’m critiquing what’s wrong with my website…so check it out!

Smashing Magazine has posted a review of 25 WYSIWYG Website Editors for Windows and Mac. In addition to the popular editors, the reviews also include free editors if you have a limited budget. Check it out here.

Hey heres my question. I finished building my website and it looks fine on my computer, but when my friend looks at it the top is all messed up. He’s looking at on using IE6, but it looks fine when I look at it on my computer. I use IE7 and Firefox. What’s going on? Does it look like this when everyone sees it. Any help would be great.

Ahh…browser differences…the bane of every web designer’s existence. Here was my reply.

Hi John,

This is is not unusual at all, in fact it’s pretty common. If you look at the same web page on two different browsers, say Internet Explorer (IE) and Firefox, it’s not usual to see differences in how the web page looks. You can even find differences in different versions of the same browser. Older versions of Internet Explorer can display the same web page very differently than the newer version. You can even see some differences if you’re using Internet Explorer for PC and Internet Explorer for Mac. Which explains why when someone is looking at your website using Internet Explorer 6 they see the messed up header as opposed to someone using Firefox who will see your website perfectly.

Internet Explorer in particular seems to be especially bad about this issue. Most of the newer browsers like Firefox, Opera, Mozilla, and Safari all follow a set of standards in how they display web pages, which makes them fairly consistent when in comes to viewing and designing web pages. Unfortunately, Internet Explorer doesn’t always follow these standards, which is one reason why you get these differences.

What makes this even more difficult is that Internet Explorer is also the most popular browser in use on the Internet, so you can’t really ignore it. Fortunately, more standards compliant browsers like Firefox like are becoming more popular and supposedly the newest version of Internet Explorer, which is version 7, is more standards compliant than the older versions of IE. But there’s still a lot of people that use older versions of IE, so you or your designer needs to be especially careful about looking at your website using different browsers, on different computers, and looking at your website using different version of of the same browser.

One easy way to check to see what your website looks like on different browsers is to go to a website called Browsershots. There you can enter in your website address and then you’ll get screenshots of your website in different web browsers. It’s a free service and you can check it out at: http://www.browsershots.org

As for your website, if you had a designer build your site for you, drop them a line and tell them that your site needs to be fixed for IE6. Most designers should be familiar with these issues already. If you’re building your own website, here are a few articles that can help you:

• Explorer Exposed!
• Designing for IE – Design for Firefox First
Designing for Every Browser: How to Make Your Site Fully Cross Browser Compatible

These links might be a bit geeky but they should help you if you’re already familiar with web design.

Good Luck!

Do you have a burning question about websites or promoting yourself online? Click on the “Ask a Question” tab at the top of the page and send me your question. I’ll send you an answer to your question personally.

In the last post of this series talked about the different types of image formats that you can use on the web. In this post, I’ll explain the concept of image resolution and file size and what it means for your images.

Simply put, image resolution refers to the amount detail a digital image has. There are several very technical ways to measure resolution, but the way that’s most useful for you to remember is known as “pixel resolution”.

All digital images are made of little squares called “pixels”. You can see individual pixels by zooming in close to an image like this one below…

Here’s what the image looks like at normal view:

Each pixel helps makes up the whole image. Resolution is measured by how many pixels there are in an inch of the image. So if there are 100 pixels in every inch, that image has a resolution of 100 pixels per inch or 100 ppi. (You may also see the abbreviation for resolution as dpi or dots per inch…no matter the abbreviation…for our purposes it’s pretty much the same principle) The sharpness or the detail of an image depends on its resolution. The more pixels you have in an image, the sharper and more detailed your image will be. So an image at 300 ppi will be much sharper and more detailed than an image at 72 ppi because when you’re lowering your resolution, you’re essentially getting rid of pixels. The less pixels you have, less detailed your images are.

So! This means that the higher the resolution the better for your website, right? Not so fast! When it comes web images higher resolution is not always better. Why? This has to do with “file size”. File size is basically how big in kilobytes, megabytes, or gigabytes an image file is. Don’t mistake image size (which are the actual size dimensions in height and width of an image) with file size. They are two different things. The file size of your image is affected by a number of things, the file format (JPG, GIF, or PNG) the dimensions of your image (the bigger the dimension of an image, the larger the file size), and the resolution. Those images with higher resolution are as a rule larger than the same image, in the same file format as those with lower resolution.

Okay, so what difference does that make? Actually, quite a bit as far as your website is concerned. This has to do with how information is transmitted on the web.

Imagine that the Internet is a series of pipes from one your website to your computer and your image file is like water traveling through those pipes. In order to see your image on your computer screen, it has to travel those series of pipes from your website to your computer.

How fast water travels through a pipe is mostly dependent on two things: 1) the size of the pipe, and 2) the amount of water traveling those pipes. If you have a big pipe, that water zips right through because the water has more room to travel. If you have a small pipe, the water takes a lot longer to travel through because there’s not as much room in the pipe. That’s kind of how it works on the Internet too. This is a concept called bandwidth, which is the amount of data that can travel along a connection. Dial-up connections are like small pipes, data comes through slower because it can’t handle a lot of data at once. The bigger pipe is like your cable modem or DSL line. It’s faster because it can handle a lot more data at once than a dial-up connection can. So how fast a person can load up your image on their computer depends on their “pipe” or on what Internet connection they’re using.

But wait! There’s another part of the equation isn’t there? That part is the amount of water going through the pipe. Image that the amount of water traveling through the pipes represents how big your image file is. An image with a large file size has a lot more water that has to get through those pipes than an image with a smaller file size. That means if your image has a high resolution, it will have a higher file size…which means that it’s going to take a lot longer for that image to load up on your website.

Plus, you must take in account more than just one image. How fast a web page loads up depend on all of the elements on the page…that is the file size all of the graphics on that page and the file size of the HTML page itself.

Now, you can’t control the size of the “pipe”. Rather, you can’t control whether your visitors use dial-up or high speed Internet to surf your website. But you can control the “water” or the file size of your images. One of the ways of doing so is by picking the right resolution for your images. The optimal resolution for the Internet is 72 ppi. Anything lower can decrease the quality of your image. Anything higher won’t increase the quality of what you see, but will increase the file size. So stick to 72 ppi.

By the way, if you are planning on using some of your images for print purposes, say you want to create print catalog or brochure, or you want to have some digital images on hand for PR purposes, you’ll need to have two versions of that image. A resolution of 72 ppi is great for the web and terrible for print because at 72 ppi you eliminate a great amount of detail and results in a fuzzy printed image. This also explains why web graphics looks so lousy when you print them out. At minimum, your images should be about 300 ppi for print…at minimum. If your images are going to be used in a glossy magazine or for high quality prints, they’ll need to be at an even higher resolution than 300 ppi.

You should also remember that you always size your images down, not up. Don’t attempt to take an 72 ppi image and change the resolution to 300 ppi. Once you save an image at a lower resolution…all of that detail you got at a higher resolution is gone forever. Raising the resolution won’t bring the detail back and it will just result in a fuzzy image. The same thing goes for changing the size dimensions of your image. Don’t take a 100 by 200 pixel image or a 2 inch by 3 inch image and convert it to a 500 by 600 pixel image. Again, the detail is gone once you save the image at the smaller size.

Remember…always down…never up.

Next week: Changing the resolution isn’t the only way you can control the file size of your image. Next time we’ll dive into the wild and woolly world of compression.

Digital images come in a number of different formats and each are good for different purposes. There are special formats for printing, special formats just for the computer screen, and special formats good for the web. For the web, there are three different formats that you need to be familiar with; JPG, GIF, and PNG
Image Formats for the Web

JPG- (pronounced, “jay-peg”) this image format is short for Joint Photographic Experts Group. All images that are in a JPG format end with .jpg or .jpeg. As you might have guessed from the name, the JPG format is used for displaying photographic or “true color” images. So any image that’s scanned from a photo or slides must be in JPG format. If you are taking pictures with a digital camera those images will be in JPG format.

GIF- (pronounced “Gif”) this image format is short for Graphics Interchange Format. All images that are in a GIF format ends with .gif. Unlike JPGs, which can display millions of different GIFs can only display a range of 256 colors. Because GIFs only display 256 colors, GIF files tend to be smaller than JPG files and will load up faster on your web page. So GIF are best used to display images that have a limited range of colors, like non-photographic logos, animations, buttons, and icons. GIFs can also be used when you need part of your image to be transparent (I’ll discuss transparency in later posts).

PNG – this image format is short for Portable Network Graphics. All PNG images ends with .png. The PNG format was specifically created for the web with the purpose of replacing the GIF format. Unlike the GIF format, PNGs can display a much deeper range of colors and PNGs can also handle transparency better than GIFs can. Unfortunately, not all web browsers can display PNGs and all of it’s features properly.

What to use
When it comes to picking the right format for your images use these simple guidelines:

• Use JPGs for photographic images
• Use GIF for images with simple colors like buttons and logos
• Use PNG for simple non photographic images that have elements like color gradients, drop shadows, and transparency

One of the biggest mistakes I see in those just becoming familiar with designing for the web is using the wrong image format for the type of image.

Here’s an example of using the GIF format on a photographic image….

Not pretty huh? Remember that GIFs can only display 256 colors. If the image contains a color that the GIF format can’t display, it will replace it with the closest color available, which results in these bands of color throughout your image.

Here’s the same image in JPG format.

…much better.

You don’t see such a dramatic difference when you save what’s supposed to be a GIF type image as a JPG, but there are still problems.

Here is the blog’s logo in JPG format…

Here’s the blog’s logo in GIF format…

When you look closely at the JPG image, notice that there appears to be some fuzziness that you don’t see in the GIF format. These are known as “compression artifacts” and it’s a result of how JPG formats saves images. I’ll explain the process of compression in later posts on this series, but bottom line is, when you’re saving images in JPG format, you’ll always have to be aware of these compression artifacts.

Next time:
I’ll discuss image resolution and file size and why you should care.

All experienced artists knows that it’s absolutely essential to have good images of their work. We need good images to jury into shows and exhibitions. We need good images to get into stores and galleries, and we need good images to make marketing materials like press kits, brochures, and catalogs.

So it should be not surprise that the one element that’s essential for an artist’s web site are the images of his or hers work. Unfortunately, a lot of artists don’t really understand how to format their images properly for their web sites. As a web designer, I get a lot of questions about digital images and formatting images for the web. Every Thursday for the next few weeks, I’ll be blogging a guide to digital images for absolute beginners, about the different image formats, about resolution, and how to optimize your images for your web to show them in the best possible light.