A picture is worth a thousand words, as the old saying goes. This statement is fully applicable when it comes to using photos in web design. A web page, by its nature, has a very strong visual impact: images matter more than anything else, so it’s crucial that the photos are of high quality and expressive.
Text, while important for accurately describing our commercial offer on the web page, certainly doesn’t have the emotional power of a well-crafted photo, which can trigger the “call to action,” as it’s technically called, inviting users to take action, often resulting in filling out a form for booking or purchasing a product.
In the early days of web design, the use of high-resolution photos on web pages was limited by the technical constraints of internet bandwidth, which in most cases reached only 56 Kb/s, so photos with a maximum “weight” of about 40 Kb were recommended. Now, the widespread availability of broadband has effectively removed any restrictions on using high-resolution photos, although the maximum standard for a photo on a web page remains around 900 pixels horizontally, given the continued prevalence of 1024-pixel monitors. This 900-pixel standard is also what Facebook recommends for uploading high-resolution photos to albums or the site’s stream. Clearly, the dimensions of a photo must adapt to the specific layout of each web page. It’s important not to confuse the concept of a photo’s resolution with its dimensions. Let’s clarify: resolution defines the number of dots per inch in an image (dpi). Clearly, the more pixels there are in an inch (1 inch = 2.54 cm), the more defined the photo is, but it also inevitably weighs more in terms of kilobytes. For monitors and thus web pages, a very high resolution isn’t necessary (72-78 dpi), unlike photos for print, which require about 240-300 dpi resolution. These settings are easily adjustable in any photo editing program, especially Photoshop, which has a specific ‘save for web’ function. The classic format for a web photo is jpeg: only in cases where the photo also contributes to the graphic design of the page layout and transparency is needed, can we use the png format, knowing, however, that the photo will significantly increase in “weight.”
