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When updating or expanding your Web Boutiques website, you may need extra images. Whether you source these or use your own, it is important that you use the right image to keep your website looking professional and approachable.
If your company offers a very specific service, it may be that you need to hire a professional photographer. Bad photography will give your website an amateurish feel which in turn will reflect badly on the professionalism of your company as a whole.
The most cost-effective way to source the right images, however, is by using stock photography. There are a number of companies to choose from but Web Boutiques recommend www.iStockphoto.com, who have millions of quality images at very competitive prices. Simply open an account, opting for the pay-as-you-go credits. You can then use your credits to download royalty-free stock photography. For web-sized images, you should choose “x small”, which cost around £1 each.
When looking for images, be aware of the space it will fill on your website. If you need a tall image, then don’t choose landscape, or alternatively use a number of landscapes to fill this area. Web Boutiques will auto-resize the images to fit exactly in your web pages, news articles and catalogue systems on the horizontal plain, keeping the images aspect ration the same. This stops images expanding sideways out of your website.
Try to use a similar style of photography throughout your website for consistency. For example, use all black and white, all colour, or all ‘isolated’ photographs (an image with a white background). Isolated images appear to float in the page breaking up the lines whilst complete images give you an angular feel. If your website has a light-hearted feel to it, then use images of this nature, whereas if you are a more corporate company then you may wish to choose more professional-looking images. You can also choose images which run on the same colour theme.
The very point of having a Web Boutiques solution is so that you can easily and effectively update your website yourself, keeping it looking professional and working for you. Finding the right image can make all the difference to someone visiting your website so spend a little time making sure it works well.
| Saving you time finding the right image on www.istockphoto.com |
With millions of images to choose from you must narrow down your search by using modifiers:
- Use AND to separate each search word
- Use OR to expand your results, for example, red OR blue
- Using a comma to separate words is the same as using AND/OR. The results will contain either or both terms
- Use NOT to exclude certain results, for example, wagons NOT red
When making a search, use multiple words such as “business, woman, smile, telephone”. If you are looking for an image with a white background, include the word ‘isolated’ in your search.
If you want to search by phrase, put the words in quotation marks. For example, if you are looking for a girl wearing a halter top then you should search under “halter top” AND girl. |
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