Professional Information Technology-Programming Book part 54 potx

12.3. Promoting Your Images on the Web By far the most efficient means of selling yourself and your work is getting it on the web as many ways as possible. That includes communicating with clients and potential clients with photo-illustrated e-mail newsletters, putting up your own web site, and getting your photos out to one or more stock agencies. 12.3.1. Optimize Images for Web Viewing If you're going to the trouble and expense of putting up a web portfolio, you're going to want as many people to view it as possible. You'll also want plenty of space for all of your best images. If your thumbnails don't appear instantlyor if people have to wait more than three or four seconds for the larger image to appearit is quite likely that your audience will quickly surf to someone else's web site. By the same token, if your pictures don't impress the viewer with their quality, it is unlikely that you'll get swamped with requests for assignments or orders for exhibition prints. You must learn to make the right compromises so that your portfolio will perform efficiently and still look stunning. Most of the routines for creating a web gallery, suggested further on in this chapter, automatically optimize your JPEGs at an acceptable level. Still, there will always be exceptionsand some of them may be truly glaring. (See Figures 12-25 and 12-26.) Every picture is different, and the same compression rules won't work for all of them. The automation programs choose a compression formula that works more often than not. Figure 12-25. This image was oversharpened and saved at low JPEG quality and resolution. It loads fast, but would you want to show it to an art director?. Figure 12-26. The same image as Figure 12-25when optimization is not an issue. Here's the most efficient workflow I've found for optimizing web photos: 1. Using the Photoshop Browser (or an image management program that produces large thumbnails and lets you drag and drop), go to the folder where the auto-generated web portfolio has been stored. Open each image in Photoshop and examine it carefully. 2. Make sure that each image is set at 100 percent magnification. If you can't see compression problems at normal magnification, neither can your audience. If an individual image seems just fine, simply close it without saving it. If it doesn't, minimize the window or drag it out of the way so that you can use it in the next step. 3. When you have a set of images that you'd like to see improved, make a list of them and their dimensions and then close them. You are going to have to resize the originals and then do your own manual optimizations on each image. 4. Minimize Photoshop and use your operating system's file browser in thumbnail mode to open the folder that contains the original JPEGs. Press Cmd/Ctrl and click on each image you want to reoptimize. Now create a new subfolder in a new browser window (Finder on the Mac) that uses the name of the original folder with "man-opt" appended to the end of the filename (this will tell you that the folder contains manually optimized files). Now drag the files that you wish to optimize into the new folder. 5. Create an Action that will automatically resize the files in the new "man- opt" subfolder to the same size as was created automatically by the web gallery program you used. Be sure to save them with the same filenames and that the JPEG quality is set to the maximum of 12. Now run the Action and resize all the files in the subfolder. 6. Click the Edit in ImageReady button at the bottom of the Tools palette. The on-screen interface will change to the ImageReady interface and you will see a series of tabs at the top of each image window. 7. Start with the image on the top of the stack and click the 2-Up tab. You will see the original image on the left and the version that has been optimized according to the present Optimize palette settings on the right (see Figure 12-27). On the right side of the screen are several palettes; one of them should be the Optimize palette (if it's not there, choose Window Optimize). Figure 12-27. The Save for Web dialog with the Optimize palette on the right. 8. Make adjustments in the Optimize palette and watch the results in the righthand image of the 2-Up window. Because you can immediately see the effects of your optimizations, you'll know when the result is of acceptable quality. When you reach that point, the next question will be whether the image will display quickly enough for your purposes. 9. If you edit the image in ImageReady in Photoshop, you will see the Information menu in the status line at the bottom of the document window (see Figure 12-28). Since most people viewing my site will be professional buyers and gallery owners, and since high-speed Internet connections are now the rule rather than the exception, I generally go by how the image looks and how fast it loads at 512Mb, an average speed for DSL and cable high-speed Internet connections. I also look at its performance at 56 Kb, the typical speed for dial-up modem connections. If that speed is slower than 15 seconds, I will consider lowering the quality of the image. However, my rationale is that dial-up viewers are used to relatively poor performance and are willing to put up with it to some extent. Figure 12-28. The Information menu at the bottom of the document window. 10. Once an image is optimized, save it to the same directory from which it was opened. When all the files have been optimized and saved, copy and paste them into the Image directory in the HTML folder that was created by the web gallery program. When the program asks if you want the new file to overwrite the original, click Yes. Additional Tabs There are also tabs for showing only the optimized version of the file and for showing a 4-Up view that displays the original and three optimized views. You can then apply three different optimizations to the same original and choose the one you like best. 12.3.2. Protecting Your Copyright with Watermarks Many expert photographers are afraid to put their photos on the Web for fear they'll be stolen and then used without pay or be claimed as the work of someone else. But giving up web exposure for your photography means giving up one of best ways of becoming known (especially if your career is just starting) and of communicating with clients. Also, web graphics are highly compressed and merely 72 dpi in resolution, which is so low that, even if an image is easily stolen, its use is pretty much limited to the Web anyway. You certainly couldn't make prints of high enough definition to have any commercial value, nor could you use the images in print publications (unless they were just used as small icons). Of course, it's still not a very pleasant idea that someone could use your image for their own web site or put it into their web portfolio and claim it as their own. And although there's no surefire way to prevent that, there is a way to prove the image is yours if it's stolen. At least, that could be grounds for a profitable lawsuit. The way to do this is to watermark your images. Watermarking places identification text over the surface of the image in such a way that it is not visible to the naked eye, but can be easily read by the appropriate softwareeven if the image has been cropped or otherwise modified. NOTE You can only watermark RGB images. If you want to watermark GIFs, you have to cheat by first converting the GIF to JPEG, embedding the watermark, and converting it back to GIF. The most widely usedand therefore easiest to verifywatermarking system at the time of this writing is Digimarc. Digimarc ships with Photoshop 5.5 and later, as well as with some other image editing programs such as PaintShop Pro. 12.3.2.1. Creating a watermark with specialized software Before you can actually watermark your images, you need to create and register your watermark with the company whose watermarking software you are using. Instructions for doing this will be included with the program. The following method shows you how to watermark your files using Digimarc from within either Photoshop or ImageReady. (Note that you must be online for this procedure to work.) 1. Choose Other Digimarc to bring up the Embed Watermark dialog (see Figure 12-29). Click the Personalize button. Figure 12-29. The Digimarc Embed Watermark dialog. 2. The Personalize Digimarc ID dialog will appear (see Figure 12-30). You will first need to register with Digimarc, so click the Info button. Figure 12-30. The Personalize Digimarc ID dialog (the information shown in the fields is entirely fictitious). 3. The Digimarc registration site will appear. You will see a chart of rates for different numbers of images. (These rates may inspire you to watermark only your most important images, but that's up to you.) Also note that for an additional charge, Digimarc can automatically search the Web for your watermarked images, which can be a very valuable service. Follow the instructions to register with Digimarc for the number of images you want to watermark. 4. When you have finished registering, enter your Digimarc ID and PIN number in the appropriate fields in the Personalize Digimarc ID dialog and click OK. 5. A new dialog will appear; fill in the required fields and click OK when complete. Watermarking is an annual and not inconsequential expense. You can do it a little at a time, however, by adding new registrations whenever you have new images to watermark. 12.3.2.2. Creating a free watermark in Photoshop There is another free way to protect your images: use Photoshop (or any other layer-supporting image editor) to superimpose your copyright information over the image. Unlike the Digimarc watermark, these are readily visible. To do this, simply create a new transparent layer at the top of the Layers palette and then use the Text tool to type in any size and style that will fit inside the image frame. You can make the watermark semi-transparent by adjusting the layer's Transparency or Fill sliders. If you have lots of contrast in the print, use transparent type and a Layer Style that creates a dark edge (choose Window Layer Styles to get a thumbnail dialog that will automatically apply the style shown). This way, your watermark will be readable in both light and dark areas of the photo. There are two major drawbacks to such free watermarks:  They can't be automatically traced.  You'll probably end up hiding the most important part of your picture if you place them so they can't be easily cropped out. Still, it's good to have options, and you will probably discover situations in which these watermarks will work just fine. 12.3.3. Creating the Web Gallery . Photoshop, you will see the Information menu in the status line at the bottom of the document window (see Figure 12-28). Since most people viewing my site will be professional buyers and gallery. relatively poor performance and are willing to put up with it to some extent. Figure 12-28. The Information menu at the bottom of the document window. 10. Once an image is optimized, save it. with Digimarc, so click the Info button. Figure 12-30. The Personalize Digimarc ID dialog (the information shown in the fields is entirely fictitious). 3. The Digimarc registration site will