How and Why you need to optimise your images for your website and image sizing recommendations

Article ID: 460

Last updated: 02 May, 2014

Why

The reason we have set the below recommendations is to help you to use up as little of your Bandwidth and Disk Space Quota as possible, whilst still providing a fast loading website and image, a big enough image for its intended purpose, with an appropriate image quality to showcase your products and photos.

If an image is to go outside of the below recommendations, your website will be using up more of its disk space quota to store the image on the server, and more bandwidth as each time someone views the page with that image on, it will chew up more bandwidth than it would if the image was optimised for website usage. If you exceed your Bandwidth and/or Disk Space Quota, you will end up having to pay more for your hosting fees, which is generally avoidable if you follow the recommendations below.

Product Images / Images in general

File size: Less than 100kb.
Dimensions: No larger than 800px (pixels) by its long edge (portrait long edge would be height, landscape - width).
Image Quality: 60 dpi or less (without making the image quality noticeably degrade).

Photography Website Images

File size: 300kb ideally, 500kb max.
Dimensions: No larger than 1000px (pixels) by its long edge (portrait long edge is height, landscape long edge is width).
Image Quality: 60-80 dpi (any higher is barely noticeable on a computer monitor to the naked eye).

How

You can resize your images by following one of the below articles, based on how many images you wish to edit:

- If resizing many (5-10+) images at once, view this guide: http://magicdustsupport.com/kb2/entry/312/ - Resize images in bulk using Fotosizer

- If resizing a few images sporadically, view this guide: http://magicdustsupport.com/kb2/entry/311/ - Resize images using Paint

We only have Windows PCs here, so you would want to view one of the many guides that can be found online, by doing a search into your preferred Search Engine (Google/Bing) and search for 'Resize images on a Mac' or 'Resize images in bulk on a Mac'.

Why is my image not uploading successfully?

There are a number of reasons that your images will not upload successfully. The potential issues and a short explanation are listed below.

Potential Issues

The most common issue is that the Image file is too large to be uploaded (larger than the 2mb limit). You can check this by navigating to the file on your computer, right clicking it and selecting properties. No images on any website should be more than 2mb ideally because the image is most likely 3 to 5 times the normal size of an average screen and/or of an image quality which vastly exceeds the needs for website usage and what can be seen by the naked eye. The below image for example, is 3.08mb. This image would not be able to be uploaded.

For example, the above image is 3 times wider than the average width of a computer monitor and 5 times in height. To check this, click on the ‘Details’ tab, shown below:

If you have any further questions, feel free to email the image(s) along with your questions to support@magicdust.com.au

Also listed in

	eShop 2.0
	eWeb 2.0 -> Images / Galleries
	eShop 4.0
	eShop 4.0 -> Images

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