The visual aspect of a website is extremely important nowadays. The images may be the reason a visitor stays on the page or, on the contrary, leaves it for good. So let’s find out how to make eye-pleasing pictures for your website to boost its efficiency – follow our 5 tips to make photos look more professional.
1. Choose a Suitable Style
Everything on your website, from the fonts and colors to photos and graphics, has to stick to a certain style. So before you look for suitable imagery, decide what kind of aesthetics you need and what atmosphere you want to create: entertaining and funny, or perhaps strict and classic. If you struggle to choose the style, look for inspiration on platforms with stock photos – you might also find great images for your page there.
2. If You Shoot, Shoot Like a Pro
Prefer taking photos on your own? Then check out these recommendations for taking high-quality shots for your project.
- Be sure to invest in a tripod. A tripod is a must-have for any photoshoot if you want to avoid camera shakes. This way, it will be easier for the camera to focus on the object, and the picture will look much sharper.
- Consider the lighting conditions. Without proper lighting, it will be impossible to take appealing photos, but that doesn’t mean you have to invest a fortune in costly lighting equipment. The best type of lighting is absolutely free: natural lighting. Try to avoid using a flash, otherwise, the light will be too harsh in the pictures.
- Mind the composition. Composition is crucial in any photo, so it’s definitely something you can’t ignore. If it’s difficult for you to figure out the right angle, then google a few composition rules, such as the Rule of Thirds or Golden Ratio, and try them out the next time you take pictures for your website.
3. Level Up Your Photos in Post-Production
Whether you take photos yourself or download the visual content from the Internet, you’ll need to prepare it before uploading it to the website. Follow these 3 steps to tweak a photo – you can use almost any photo editor for this job:
Step 1. Make photos more detailed using sharpening tools.
Step 2. Correct the colors to match other pictures on the website.
Step 3. Fix the perspective and composition.
Step 4. Crop and resize the image.
If you’re still not satisfied with the quality of your pictures, click on the link and find out more about how to enhance an image. When you’re done with editing, don’t hesitate to add your logo as well to protect your content from unauthorized use.
4. Pick the Right File Format
Choosing the right file format is as important as adjusting your camera while shooting and editing pictures in a photo editor. All your hard work might go in vain if you use the wrong one. You can either convert the images you have with a converter tool or save them in a suitable format after upgrading them in post-production. Here are a few options we can recommend:
- PNG – works best for logos and pictures with transparent background
- JPEG – handles complex colors but the quality may suffer at smaller sizes
- WebP – perfect for those who want a small size without quality loss, but keep in mind that very few photo editors support the file format
5. Reduce the Image Size
For any website, it’s important to increase the site speed, and reducing the image size is one of the best ways to do it. One of the most common mistakes is to make pictures smaller, which often leads to image quality loss. So is there a way to make it less heavy without such consequences? Sure there is – simply compress the imagery. There are lots of image compression tools available on the Internet: TinyPNG, CompressNow, Optimizilla, Compressor.io, and so on.
Conclusion
Now you know all the ins and outs of making eye-catching photographs for a website. In this article, we shared 5 tips to take top-quality shots, and prepare them for the site. Just make sure they are small in size, look aesthetically pleasing, and, after all, make sense on the page. We hope you found the tips useful and will soon put them into practice.