To receive a copy of this article to use on your website or in your newsletter just send me an e-mail at
Put "Article Request: Small Graphics" in the subject line.

In the past week, I've had two different clients approach me to do some work on their websites. They each had various things they wanted changed, but they both said people had been complaining that their sites loaded slowly.

I took a quick look at the sites and they seemed fine. There were only a few small pictures on each page, nothing that sent up red flags. However, I'm on a high speed internet connection, so things aren't always as they seem. I then downloaded the sites (scary as it seems, I can download almost any website in minutes, as can almost anyone else.) and looked at the file size of the photographs, and they were huge. Not one of the photographs was under 1 MB in size. On a dial-up connection, each one of these would take over five minutes to download, and with two to three per page it was taking forever to see the page. And remember that 52% of the people using the Internet still use dial-up connections. That's over half of the people coming to websites. No one wants to chase away half of their customers.

I tooked at the details of the web pages and found a common mistake. The people who made the websites never resized or optimized the images. The images were about 8 x 10 inches in size, but had been set to display at about 2 x 3 inches on the page. Some people think this makes the image file smaller, but it doesn't. It just make the image display smaller.

So how do you make a big image small? It's really rather easy.

The first thing you do is to resize the image. If you have a photograph or graphic that's 8 x 10 inches in size, but will only be 2 x 3 inches on your web page, then resize it to 2 x 3 inches. I then save this with the same file name, but add something like "small" in the file name. This alone will greatly reduce the size of the file.

Next, you will want to optimize the file. You can do this with almost any graphics programs. I use Photoshop, and on this program optimization is called Save For Web. To find free or inexpensive graphics software go to www.CNET.com and click on the Software tab. Then do a search for Free Graphic Software. Then select Free in the filter options, and press the Filter button. You'll be given a list of about 60 programs to choose from. Just go for the ones with good ratings from CNET or users. I've heard that GIMP is supposed to be good.

When saving files, remember JPG files will be smaller than GIF files. JPG is best for photographs and some graphic images, while GIF is best for graphics or photographs that have text in them. Letters usually look best when saved as a GIF file.

By reducing the image size, and optimizing, I've made 5 MB files as small as 50 K. That means that instead of taking 25 minutes to download the image with a dial-up connection, it will download in less than 10 seconds. Making your pages load faster will encourage more people to explore your site so you have a better chance of selling your products and services.