Photo Tips

Here are some quick photo tips if you’re sending some off to go on a website, in a newsletter, in a magazine etc

1. Check with the person you sending them what format, size etc they want them.
   
   They will have a preference and it will save a lot of time if you check before hand. And if you are asking people to send photos, tell them what you want. True a lot of the time people ignore instructions but at least you tried and you can write passive aggressive emails!
   
   Generally speaking, if the photo is going to be printed you will need to send the highest resolution you have. Photos for websites don’t need to be such high quality. A large high res photo can be made smaller but there’s only so much Photoshop etc can do with a small low res image.
   
   
2. Send them as attachments, not inside a Word document, PDF etc. Yes we can often extract them but don’t make extra work for us.
   
   
3. Name them something useful that makes it clear for the person at the other end what the picture is.
   

Let’s look at point three

Suppose I’m putting a gallery together of the key people involved in an event and they all send me a photo called photo.jpg

I’m going to end up with half a dozen or more photos with the same name! Can we say avoidable confusion?

How much easier if you send a photo of yourself and you call it whatever your name is!

So there you go, three quick tips to make life easier for the person you are sending a photo to.

If you want to learn more about the difference between image sizes for print and online, check out this article from Digital Photography School