Unit 39

You should make sure you follow certain procedures when capturing or downloading images to avoid future problems, such as copyright laws. For example, you don't want to download and use an image that is copyrighted, such as a logo or character. This could potentially have a massive backlash if the owner finds out your using it. To avoid this make sure you have permission to use whatever your going to use and don't just take images freely.

Secondly you want to make sure the formatting is correct. There are tons of different file types and formatting but there are a lot which are considered industry standard. Most commonly used being JPEG, PNG and GIF formatted.

JPEG - The JPEG filename extension is in nearly every digital camera, as they can save images directly into JPEG format. JPEG supports 8 bits per colour (red, green, blue) for a 24bit total, being relatively small in size. JPEGs tent to suffer a loss in quality if they get edited and re-saved. JPEGS are also used as the image compression algorithm in many PDF files.

PNG - PNG was created with the intention of being the free, open source successor to the GIF. PNG supports truecolor which has 16 million different colours, where as the GIF only supports 256 colours. PNG looks best when the image has large, uniformly coloured areas. The PNG is best suited for editing pictures, where as JPEGs are better suited for final distribution of photographic images or high quality pictures.

GIF - Limited to only an 8-bit palette (256 colours) it makes the GIF best suited for storing graphics with relatively less colour such as shapes, logos, diagrams or cartoon style images. GIF supports animation and is best used in that line of work. It is widely used in the animation industry.

Staying organised is important, you should structure your folders so everything can be found easily. You want to make sure every folder branches out to the appropriate file locations. For example, inside your portfolio folder it would divide into folders such as pages, images and style sheets. Overtime you want to try and archive your older work for later use as you never know when you might need it again.

Backing up your images is vital, you never know when your computer might erase or break your hard drive. To make sure all your work stays safe you should back it up, there are a variety of different ways you can do this. You can have a hard copy such as a CD, DVD or floppy back up. Alternatively you can put it onto a USB memory stick to protect them. You can also upload it to dropbox which is an online storage website for on the go access.

Using alt tags plays a part in opening your images to a wider audience range. For example, if someone who is visually impaired is viewing your images, they will not be able to tell what it is. Therefore if there are alt tags on an image, which are a written description of what is in the image, their audible software would be able to read it out to them so they can understand what the image contains.

This can also work both ways, you do not want to put flashing or rapid moving images, if someone from your audience is epileptic you could potentially harm them. It is important to keep all of this in mind when creating or using an image as it could potentially harm your audience.