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For corporate communicators brought up on printed publications, the immediacy
of on-line communications is a breath of fresh air. But just as we have had
to adopt our writing style for the net, we should also be thinking differently
about how we take and edit photographs.
Why? Internet and intranet images are used very small – often no bigger
than about 250 pixels wide. This immediately throws up a problem. On printed
pages where we had a whole page to play with we could afford to be clumsy with
our cropping and composition. Not any more.
Photographers should adopt a different shooting style for intranet, one that
involves much tighter composition and adherence to the common shapes that are
used.
Take a look at your on-line news service and you will see that most imagery
tends to be landscape shaped. The more enlightened will have adopted portrait-shaped
images too, which seem to give the viewer more to look at when placed alongside
copy, while still leaving space for a decent column width for text.
But, with a few exceptions, I bet you don’t use cut-outs, or full-screen
shots that whack the reader right between the eyes. And you don’t have
too much room for picture stories that tell the tale across about 10 images
either.
So what we need is a single image that has impact, even when only two inches
wide.
The answer then is to brief your photographer carefully about the space you
wish them to fill. If possible, show them a typical page or send a print-out.
If you don’t brief your photographer carefully how can you expect to get
the results you require?
If you’re taking the pictures yourself then try to a) get a lot closer
to the action and b) compose your shots to maximize the area you have. I have
one consultancy client who nicknamed me “Phil the Frame” as apparently
that’s all I kept saying to them! I don’t care – the message
seems to have struck home!
But how can you compose your shots better?
The first trick involves heads. If you are shooting a group of three or four
people don’t just line them up, stagger them so that their heads are closer
together. The same with a shot of a couple. OK, it may feel a little strange
for them to be so close to their neighbor, but you can lose that irritating
space between their heads and so come up with a tighter image.
You can use the same technique if photographing someone with an object, such
as an award. Get them to hold it up against their face, not on their chest.
When using the viewfinder or preview screen really work hard to fill every
pixel, moving people around if need be.
Once you have the shot there is a lot you can do to improve it. I have yet
to see any image straight out of a digital camera that couldn’t be enhanced.
First, make sure you are viewing the image on the type of monitor that everyone
else in the organisation is going to use. If using a Macintosh, change the gamma
setting from 1.8 to 2.2 (the Windows standard). Images displayed on a PC are
inherently more contrasty than they look on a Mac if you don’t.
In Photoshop, adjust the levels using the histogram as a guide. This is better
than using the brightness and contrast controls. Sometimes it can help to boost
the saturation by +10 too, depending upon what camera you use.
Then crop the image to show what you want, bearing in mind how it will be used
on the screen. Once cropped, resize the image down to 250 pixels or whatever
you normally use. If you resize and then crop you will end up with something
totally the wrong size!
The final step is to apply some Unsharp Masking to the image to put back some
of the definition lost through resizing. It is amazing how many people don’t
do this. Typical settings in Photoshop are Amount: 30-100%, Radius 1.5 pixels
and Threshold 5-7 levels.
Don’t overdo the sharpening. If it looks too gritty, cut the Amount down
by half.
Finally, save as a JPEG file (not a GIF, which only uses 256 colors, instead
of the JPEG’s 16.7 million), choosing an appropriate level of compression.
When all internet connections were via a modem it was important to get the file
size incredibly small, but with most intranets you can afford to make them a
little bigger.
Using the “Save for Web option” you can play with the “Quality”
control to get a good balance between file size and image quality. You should
be able to get a 250 x 200 pixel image down to around 10k with no sign of degradation
or artefacts – these are the strange squiggles you see in over-compressed
images.
Voila! You now have an image that is well composed, tightly cropped, optimized,
sharpened and ready for use.
About the Author:
Steve Nichols runs InfoTech Communications (www.infotechcomms.co.uk), which
specialises in online communications. He has acted as consultant and trainer
for many blue-chip companies including Aviva, AWG, BT, Shell, Standard Life,
HBOS, BNFL, AstraZeneca, Diageo, Accenture and Australia New Zealand Bank. |
