Optimising Images for Websites

Riot is the best free software that I have found to optimise images before loading them into a Content Management System. It enables you to resize/crop images and optimise them for web display (72ppi). You can also optimise and/or resize a batch of images at once.

Here is a review and download link for the RIOT software:  http://download.cnet.com/RIOT/3000-12511_4-10911908.html

Following is a simple guide of how to use the Riot software.

1. First decide on the size of the image you wish to create. This needs to be the size in pixels. As a guide the width of your website is 950 pixels. Most images will be around 300 – 400 pixels wide.
2. Use ‘Open’ to select the full size image you wish to resize. You may be asked if you want to resize the image if it is quite large – this is not usually necessary unless the file is greater than 10Mb.
3. Use ‘Edit/Resample’ and enter the Width of the image you wish to create e.g. 420 (pixels). The height will automatically be adjust to keep the image aspect ratio the same as the original. You will see the actual size of the image in the ‘Optimised Image’ display.
   
4. Use a Quality setting of 80% as a starting point for optimising .jpeg images. This should give quite a high quality image with significantly reduced file size.
   
5. Use ‘Save’ to give the optimised image a new file name. We recommend using a good descriptive name (helps the Search Engines).