The Lord of the Picture Part I: Everything You Wanted to Know About Photos & Collage

The Lord of the Picture Part I: Everything You Wanted to Know About Photos & Collage


People use pictures for everything, including sprucing their websites. As the old saying goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Thankfully in our case you don’t have to write and put into collage 1,000 words before you can put a picture in. This guide will not only walk you through how to get your photo optimized and uploaded into Collage, but will also explain the University’s policy on photos – “Why can I have only three photos per page?” and much more.

 

First of all let’s start with some ground rules. The University’s Graphic Standards Policy can be found here, including logos and power point backgrounds available for download.
There’s also a CMS FAQ with photo information.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Adding pictures and graphics to your website is encouraged. Clip art, while good for blogs and other informal communications, is not allowed on web pages.
  
  
• Only three pictures are allowed per page (with some rare exceptions). The main reason for this is that the more photos on a page, the longer it takes to load, and it has been determined that three photos is the optimal amount for a quick load.
  
  
• If you have more than three photos you’d like to include, an on-line gallery can be created here. Please contact a member of the Web Content Team via e-mail at 978-934-3875 to set up one of these.
  
  
• Photos can be hand-delivered on a CD, disk, flash drive, etc., to the Public Affairs Office in Cumnock C-7. You can also upload and send them to us via the Dropbox.
  
  
• On some occasions photos can also me e-mailed to the Web Content Team. Please contact a member of the Web Content Team (e-mail: webcontent@uml.edu) at 978-934-3875 to discuss your options.
  
  
• For the Web photos should be 72 dpi, 200 pixels wide, optimized for web, saved as .jpg. There’s one exception – bio (Faculty and Staff) photos should be 72 dpi, 160 pixels wide for the image on individual bio page, 64 pixels wide for the thumbnail on the faculty listing page, optimized for web, and saved as .jpg

So how do you re-size your photos and optimize them? Please read Part II of this blog trilogy for how to use Photoshop to do so. You can also read Part III for a  step by step guide on how to upload a photo into Collage.