So you have images on your microsite (or logos on your directory, etc.), and you know they have to be pretty small, data-wise, so that your site loads in seconds instead of minutes. MatrixMaxx has a failsafe that can automatically shrink them for you, but – oh no! Ick! Your 2,000-pixel wide image that’s 2MB got compressed down to a 950-pixel wide, 5KB image. And it looks like a pixelated mess!
See the difference in the two images below:
You can make your site faster, better, stronger by controlling the size of your images before they even get to MatrixMaxx. You do that by changing the length, width and resolution of your images in an image editing program like Photoshop, Pixlr, Gimp or other options (a good list of less-expensive alternatives is here).
Don’t just trust the MatrixMaxx Upload Image interface to do all the work for you. It won’t shrink a humongous image down to the recommended pixel range without a loss of quality (this is what’s meant by the term “lossy”), and our maximum allowed size might still be bigger than is ideal for your site.
Any image that is made small enough to go onto a website without making trouble is going to lose some of its quality – that’s inevitable – but by using an outside program, we can more easily control this loss of necessary data – and, as a result, how low-quality the image will look on your site.
We’ll use Pixlr as an example.
- Open your image
- Go to Image > Image Size (fig. 1)
- Enter a smaller number of pixels in either field; leave the Constrain Proportions box checked, and your image will stay the same shape – no squishing (fig. 2 & 3)
- Save the image
You now have an image that’s compact and pretty!