Web Design : Graphics

Web Design : Graphics

Web design packages do not usually include a facility to let you create images. Instead you must obtain an image from another piece of software and bring this into the web design package. This is known as importing. The three most likely sources of images are :

Images can be created from scratch in a graphics package.
Images can selected from a clipart library.
Photographs can be taken with a digital camera or scanned using a scanner.

Images take up a lot more storage space than text does. When a person looks at a web page the files that make up the page must be transferred over the Internet to his computer. If a web page contains an image it will take a lot longer to access than a text only page.

To speed up page loading, images on a web page must be stored in one of two special formats. These formats are GIF and JPEG. Both formats compress the image data so that it can be loaded more quickly.

GIF	A GIF file is a compressed graphics file. GIF files store information about sequences of pixels. An image saved as a GIF file will look exactly the same as the original image. GIF files usually take up more space than JPEG files. GIF files are often used for banners and icons.
JPEG	JPEG files are highly compressed graphics files. JPEG files can store an image in a very small space. However some detail can be lost from an image when it is stored as a JPEG file. For this reason photographs are usually stored as image files but icons and banners can not be stored in this format.

Images in other formats such as bitmaps must be converted to one of these formats before they are put on a web page. A web design package will probably do this automatically.

GCSE ICT Companion 04 - (C) P Meakin 2004