Pictures Help Us Communicate
Pictures have been a major part of our communication even before there was a spoken language. It’s one of the most important ways to deliver a message because sometimes, words just don’t cut it. It can take 1,000 or more words in order to communicate the same message as a single photo can do. We often use Emojis to convey certain messages when we text, tweet, post or upload.
That means that the pictures you use on social media websites like Instagram, your YouTube Channel or your WordPress Website and Blog, are extremely important.
Having the right picture can mean the difference between lackluster results or a flood of likes, shares, comments and accolades.
SmartPhone Cameras Are Powerful
We also carry with us some of the most powerful cameras ever created, right within our pockets. These cameras have the power to take pictures, edit the photos and connect to our favorite social media sites all in just a matter of minutes.
Before, a professional photographer would have to take a picture, develop the film, hope it looked good since there was no delete button and film was expensive, then scan the photo if they wanted to email it to someone. That was also a very slow process since the internet connections of those times were dreadfully slow.
So we have no excuse when it comes to taking amazing pictures. We can take hundreds of pictures in a matter of minutes and choose whichever one came out looking best. We can then edit the pictures to improve them and finally use preset filters to take them even further.
Dedicated Cameras & DSLR’s Make Us All Look Like Pro’s, Almost.
That being said, there are still professional and amateur photographers who use dedicated cameras like DSLR Cameras that come with amazing features that are even more powerful than those same cameras in our smart phones.
These cameras can take amazing pictures in the most important moments where the best image quality is vital. While our smart phones have very good apps that can be used to edit photos, our laptops and desktops have even better programs that give you greater control over how you edit your images.
But I’m No Photographer
Even if you’re not a great photographer, there are options out there for awesome looking stock photos. I previously created a video on the top 10 websites you can use to get free images for your commercial and personal website or social media postings.
I’m going to write that blog post to go along with the video since it’s something all website owners could benefit from seeing. In the meantime, here’s the video for that.
In the video, I introduce you to some of the best places online to get amazing free stock photos.
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility
While our phones can take amazing pictures, the DSLR’s we own give us even better photo taking capabilities and the websites in the video above introduce you to the best websites for free pictures, there’s a problem with having the ability to take such amazing pictures.
Super Sized Photos
The resolution and dimensions of the pictures you take or download can be thousands of pixels wide and thousands of pixels in height. The file size is also going to often be in the double digit megabyte size which is not a great choice for your website or blog.
Here are some dimensions to keep in mind
Instagram this photo centric app recommends 1080px by 1080px which as we know is a square and smaller than what your smartphone takes.
YouTube Thumbnail the video giant recommends that video creators use thumbnail images that are 1280px by 720px. Read this book if you want to learn how to Vlog Like a Boss.
WordPress Website whether you’re blogging or have a business centric website, the WordPress Theme you use will recommend the right dimensions for your website.
There are a lot of other websites and apps that all require different dimensions for the images you upload. So it’s vital that you edit the pictures to look great on all the platforms.
In this video I show you how to use Photoshop and Canva to properly edit the pictures.
It’s very easy to do with either Photoshop or Canva. While photoshop is a premium solution and considered the best photo editing software you can get, Canva is a free online solution that will give you all the features you need in order to edit your photos like a pro. You can follow me on Canva and also, join for Free. PixemWeb on Canva
Then I also introduce you to 3 different free online tools you can use to reduce the filesize and make your pictures load faster when used on your website. This is important for search engine optimization aka SEO.
So watch the video and make sure your pictures look amazing and are properly sized for each platform. Make your pictures convey the proper message to your audience so you can get the results you’re looking for.