Media Standards

Image Standards

Accessibility

Terminology

Pixel- A digital image is made up of millions of little dots -each dot is called a pixel.
Resolution- The number of pixels that form an image. the resolution of an image is measured by the number of pixels in length and width. A higher number of pixels per inch (ppi), the more detail in the image. The web standard for image resolution is 72 ppi.
Resize- To change the size of an image while retaining the length to width ratio. The resolution of the image stays the same.
Crop- The cation of cutting out unwanted parts of an image. The size of the image is smaller with certain parts removed, but the resolution stays the same as the original.

Standards

Image file size should not be larger than 1MB. The larger the file size of the image, the slower the page will load. The more images you have on a page, the slower the page will load. This is more of an impact on slower networks and specifically mobile users. Tinypng is a free online resource that can compress your image to the smallest possible file size.
The width of standard HD banner images should be no larger than 2,000 pixels and no greater than 100ppi.
Do not use text over an image.
Add a brief and clear description of images using the alt text. Examples of alt text uses can be found at Webaim.org.
Do try to use a photojournalism style for all images.
All images must abide by copyright laws. More information at ECU Copyright.
Use the rule of thirds when cropping an image.
- If Photoshop is unavailable for you to use to resize or crop images, ImageResize is a free online tool.