Tips To Maintain High Quality For Images In Your Posts

Using images in your blog posts makes an immediate visual impact on your readers, and is a great way to supplement your writing. Of course, you'll want to display the photos in your posts at the highest quality available. The Insert Image function uploads your photo to Typepad at the original quality, but depending on the settings you specify to display the images, the quality of the image can be degraded. We have several tips to allow you to maintain image quality:

• Do not choose the Full option for Image Width. The Full size option can result in your image being scaled to fit your column reducing the quality.
• Use the Custom option for the Image Width to set the best fit width for your blog's layout.
• Set an Image Width in 50 pixel (px) increments. e.g. 350px, 400px, 450px, 500px
• Keep in mind most themes include 15px of padding on each side of the column reducing the available column width by 30px. For blogs with 500px columns, the recommended width for images is 450px.
• Increase the main content column width to allow for wider images and add 30px to accommodate for the padding. For example, a main content column of 830px would allow you to display 800px wide images. See the article on customizing column widths.
• Do not choose the option to have your image open in a pop-up window. When you opt to not have the image open in a pop-up window, the thumbnail image by default will link to the original image allowing readers of your site to see the high quality image originally uploaded in addition to the thumbnail image included in the post.
• Resize large images using a photo editing program to be closer to the size the image will be displayed at on your blog. An image which starts at 3600px by 4320px will need to be resized a lot which is not ideal. Use an aspect ratio calculator to determine the best size for your image.

For more technical details on inserted images, see the Technical Specifications For Inserted Images article.

Do you have a photography blog? Share your tips for optimizing your blog for photos in the forum.

Comments

[Debbie Crowley]

Thanks...I definetly needed that help.
Debbie

[Geo]

Another way to have good-looking images in a post would be for TypePad to finally just eliminate the ridiculous section offering to 'Display your image at full size, scaled to the width of the column...' I find it hilarious that the very first tip offered is NOT to choose that option. I've been fighting TypePad for five years to eradicate that ludicrous 'default' which hideously distorts images. Who would want that as a default setting? Why is it even offered as a default setting? Who thinks 'distort this image' is a brilliant default function? I thought Microsoft were the only company creating needless extra steps and extraneous settings. After the big switch to your new platform several years ago, I had to manually go back and fix hundreds of images originally uploaded as 'original size' which were then distorted by that 'full size' setting. When will someone on the design team realise, 'Oh... this is a stupid setting providing no useful function, let's get rid of it?'

[Honoré]

Me thinks I'll be adding photos mucho differently, thanks to this post!

Cheers~

[Kofla Olivieri]

I always edit my images, regardless of size, using Adobe Photoshop. I (almost) never use the custom image Typepad feature.

[Datingmenus]

I'll be adding photos later

[Kelvin F.]

Great tip I use it on all my images at Amongstmen.typepad.com

[Greenmary12]

Thanks, now everything is clear.

[Prince]

This is a great tip. A brief introduction about this image-tool will really help us to manage our blog images.