When adding images to the site you will often have to ensure that the images are of the right size otherwise you may have problems with images appearing blurry, not fitting in the space available, or taking too long to load.
You can use nearly any image editor to prepare images, however the image editors that come by default on most computers lack features that are needed for this task. This is why we have prepared this simple guide on using an easy to use online photo editor called Pixlr that is a very handy tool for preparing images.
Getting started with Pixlr
The online Pixlr editor can be accessed via this link: https://pixlr.com/editor/
It is free to use, with an option for paying for a premium account. The free to use option does contain all of the features we will be using in this guide.
Once you have opened Pixlr it should look like this:
In this example, we can use this image of a golf course in Australia.
While it is a nice image it is unfortunately the wrong size (technically "aspect ratio" and "resolution") for the website. We need to crop and scale it to make it fit the site.
Cropping and scaling your photo within Pixlr
1. Open the file. If it is stored on your computer the simplest way to do this is to go to the "File" menu and select "Open image..." and you can then pick the file you need to open.
The image loaded into Pixlr
2. Select the crop tool on the left hand side. This is done by selecting the crop icon ()
3: At the top of the screen you should see some options for the crop tool. Where it says 'Constraint' select 'Output size'.
4: Then enter the desired width and height into the area next to it.
We can often advise on what would be the appropriate width and height for an image you are trying to replace on the site. For this example lets say we want to resize the image to be 1100 pixels wide by 500 high.
5. Once we have done this we carefully select the area that we would like to make into our final image by clicking in the top left corner of the area and dragging to the bottom right.
Once you have selected this area you can adjust it by clicking and dragging the corners or the centre.
Pay careful attention to what areas you keep in your image. You want to keep the main elements of the images in the frame, and avoid cutting off anything like people etc. where possible.
(It's possible that you discover at this point that the image simply won't look good when cropped like this, in which case you will need to look at an alternative).
6. Click the crop icon () again. You should see a dialogue box asking "Do you want to apply the changes?". Select "Yes" to confirm, or "No" if you want to go back and adjust further.
7. The image will now be cropped and scaled to the size specified.
(It may appear smaller now due to the scaling and in order to get a better look you can zoom in by going to the menu "View" and selecting "Zoom In").
8. To save the file just go to the menu "File" and select "Save...". Pixlr will then ask you for a file name, and once you have specfied that you can hit the "Ok" button to save it to your computer.
Now that you have prepared your image you can add the images to your website.
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