12.3. Promoting Your Images on the Web
By far the most efficient means of selling yourself and your work is getting it on
the web as many ways as possible. That includes communicating with clients and
potential clients with photo-illustrated e-mail newsletters, putting up your own web
site, and getting your photos out to one or more stock agencies.
12.3.1. Optimize Images for Web Viewing
If you're going to the trouble and expense of putting up a web portfolio, you're
going to want as many people to view it as possible. You'll also want plenty of
space for all of your best images. If your thumbnails don't appear instantlyor if
people have to wait more than three or four seconds for the larger image to appearit
is quite likely that your audience will quickly surf to someone else's web site.
By the same token, if your pictures don't impress the viewer with their quality, it is
unlikely that you'll get swamped with requests for assignments or orders for
exhibition prints. You must learn to make the right compromises so that your
portfolio will perform efficiently and still look stunning.
Most of the routines for creating a web gallery, suggested further on in this
chapter, automatically optimize your JPEGs at an acceptable level. Still, there will
always be exceptionsand some of them may be truly glaring. (See Figures 12-25
and 12-26.) Every picture is different, and the same compression rules won't work
for all of them. The automation programs choose a compression formula that
works more often than not.
Figure 12-25. This image was oversharpened and saved at low JPEG quality and
resolution. It loads fast, but would you want to show it to an art director?.
Figure 12-26. The same image as Figure 12-25when optimization is not an issue.
Here's the most efficient workflow I've found for optimizing web photos:
1. Using the Photoshop Browser (or an image management program that
produces large thumbnails and lets you drag and drop), go to the folder
where the auto-generated web portfolio has been stored. Open each image in
Photoshop and examine it carefully.
2. Make sure that each image is set at 100 percent magnification. If you can't
see compression problems at normal magnification, neither can your

audience.
If an individual image seems just fine, simply close it without saving it. If it
doesn't, minimize the window or drag it out of the way so that you can use it
in the next step.
3. When you have a set of images that you'd like to see improved, make a list
of them and their dimensions and then close them. You are going to have to
resize the originals and then do your own manual optimizations on each
image.
4. Minimize Photoshop and use your operating system's file browser in
thumbnail mode to open the folder that contains the original JPEGs. Press
Cmd/Ctrl and click on each image you want to reoptimize. Now create a
new subfolder in a new browser window (Finder on the Mac) that uses the
name of the original folder with "man-opt" appended to the end of the
filename (this will tell you that the folder contains manually optimized files).
Now drag the files that you wish to optimize into the new folder.
5. Create an Action that will automatically resize the files in the new "man-
opt" subfolder to the same size as was created automatically by the web
gallery program you used. Be sure to save them with the same filenames and
that the JPEG quality is set to the maximum of 12. Now run the Action and
resize all the files in the subfolder.
6. Click the Edit in ImageReady button at the bottom of the Tools palette. The
on-screen interface will change to the ImageReady interface and you will see
a series of tabs at the top of each image window.
7. Start with the image on the top of the stack and click the 2-Up tab. You will
see the original image on the left and the version that has been optimized
according to the present Optimize palette settings on the right (see Figure
12-27). On the right side of the screen are several palettes; one of them
should be the Optimize palette (if it's not there, choose Window
Optimize).
Figure 12-27. The Save for Web dialog with the Optimize palette on the

right.
8. Make adjustments in the Optimize palette and watch the results in the
righthand image of the 2-Up window. Because you can immediately see the
effects of your optimizations, you'll know when the result is of acceptable
quality. When you reach that point, the next question will be whether the
image will display quickly enough for your purposes.
9. If you edit the image in ImageReady in Photoshop, you will see the
Information menu in the status line at the bottom of the document window
(see Figure 12-28). Since most people viewing my site will be professional
buyers and gallery owners, and since high-speed Internet connections are
now the rule rather than the exception, I generally go by how the image
looks and how fast it loads at 512Mb, an average speed for DSL and cable
high-speed Internet connections. I also look at its performance at 56 Kb, the
typical speed for dial-up modem connections. If that speed is slower than 15
seconds, I will consider lowering the quality of the image. However, my
rationale is that dial-up viewers are used to relatively poor performance and
are willing to put up with it to some extent.
Figure 12-28. The Information menu at the bottom of the document window.
10. Once an image is optimized, save it to the same directory from which it was
opened. When all the files have been optimized and saved, copy and paste
them into the Image directory in the HTML folder that was created by the
web gallery program. When the program asks if you want the new file to
overwrite the original, click Yes.
Additional Tabs
There are also tabs for showing only the optimized version of the file and
for showing a 4-Up view that displays the original and three optimized
views. You can then apply three different optimizations to the same
original and choose the one you like best.



12.3.2. Protecting Your Copyright with Watermarks
Many expert photographers are afraid to put their photos on the Web for fear
they'll be stolen and then used without pay or be claimed as the work of someone
else. But giving up web exposure for your photography means giving up one of
best ways of becoming known (especially if your career is just starting) and of
communicating with clients. Also, web graphics are highly compressed and merely
72 dpi in resolution, which is so low that, even if an image is easily stolen, its use
is pretty much limited to the Web anyway. You certainly couldn't make prints of
high enough definition to have any commercial value, nor could you use the
images in print publications (unless they were just used as small icons). Of course,
it's still not a very pleasant idea that someone could use your image for their own
web site or put it into their web portfolio and claim it as their own. And although
there's no surefire way to prevent that, there is a way to prove the image is yours if
it's stolen. At least, that could be grounds for a profitable lawsuit.
The way to do this is to watermark your images. Watermarking places
identification text over the surface of the image in such a way that it is not visible
to the naked eye, but can be easily read by the appropriate softwareeven if the
image has been cropped or otherwise modified.
NOTE
You can only watermark RGB images. If you want to watermark GIFs, you have to
cheat by first converting the GIF to JPEG, embedding the watermark, and
converting it back to GIF.
The most widely usedand therefore easiest to verifywatermarking system at the
time of this writing is Digimarc. Digimarc ships with Photoshop 5.5 and later, as
well as with some other image editing programs such as PaintShop Pro.
12.3.2.1. Creating a watermark with specialized software
Before you can actually watermark your images, you need to create and register
your watermark with the company whose watermarking software you are using.
Instructions for doing this will be included with the program. The following
method shows you how to watermark your files using Digimarc from within either

Photoshop or ImageReady. (Note that you must be online for this procedure to
work.)
1. Choose Other Digimarc to bring up the Embed Watermark dialog (see
Figure 12-29). Click the Personalize button.
Figure 12-29. The Digimarc Embed Watermark dialog.
2. The Personalize Digimarc ID dialog will appear (see Figure 12-30). You
will first need to register with Digimarc, so click the Info button.
Figure 12-30. The Personalize Digimarc ID dialog (the information shown in
the fields is entirely fictitious).
3. The Digimarc registration site will appear. You will see a chart of rates for
different numbers of images. (These rates may inspire you to watermark
only your most important images, but that's up to you.) Also note that for an
additional charge, Digimarc can automatically search the Web for your
watermarked images, which can be a very valuable service. Follow the
instructions to register with Digimarc for the number of images you want to
watermark.
4. When you have finished registering, enter your Digimarc ID and PIN
number in the appropriate fields in the Personalize Digimarc ID dialog and
click OK.
5. A new dialog will appear; fill in the required fields and click OK when
complete.
Watermarking is an annual and not inconsequential expense. You can do it a little
at a time, however, by adding new registrations whenever you have new images to
watermark.
12.3.2.2. Creating a free watermark in Photoshop
There is another free way to protect your images: use Photoshop (or any other
layer-supporting image editor) to superimpose your copyright information over the
image. Unlike the Digimarc watermark, these are readily visible. To do this,
simply create a new transparent layer at the top of the Layers palette and then use
the Text tool to type in any size and style that will fit inside the image frame. You

can make the watermark semi-transparent by adjusting the layer's Transparency or
Fill sliders. If you have lots of contrast in the print, use transparent type and a
Layer Style that creates a dark edge (choose Window Layer Styles to get a
thumbnail dialog that will automatically apply the style shown). This way, your
watermark will be readable in both light and dark areas of the photo.
There are two major drawbacks to such free watermarks:
 They can't be automatically traced.
 You'll probably end up hiding the most important part of your picture if you
place them so they can't be easily cropped out.
Still, it's good to have options, and you will probably discover situations in which
these watermarks will work just fine.
12.3.3. Creating the Web Gallery