Providing Images or Video for your website

Most importantly, you must hold a license for each image you use on your website.

We cannot add images taken from Google or other websites under any circumstances and we strongly advise against this practise . As image recognition technology improves, it is not unusual for the owners of websites using unlicensed images to be served with a penalty charge for each image used, often amounting to hundreds of pounds per image.

Images should be as high resolution as possible. We can always make hi-res images smaller but we can't make low-res images bigger. Most cameras are capable of taking images of at least 12 Megapixels

Provide lots of bleed for the subject - The image will appear with different cropping to different users. By making sure you provide lots of bleed (i.e. space around the subject of the image), we can ensure the cropping is optimal for all users.

We can crop images where needed but we can't uncrop images.

Landscape oriented images are generally more useful than oriented portrait images as many images run to the edge of the screen. Full width portrait images can use up a lot of screen real estate. If in doubt provide hi-red landscape orientated images with lots of bleed

Stage the image well. Consider what is around the image or in shot. Make sure there's no rubbish sacks, ladders, washing on washing lines etc!

Videos should be filmed in landscape format wherever possible. Portrait videos may appear with two black lines down the edges and take up excessive screen space.

Videos should be longer than 60 seconds. Shorter videos may be displayed as "YouTube Shorts" which are not usually appropriate for business websites.

Videos are very large and will usually need to be served from a video optimised CDN (a Content Delivery Network), In practise that will usually mean embedding on Youtube or Vimeo.

Consider sound on your video. Is there background noise that can appear unprofessional or distract from the content?