If you’ve ever landed on a website with low-quality or poorly sized images, you know what kind of message it sends. Fair or not, bad images can make a business look unprofessional and repel potential customers.
Amazing, high-quality images on your website and social media channels not only help build trust in your brand, but they also help draw more business. In fact, 93% of customers surveyed in a recent study said that a website’s appearance is the most important factor they consider before making a purchase.
Regardless of the type of business you run, it’s important to put your best foot forward when it comes to the images you use on your website. Not only should they be professional and attractive looking, but they should also be the right size. Images that are too large will bog down your site speed, which can frustrate visitors and hurt you in search results.
So how can you find the best images and modify them to fit your needs? Here are some tools to help.
Websites with Free, High-Quality Images
If you have a professional photographer to take photos for your site or you have taken some great shots yourself, you are ahead of the game. If not, no worries! Below is a list of websites where you can find free or inexpensive stock images for your web pages and social media channels—no attribution required.
Each site has its own rules about acceptable use, which includes commercial and noncommercial, so make sure you are aware of any restrictions.
Image Editing Tools
Now that you have some great images for your blog, website, and social media posts, it’s time to size and optimize them to fit your needs. Here are some online tools you can use to resize your images online for free:
Bulk Resize Photos (free)
Bulk Resize is a great, no-frills way to resize single images or bulk images quickly and easily. Because your images are resized/compressed on your computer, they don’t get uploaded, which saves a good bit of time.
With this tool you can:
- Scale your image dimensions by percentage
- Choose a file size
- Specify exact dimensions
- And More
Just be careful when using the exact dimensions feature because it doesn’t automatically scale your image when you enter a width or height. This can lead to distorted images.
BeFunky (free with paid option)
If you are looking to go beyond basic resizing, BeFunky is a nice option. It’s free to do basic editing and resizing, but you can upgrade to BeFunky Plus and pay a monthly fee ($5.00) for additional options like photo effects, filters, text, touchups, object removal, batch processing, and more.
Photoshop Express (free)
A scaled down version of Adobe Photoshop, this free tool allows you to edit images easily with tools to crop, resize, and scale images; adjust perspective, hide blemishes, adjust exposure/contrast; add effects, styles, border, text, and more.
Adobe Photoshop Express is not as straight-forward as many other image editing tools, but you get a ton of free editing options. It also allows for easy optimization and sharing on social media platforms.
Image Compressor Tools
If you have large image files, it’s important to reduce their size without losing your image quality. In fact, some CMS systems won’t even allow you to upload images larger than 4 MB. Here are a couple of tools to help you compress large images so they still look great but don’t slow down your site:
Simple Image Resizer (single images)
The Simple Image Resizer is exactly that—a super simple way to modify an image size by percentage or dimensions. To accomplish this, just click Select Image, choose Percentage or Dimensions, and hit Resize. No bells and whistles here, but it gets the job done. For example, if you have an image file that is 6 MB, you can reduce it to 3 MB by setting the percentage to 50%.
Optimizilla (single or multiple images)
This tool shrinks images to the minimum size possible without sacrificing quality. Optimizilla is good for single images or bulk images (up to twenty at once). You can control the compression level for best results.
Concluding Thoughts
These photo editing and resizing tools will help you get your images ready to publish and share with the world!
OpenVine helps small businesses across the country create stunning websites. If you need help with professional photography or need to design a site with irresistible images that draw in customers, get in touch with us today!