low resolution vs high resolution images on your website

Hello, Marianne here. I am at the point where I am creating my website for clients to access images for proofing. What I was wondering is do you INITIALLY upload low resolution images into your proofing galleries on your website, then the client selects which images they intend to buy and the sizes particularly the ones they intend to keep in DIGITAL form. Then AFTER they made their selections you provide a CD or a zip file for them with high resolution images or AFTER they made their initial selection of low resolution images you ONLY THEN upload on the website the high resolution images for them to download. Alternatively you could upload high resolution images TO BEGIN WITH allowing the client to select and download images RIGHT AWAY. Which practice would you recommend? Thank you very much for your help,

 

Marianne

It depends on your bandwidth & webspace, your business model + the hardware at client side.

I'm not self employed professional, so I can't tell which model sells better and more easily.

Downside of the low res upload: You have to do work on your files and don't know if they'll sell.

If you cash in in advance (shooting fee), why not shovel everything out and be done?

Not knowing a client's hardware I'd do 3 sizes of a digital album: HD 1080 (or maybe iphone X: 2436-by-1125-pixel resolution at 458 ppi), 4K, and fulls size for printing + offer a service to downsize optimized for social media uploads. - No clue if those sizes are best or if the difference between 4K and full size is worth the hassle.

It depends on your bandwidth & webspace, your business model + the hardware at client side.

I'm not self employed professional, so I can't tell which model sells better and more easily.

Downside of the low res upload: You have to do work on your files and don't know if they'll sell.

If you cash in in advance (shooting fee), why not shovel everything out and be done?

Not knowing a client's hardware I'd do 3 sizes of a digital album: HD 1080 (or maybe iphone X: 2436-by-1125-pixel resolution at 458 ppi), 4K, and fulls size for printing + offer a service to downsize optimized for social media uploads. - No clue if those sizes are best or if the difference between 4K and full size is worth the hassle.

Thank you very much for your reply.

My question to you is: are you into coding? How will you manage to build your website and then upload low resolution images first and once if the client purchases, upload again a high quality image? Not sure but this looks like a tedious process. Go with a decent website builder that automates this process. There are hundreds of platforms out there that'll do the job for you. You just have to upload your original size images and they automatically crop it to show on your website. Once the client makes payment, he gets the link to the original file. I'm already doing this with Pixpa, and the process is smooth. Just google up client proofing platforms and you'll come across plenty of them. All the best!

IMO, you don't want the low res images too good or you'll never sell the high ones. You'd be surprised at what people will be happy with if they can get it for free. As a reference point, I'm not in the business and want good quality fast images on my site. They're typically about 600 wide and moderately compressed (jpeg). Size is typically about 50 KB and they load almost instantly. Quality is very good at that level (if done right), so you probably want something quite a bit worse! Watermarks? Possibly you can do a script in a photo editor to automatically process a bunch of images, otherwise it will be too much work.

2436-by-1125-pixel resolution at 458 ppi

 

It's 2018, by now people should be aware that ppi is totally irrelevant to image display.

I have not followed website desing for long time. My guess would be that final media these days for moderately compressed fullsize jpeg images is micro-SD, that clients can plug into their mobile phones or with SD-adapter to their computers.

 

It is completely different matter if You want offer somekind of once a lifetime shopping experience for selected prints or products.

Slightly embarrasing, I forgot I-phone users that need website interface. Make sure that somewhere there is one button dowload of large jpegs. Think of amazon one click order on products.

Having high resolution images on your website is not a good idea. Upload around 1200px wide images which would be a 4x6 print at 200ppi. They can download it and make a proof print. Once they select there images for their order you can then reupload the higher res files or send them via a FTP 3rd party source like wetransfer.

Not so long ago, I was at a tourist attraction which made and sold both still and video of the tourist's experience.

 

There were display stations where the tourists could view and order copies.

 

There were also big signs telling them not to photograph the display screens!

 

Yes, for many even the lowest resolution (pictures of the display) is enough.