Graphics, Scanning, Photography, Technology...

Scanning - What resolution? What percentage of sharpness? Threshold? Radius? Check out Sullivan's On Line Scanning Source for answers to all your questions about putting good looking pictures on the web. This site will save you months of learning and testing. We Emailed a "thank you" for making this information available.

Recommended imaging software - AirSho relys heavily on Debabilizer Pro (new for Windows 95) for rescaling images, batch processing, and compressing files. Adobe Photoshop works well for sharpening images and adding special effects. Both Photoshop and Microsoft Image Composer are good choices for adding sharp looking text.

Photography - Kodak offers all we need about cropping, F stop, shutter speed, composition, lens, film..

Aerial Photos (and marketing) - An information page is being written now about this highly specialized subject.

Digital Photography - "Digital" cameras are here and priced below 200 dollars. Some store 100 images in their memory. Others have a 3.5 inch floppy which can hold a little more than 20 pictures. Either way, digital cameras make putting your pictures on the Internet painless. No more mutliple trips to buy film, or take it back for processing, or pick it up...or wait until they re-do the ones they printed badly! Digital cameras let you see what you've shot and record over bad pictures instantly. Getting digital photos on the Internet is the real plus. No scanner, no re-sizing, and already compressed to a JPEG!

"MPEG" is a new technology. Here's an update on a camera that can store 3,000 pictures, and sound. It delivers an acceptable picture but at a heavy cost. The idea of moving pictures using this technology is not practical for our use yet. Internet surfers will not wait two minutes for 15 seconds of video to download. Eventually AirSho Tour pictures will be fluid and move in real time. MPEG is not the technology which today will deliver that. It's only an indicator of what's to come. We believe the Internet will utlimately replace television. The Internet is interactive, and with an unlimited number of channels.

"How many pictures on my page?" Think in terms of how long will it take for that page to come up on someone's monitor. The Detroit Free Press has a good looking, fast moving site. Their designers told us they try to put only one picture on a page to achieve that.

How many logos, buttons? Again, think only in terms of how long it will take to draw up on an average monitor. It's really hard to fight the temptation to add another visual element. AirSho, being a 100% visual, is always weighing the benefits against the disdvantages of large file sizes. We continue to downsize or eliminate the earlier (some very large) files as we grow. There is a heavy penalty for graphics. Dynamic HTML is the future for web pages on the Internet.

What color background? HTML codes? Use Microsoft VBScript or Ken Cox's Color Calculator, or the newest Greatest Color Generator.

Reduce your GIF file sizes and dimensions. This can be done with Gif Wizard.

Should I design my pages for 800x600 or 640x480 displays? Both. The rule here is: if it will fit on a 640x480 pixel display it will certainly fit the 800x600 pixel display. It will not, however, work the other way around. Incidentally, Our experience is that a majority of web surfers today have their monitors setup at 640x480, with only 256 colors. That's mainly because it's the default setting and they don't know that it can be changed, or even how. Further, because things run slow on the Internet, many people on line today have their "Auto Load Images" turned off. This will improve in time, but for now design your pages with meaningful text, keeping those things in mind. Be sure to identify the image using "Alt" text (3 or 4 words max) so they know what's there to be "turned on".

If you see new sites or information that would be useful to members let us know.sales@airsho.com

International Real Estate Directory "Top 10" winner, February 1997

If you have any questions click here: sales@airsho.com

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