7 Simple Tips for Better Integration of Images Within Your Content

Images have become a common sight on blogs. This is because of the improvement of technology—mainly internet connections. Images, for many blogs, play an integral part of the content. Whether or not you use images on a regular basis is irrelevant, but when you do use them, it helps to have them looking smooth.

Standard Image Sizes

If you want to make your site more professional, you could start by making the images you integrate into your content a standard size. To begin, consider finding out the width of your content area (or the area that text is displayed). Make this the maximum image width for a large image. Make an image around half that width for a medium sized image. Make an image width a quarter or less of the maximum for a thumbnail image.

For example, let’s assume that your blog’s content area is 500 pixels wide. Try following this set of image sizes:

500 x 200—lead images for featured articles
500 x 500—large images for screen captures and image content being discussed
200 x 200—medium images aligned to the right for complimenting the content wrapped around it
100 x 75—small images aligned to the left used for company/service logos being discussed

If you do something like this, when people are searching through your archives, they know what to expect. It is a subtle change, but, in my opinion, it can make a blog look much more professional.

Great Color

I don’t want to blow your mind with color theory, as even I lack great understanding about this, but I will tell you that there are color combinations that work well together, obviously. Unless you are an artist, you might not know how it all works. I did find an interesting website that has a digital color wheel that could help. Play around with it, and try finding complimentary, analogous, triadic, monotonous, and other various color combinations.

Optionally, you could play around with the opacity and monotonous colors to add a unique and impressive effect to images. On my previous blog, I had considered adding a bluish monotone to all my images, but it is a lot of effort. If you are really into making your blog’s design look phenomenal, take care to be consistent.

Quality Images

It should be an obvious thing to use quality images, but even I am amazed at how horrible the quality of the images that people use on their blogs. Sometimes it is so bad that, at times, I wonder if even the picture was highly relevant, would it have been better if it was just not there.

There isn’t an incredibly negative impact if a great image goes unnoticed, but it is a very bad thing if a poor image draws all the attention to the readers. Image size is becoming less of a factor as connection speeds increase, so your images should be able to look great if scaled properly. To put this simply, use quality images or don’t use them at all.

Rounded Corners

Rounded corners are very popular in this day of web 2.0 flair, and rounded corners are a simple and relaxing way to add some elegance to your images. This requires some effort, and if you are tied for time, it might be easier to skip this suggestion. They do like nice though—the first site that comes to mind is Ars Technica.

Captivate with Captions

Captions are a great way to add information to your image that might not be obvious to your readers. With the inclusion of the caption functionality in WordPress 2.6, it is very easily done. Use them to give credit. Add a short description to answer any of the who, what, when, where and why questions. Just make sure to not abuse them. If you need several sentences to explain what is going on within the image, the image would probably be better left out.

Alignment

Image alignment is another thing that can really improve the look of your site. Aligning images to the left or right is a nice change. It is preferred to align the images to the right as it does not interrupt the reader as much as a left-aligned image. If you use alignment, be sure to use smaller images, as having only two to three words per line looks very odd. Some sites, like a few blogs owned by Gawker, have been guilty of displaying only one or two words beside a lead image. Take care to preview your content before publishing it.

Meaning

Finally, you want to ensure that all of your images have a meaning to the content that it compliments. Namely, the image should, in fact, compliment the image. If this image is there just for the sake of trying to add some production value to the post, the article might be better off without it.

For example, I am writing this article about images—it would be useful for me to add images that exemplify good alignment, colors, size, or what ever is relevant to the image discussion. But adding images to this post just for the sake of claiming that I have added an image is pointless and distracting. In other words, add images if they are relevant and/or help to break up the content. If not for either of those reasons, just don’t bother adding them.

Hopefully these suggestions about images will help you better integrate images into your posts. Take care to not overuse images. Some blogs manage to display several dozens of images displayed per post—Noupe comes to mind—but be sure to make them count on your blog.

If you have any tips for integrating images with content, please add them in the comments section. Also, if you liked this post, why not subscribe to Performancing!