images

Essential Characteristics of a High-Quality Image or Video

March 17, 2014 Leave a Comment

Editor’s Note: This post was written by Jake Magleby, who has written extensively about effective marketing, sales, and financing strategies to help small business owners succeed in the fast-paced and ever-changing business world. He is also interested in photography and video production. To learn more about choosing great media for your site, check out Stockfootage.com.

If you are creating content for television, blogs, movies, print ads, or websites, you know high-quality media essential. Humans are visual thinkers and learners, and we gravitate toward images and videos. While well-written copy is usually an important component of quality content, engaging media is one of the best ways to capture and hold someone’s attention. Here are some essential characteristics to look for when selecting an image or video for your next project.

Sharp Focus

Image by steve r watson via Flickr

One of the most important things to look for in a photo or video is sharp and correct focus. An adorable photo of tiger cubs loses its value if the photo is blurry or the camera focused on the rocks behind the cubs. The same thing goes for video—looking at blurry photos is uncomfortable, but watching out-of-focus video isn’t just uncomfortable; it can induce nausea and headaches. Before you consider anything else, make sure your image or video is focused. If it isn’t, throw it out and move on.[Read More]

5 Tips on Choosing Great Stock Footage for Your Videos

August 22, 2013 Leave a Comment

Thanks to desktop editing programs, making videos is cheaper and easier than ever. As a result, more companies, bloggers, and entrepreneurs are discovering the power of video. One of the most cost-effective and time-sensitive ways to make video these days is to incorporate some stock footage. Similar to stock images, these clips can help move a story, set the scene, or show off a beautiful landscape.

However, finding the right footage for your needs can be laborious or downright frustrating. Here are five tips to get you started with your search and discovery:[Read More]

The Noun Project: Get Your Fill of Symbols

December 8, 2010 Leave a Comment

What’s a noun? Merriam-Webster’s Learner’s Dictionary gives a simple definition:

A word that is the name of something (such as a person, animal, place, thing, quality, idea, or action) and is typically used in a sentence as subject or object of a verb or as object of a preposition.

It’s the first part of speech that English learners pick up – everyone knows what a noun is! This is the premise behind one of the newest projects you can find on the Internet: The Noun Project. The guys behind the endeavor aim to share, celebrate and enhance the world’s visual language by creating symbols (based on nouns, of course) and sharing them with the rest of the world.

When you visit the site, you will be greeted by lots of black and white symbols of the most common things you encounter in daily life. The images themselves are not something to drool over – they are very simple, stark even. Then again, that is what the whole concept is about. Going back to the basics, keeping things simple – that’s what they want to do with the project.

Simplicity does have its perks. Whether you need an image to stick on to a blog post or a presentation, or you need a base image to modify for aesthetic purposes, The Noun Project’s collection do the trick for you. You simple have to hover your cursor over an image and download it for FREE. Their pledge is that the images will be ALWAYS be free.

One thing I am looking for – which they say is forthcoming – is the ability to search the images. For now, they are still trying to raise enough funds to continue the project, so head on over to Kickstarter to help them out. Learn more about the project by watching the video below.

16 Photo Sharing Web Sites Worth Using

November 16, 2009 3 Comments

Here are sixteen online photo sharing services worth taking a look at.

Got a favourite not on the list? Share it in the comments below.

1. Flickr

We all know Flickr, right? Easy to upload, search, tag and share photos and videos with a premium service available.

2. Photobucket

Another favourite with a nice look and feel.

3. Picasa

You need a Google account to get the most from Picasa, after which you can edit, share, tag, favourite and chat about your pictures. As you’d expect from a Google product, there are plenty of features being added all the time, and extra storage available at fair prices.

4. SmugMug

Not only photos on this great looking ad free site but also HD video on these pay accounts.

5. Shutterfly

The service claims free, unlimited, unrestricted size photo storage and the ability to create a range of products from your own pictures.

6. Webshots

A huge collection of photos including ones from professional photographers, available to purchase electronically and as prints.

7. Piczo

Designed for use by teenagers, with plenty of glitz and glamour, photo editing tools and communities.

8. Tinypic

A registration-free site for storing photos and videos, with unique links offered for each item much like URL shorteners work.

9. Snapfish

A service for uploading and then creating products from photos including standard prints, calendars, canvases and more.

10. Fotki

Upload, browse and rate photos or keep an online photo journal.

11. MyPhotoAlbum

Focusing on greater personalisation of online photo albums, with your own subdomain at myphotoalbum.com, plus real merchandise.

12. Picli

A Digg-style voting system for photos, pushing interesting pics to the front page.

13. Photosnack

Creates photo slideshows from your uploaded pictures and then share them across the web.

14. Glowfoto

A social network with a heavy focus on photos, and a platform for sharing images on other sites.

15. PhotoApe

A photo sharing service with an emphasis on mobile usage.

16. Photowall

As the name suggests, displays a scrolling wall of photos from users around the world.

Google launches “Similar Images” search

October 28, 2009 1 Comment

For some time, Google Labs has been testing search algorithms designed to find similar images, and yesterday announced that the feature is now a permanent fixture on Google Image Search.

As you’d expect, it’s a great way to narrow down images after searching for a broad topic, in much the same way as you’d do with text-based searches. It also helps when a word can have multiple meanings, such as “jaguar” or “keyboard”.

Unfortunately, I’ve only got Google’s word on this at present as I’m not seeing any “find similar images” links, even on the examples Google provided, but it certainly sounds like a really useful addition.

Via