Working with Images

How to open the Image Manager

When using the JCE Content Editor you open the Image Manager by clicking the Image Manager icon.

When you do a pop-up window will appear, as shown in the next image.

If the pop-up does not display then please check your browser settings to ensure pop-ups are enabled.

Note

The image properties may be pre-configured globally when you change the settings of any one JCE Editor Profile.

Read more: How to configure the JCE Image Manager.

How to organise your image files

Why bother?

Incorrectly addressed files may not load as intended when your website is viewed from older web browsers.

Later renaming of folders can cause undue extra work that is best avoided!

Large images (in terms of memory size) will load much more slowly than smaller images.

The web is increasingly mobile and, for now at least, mobile connection speeds are slower than from desktops.

Small images are therefore essential.

And slow sites rank more slowly (all other things being equal) in search engines.

Read on!

How to RESIZE image files

There is a file size limit of 2MB for any file (including images) uploaded to your WYNCHCO website.

This is the default Joomla! CMS setting.

We recommend much smaller file sizes however.

100 KB is ample for good quality display on a computer or smartphone screen.

So before uploading your images, reduce their size using a suitable Image Resize application.

Image Resizer Tool for Windows Users

We have  not used Windows since the days of Windows 7.

Back then it was not easy to resize images without installing an image editing application.

We did however come across one useful tool, which if you use Windows 7 or 8 you may like to try: Image Resizer for Windows.

After installation (and the usual malware and virus checks) the process of resizing images was pretty straightforward:

1. select the images,
2. right click - select Resize pictures.

The default settings as shown in the image below will reduce a 1+ MB image to 100 KB +.

Read more: Image Resizer for Windows.

How to RENAME image files before upload

All file names should follow these rules:

• all lowercase,
• alphanumeric (letters or numbers or both),
• no spaces,
• no fancy symbols,
• describe the image content in three to four words,
• use hyphen between each word (example: fast-car.jpg).

Example

Many of our customers are running Joomla! eCommerce websites.

Here is an eample of how you could rename images before upload to an eCommerce website selling shoes!

Best practice for search engines is to include three keywords in an image title.

Example:

567456.JPG

could be renamed

567456.jpg

but would be better named

shoes-boys-red.jpg

OR

shoes-boys-red-567456.jpg

if you want to quickly cross-reference to the image.

In eCommerce every product should have a unique reference number (SKU or PLU).

If you already know what these are then you could incorporate in your image names.

Example

Red Boys Shoes

Ref No 345

Image could be renamed

shoes-boys-red-345-1-567456.jpg

This image would be 1 of several for product 345.

A second image could be

shoes-boys-red-345-2-567457.jpg

Use a suitable file format

We recommend GIF or JPG (we prefer lower case).

Avoid PNG format if you believe your target audience mostly use older browsers, as the latter may add a shadow when presenting PNG images.

When detail is important, for example, photographs, use JPG.

When detail is less important, for example, button links, use GIF.

GIF images can have a transparent background.

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