You found the perfect image to put on your site. The image looked great on your phone, but now it looks blurry on your screen. It’s true that content is king, but that content needs images to make an impact on your audience. When your images are fuzzy or low in quality, it won’t matter how good your content is. Here are a few things to keep in mind to avoid fuzzy images.
It’s All About Pixels
Any discussion of digital images requires an understanding of pixels, which are single-color squares or dots on a screen that make up a digital image. Images vary in the number, size, and color of pixels, all of which are part of an image’s display resolution. Suppose your computer screen has a 1280 x 768 resolution; multiply these numbers and you’ll see that your screen has up to 983,040 pixels to display digital images. The more pixels per inch, the higher quality the image on the screen.
The Fuzzy Comes from Pixelation
If you have an image that’s fuzzy or blurred, it’s probably pixelated. Pixelation happens when the pixels are stretched to bigger than their size so that those individual, single-colored squares in the image become visible. If you want good images, you need to avoid pixelation. You can solve this problem in a few ways. One is simply to use high-resolution images. You also can scale or reduce the image. But don’t go crazy; scaling should be done in moderation. Also keep in mind that you can reduce images, but you can’t increase them. Another solution is to use vector rather than non-vector images. Vector images are mathematical, which allows them to be resized using proper scaling. There are a number of software applications that can fix pixelation and improve your images.
Resizing vs. Compression
A distinction between “resizing” and “compression” is important when talking about fixing fuzzy images. Resizing an image means lowering its resolution. For example, if you have a 1000 x 1000 image that’s too large, you can convert it to 300 x 300. However, resizing can be a problem when you upload it to a site, such as WordPress, that automatically resizes images, which can end up fuzzy. Then there’s compression. Suppose you want to reduce an image without messing up its resolution. This requires image compression, which is reducing the image’s file size. Of course, compressing the file size will still affect image quality.
No Excuse for Fuzzy Images
High-quality content will not likely make up for a fuzzy image. Never assume you can get away with leaving a blurry or fuzzy image on your webpage. Your audience will notice, and they won’t have a good impression of your message or brand. But don’t give up on posting images either. Consider that Tweets are 150% more likely to be retweeted if they have an image. A good, high-quality image counts.