Help on design colors

**whiteshepherd** · 08-20-2007, 08:06 AM

Re: Help on design colors

Hi there,

I personally like the new layout, design and logo of the front page much better but, this is only personal, don't like the green. But I don't like the black either.

I have a gallery on another account with more than 800 photos in it and I tend to use colours that highlight the photos in a particular gallery. I tend to group them so this is feasibele ... but there are a lot of was to present your photos ... take a look around at what others are doing, get some ideas and go from there ...

Forgive me my confusion, but I am not sure what the second site is for ... Quantum Photography or Best Friends Kennels or both? Or are you playing with ideas ...?

**QuantumPhotography** · 08-20-2007, 08:18 AM

Re: Help on design colors

Hi White sheperd, no i do not do kennels. This was a customer. It was only to show new color scheme.

Thanks for reply
Darren

**zuriatman** · 08-20-2007, 03:55 PM

Re: Help on design colors

Hi Darren,

The Colors are very plain and to me it is just an ok site.

You have to improve it by turning it into a Sticky Site
where visitors would want to spend time exploring the site.

The first suggestion and I think it is an important one is to
remove this "http://www.bridgeby.com.au/" as it immediately
despatches your visitor to another site "which is Bye Bye Darren"

The Thumbs are so tiny I had to squint to view them. You photos
are nothing much to view. They are not very *****. All this counts in the overall presentation.

As for colors my preference is towards rich pastel colors not dull flat colors to bring out the pages. Make every page different as if your visitors are entering a new site every time they change pages.
Do not leave the background white as the PC computer screen is already glaring for those with glasses and poor eyes. Use a nice pastel soothing color.

This can go on all night so why dont you Google and Yahoo some Photography sites to obtain Ideas and also download nice free images which you can use as your backgrounds and also visit php sites and other sites offering free background images.

I just renewed my hosting with VH for the second year and my site is still not online. It has taken me a long time to find my direction and what I want My site to be is not one of the 20 million look alike that you find on the web today.

Be different thats the way to go.

**koolspaces.com** · 08-20-2007, 07:46 PM

Re: Help on design colors

Here's my two cents: I like the stars theme and the blue color. Could you expand that so as to replace the plain black background? And put your best foot forward by displaying your best photographs in front.
And add two more pictures to each side in order balance it better.

http://www.koolspaces.com

The Best myspaces on myspace.com

**QuantumPhotography** · 08-20-2007, 10:15 PM

Re: Help on design colors

Hi Zuriatman,
Thank you for the reply. I will address a few of your points. The bridgeby was simply a link to there site, but i understand what your saying.
The photos I know were of nothing important the customer just wanted a few shots of his business. I only had them as to fit on the page for now but they do enlarge with the lightbox feature??? Also I have decreased them in size for quick loading, so I do not know a way around this to have quick loading page yet show large ***** pictures.

I am not 100 sure about all pages being different??? Would you not keep nav buttons and headers the same, I could understand background pics being different. When you mention background pics, are you meaning where the white area is or the grey background area on the left and right???

I must agree with the not looking like the other million sites around, this is the same comment my mother said.

Koolspaces thank you for your 2 cents...lol... I initially did stars all over the back ground but it got a bit too much.

I look forward to a few more comments and suggestions, before I totally go back to the drawing board.

Thank you again.

**Collectors-info** · 08-20-2007, 10:31 PM

Re: Help on design colors

Hi, prefer the lighter green to the black. Only a personal view! But I would avoid using the light box for any more than 1-2 images. With the images on that page at the moment, it is at well over 1 Meg & really could be made to about 2-300kb for the whole page with a bit of work with the images.

Good luck.

**QuantumPhotography** · 08-20-2007, 10:44 PM

Re: Help on design colors

Originally posted by Collectors-info View Post

Hi, prefer the lighter green to the black. Only a personal view! But I would avoid using the light box for any more than 1-2 images. With the images on that page at the moment, it is at well over 1 Meg & really could be made to about 2-300kb for the whole page with a bit of work with the images.

Good luck.

Hi Chris,
Thanks for that info. Can I ask how you tell the size of a whole page, I was actually trying to find out how, but for the life of me I couldnt find it. If your saying not to use light box for more then 1 or 2 images, what would be the best way to show a few pics??? I am aware of pix resizer etc but how do you suggest making the pages 300kb yet still keeping the images ***** and viewable??? Thank you for your time.

**Collectors-info** · 08-21-2007, 07:18 AM

Re: Help on design colors

Hi. With light box it doesn�t reduce the thumbnails in KB�s, it just squeezes the physical size of the image. That�s why thy always look a bit crinkly when made into to smaller thumbnail. It�s a bit like you taking an A4 sheet of paper & making it into a ball. Its smaller but still the same weight, but doesn�t look quite so nice. This is how the light box works.

Right clicking on an image will give you the size in most cases. Or there are many sites like this one that will test the pages. http://webxact.watchfire.com/ But don�t take them as gospel as I find may of these sites don�t read images very well.

As for making an image galleries, it depends on how fussy you are. With light box you end up with large kb crinkly thumbnails, but a nice large image. With the gallery you get smaller kb thumbnails But not the greatest looking thumbnail image. I personally think you can make your own gallery with pop ups that will show the images off far better. Or use some of the purpose made software out there that will give a professional finish.

But a big no, no, is using the tabs on the side of the image to reduce or enlarge the size of the image.

Good luck.

**zuriatman** · 08-21-2007, 09:34 AM

Re: Help on design colors

Hi Darren,

I have to disagree with Chris on the Lightbox.
It is my favourite album creator and you can design around it.
I have done more than 20 albums and I just love it.

Set your images to the size you want your viewer to see.
My preference is 500 to 600 pixels. When you import them into light box
you can resize the thumbs manually using the corner ear.

The most important to me is your page background and the design of your
page + color and add-ons that U use on the page.

The lightbox program is the centerpiece where you house all the thumbs.
I have done columns of five with 15, 600pixels images and it loads in a snap
without any problem. The format size of my Jpg images is set to max 100%.

**zuriatman** · 08-21-2007, 10:23 AM

Re: Help on design colors

Hi Darren,

Here is an example of what I am talking about.

**Collectors-info** · 08-21-2007, 11:20 AM

Re: Help on design colors

Originally posted by zuriatman View Post

Hi Darren,

I have to disagree with Chris on the Lightbox.
It is my favourite album creator and you can design around it.
I have done more than 20 albums and I just love it.

Set your images to the size you want your viewer to see.
My preference is 500 to 600 pixels. When you import them into light box
you can resize the thumbs manually using the corner ear.

The most important to me is your page background and the design of your
page + color and add-ons that U use on the page.

The lightbox program is the centerpiece where you house all the thumbs.
I have done columns of five with 15, 600pixels images and it loads in a snap
without any problem. The format size of my Jpg images is set to max 100%.

Hi�ya Zuriatman. (Just a curiosity posting)
Have you any links to the working albums/light boxes you have made. I have never seen one load quickly or with clear thumbnail images. Unless there are just a few low kb images. (Well not what I would except as clear)
I just want to make sure that I am not miss-leading anyone with my comments. This is all remembering that I have a 1.5meg connection, which is slow, but faster than the majority of the world.

Thanks,

**zuriatman** · 08-21-2007, 12:08 PM

Re: Help on design colors

Hi,ya Chris,

All my web pages and albums are still in Blue Voda I have not published my website yet. It has been a year since I started working on them.

The focal point of my website is my family tree. The orchid galleries and stamp galleries are just my hobbies to help alleviate the boredom of a genealogy website to visitors.

I am rushing to complete my web site. At the moment I am resolving the security of my genealogy database and I do not want to publish until all links and security issues that I have can be resolved.

You can view my photos by going to Epson Photocenter and view my albums.

You will see that almost all of my digital photos are extremely ***** and I
upload them to my online album between 400 to 600 pixels H in dimension.
The Epson server is a bit slow but they have provided me with 100MB of free storage space.

As far as loading is concerned I think it is the ISP Server that is mostly responsible for the slow loading. Their upload speed is slow. Voda Host Servers are fast in excess of 150mbps to 250 mbps I think [Read it in one of the threads].

I view most sites with both Firefox and IE with a screen resolution 1280 x 960 pixels [32Bit] using a Dell 20" flat screen monitor. I have a one gigabyte connection which also helps to speed the process of loading. But I find Firefox is a wee bit faster than IE.

Abu.

**Collectors-info** · 08-21-2007, 12:47 PM

Re: Help on design colors

I have a one gigabyte connection which also helps to speed the process of loading. But I find Firefox is a wee bit faster than IE.

Wow! I must admit I didn�t know you could get this sort of connecting for the net. So for you to view everything must be almost instantaneous. It will be nice when the UK catches up with the rest of the fast world.
Max you can get here is 8 meg & that�s assuming you live on the roof of the telephone exchange & make dinner for the engineers every day & take them to the pub every night.lol. You can pay for special faster connections/services (But it costs a fortune here)
If you have this connection & your visitors that viewing have fast connections there would be no problem.
But with the light boxd I have found that the thumbnails get very distorted, & especially if the image has straight/diagonal or detailed lines of any sort. Plus for my connection speed, a very slow loading page if too many images.

Oh Well! Good luck.

PS, The link to your images seems to be down at the mo.

Sorry, the photo you're looking for is not in this album. The album owner may have moved or deleted the photo. Please check with the owner to verify that you have the correct url and try again.

If you require further assistance, please contact Member Support. Please include a brief description of your problem and this error number: #1008

**LadyEye** · 08-21-2007, 01:24 PM

Re: Help on design colors

I too like the lightbox and with the proper settings it works quite successfully .. there is a box to tick to maintain image ratio, you can set your thumbnails to a certain size or variable ...

I've used it successfully

I myself, (like white shepherd) don't care for the green

I like your star header ...

so maybe incorporate those colours into everything ...

here is a sample and I made and a few nav buttons which you can install on your computer C:/programfiles/bluevoda/navbars

and then you can use one button for a mouseover nav button - if you like ... (there is one down on the bottom right)

I didn't copy all your pics, so you will see some with red x's ...

Have a look here ...

Help on design colors

Help on design colors

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