Where do you begin?

There are a number of member generated stock image sites that we recommend that provide professional images at reasonable prices. These are Royalty Free images but still require you to license them. This allows you to use these in multiple marketing items for an indefinite period, instead of per usage, and have been released by the models and property owners for public use. The license is your agreement not to resell them and licensing also means instead of purchasing the image it allows others to use the same image.

Royalty free images are not free and we do not recommend anyone use or copy images from the web without first seeking permission or having signed a license agreement.

Some sites vary but usually you will…

1. Sign up
2. Search the site using your keywords such as ‘family at beach’ ‘office desk’ etc.
3. Add images to a lightbox (this is the collection of photos you have chosen)
4. Purchase enough credits for your images (usually $1.00 USD each)
5. Agree to lIcense and download images onto your computer -  *You can also send us a link to your lightbox if we are using these on your site.

ROYALTY FREE PHOTO SITES

There are also a few good Free Stock Photo sites so please look there first.
Dreamstime (above) also offer a range of free images so you may just get lucky and find the ones you need in their free library.

These Free Photo sites have their own system but most are a few simple steps…

1. Sign up
2. Search the images
3. Agree to license
4. Download image

Tracey Trezise is a freelance hairdresser who specialises in hairdressing for weddings. Tracey was looking for an online presence to showcase her work for brides-to-be as well as provide a means to contact her and make enquiries online.

Tracey chose design AB001 and after we added her logo, colours and images it becomes Hers! Tracey ‘s new site is a perfect example of how different your own site can look using one of our template designs. Tracey also added a SimpleViewer Gallery from our Extras.

This is what Tracey had to say. “I had been contemplating putting together a web site for a little while, and I had all the information I wanted to use I just needed the brains to put it together, that’s when I found Louise and the team at eMW. I choose to use one of their templates with an extra add on for my gallery page. I am very happy with the way it all turned out. Thanks to eMW for helping my business grow.”

We were as delighted as Tracey to see what a complete contrast to the original design her site became. Take a peek at her new web site and see for yourself.

The main reason is that your site will be viewed by various operating systems using various browsers that will each display your site differently.
Browsers – Internet Explorer 6 -7; Firefox 1-2; Safari.
Operating Systems – Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/Vista; MacOS X 1.0 – 10.5; Linux.

Browsers can only use fonts that are installed on the computer/operating system of your site’s visitor. The chances of your visitors having all your favourite fonts installed would be rare and if you do use a non web safe font the user’s computer will default to a substitute font which will then change how you intended your site to look.

You can still use your favourite font or script as an image for logos and graphics ‘without over-use’ of course however, I would recommend you don’t use images for anything other than its visual effect, as smart as the search engines are, they are still unable to read the text that you have hidden away in the graphic.

Here is an example of a non web safe font shown as an image.

The only way to be sure that all versions of Windows and Mac computers are viewing your site’s content text as you would like it to be viewed – is to use ‘web safe fonts’. These are fonts that are both Windows default and Mac default fonts and are found on all computers ensuring that all your site’s visitors are seeing your site as you intended.

You may also want to have a look here at a Table of Most Used Web Fonts.

Here is a ‘safe list’ – using images.