Images should ideally show a clear view of the board with a little space between the board and the edge of the photo. It should also be free of text other than what is printed on the board itself. This will help to keep it consistent with the existing images.
To add a board to CircuitPython.org, you will need three sizes of the same image for each board.
- Small Size Minimum Width of 292 pixels. (Most photos are 300x225 or 293x225)
- Large Size Minimum Width of 590 pixels. (Most photos are 800x600 or 780x600)
- Original Size Photo in a Large Size
A good aspect ratio that looks nice for the photo size is 13:10 or 4:3. These are the ratios used for most of Adafruit's product photos. We will start with finding an image, if you don't already have it, resizing it to the appropriate size, and optimizing it for the website.
Finding Images on Flickr
Adafruit has many products available on Flickr in high resolution. Most of the photos are in the 4:3 or 13:10 aspect ratios.
- Go to https://www.flickr.com
- Type "Adafruit Industries" into the search box and click "Search people"
- Click on Adafruit Industries
Click the Magnifying Glass icon on the right
At the top, type in your Search Term and press enter
Click on a Photo in the Search Results
Verify the Description matches the item that you're looking for
Click the Arrow icon on the right side and select a size that will be your Original Sized photo
Resizing Photos
Photos can be resized in your favorite photo editor such as PhotoShop or GIMP or via websites such as ezgif.com
PhotoShop
PhotoShop is one of the most popular pieces of Photo Editing software by Adobe, however it is not free. Here are the steps to resize the image in PhotoShop.
- Open the Original Sized Photo
- Go to Image→Image Size...
- Type a width like 800. The height should automatically adjust.
- Press OK
- Go to File→Export→Export As...
- Select JPG for your Format and you can leave the quality as 100%
- Click Export All... and save the file into a folder where you'll remember it. Choose a filename appropriate to your board.
- Click Edit→Undo until you undo the resizing of the image
- Repeat at step 2 for the small sized image, except choose something like 300 for the width
GIMP
GIMP, which stands for Gnu Image Manipulation Program is another very popular, but free piece of software. Here are the steps to resize an image in GIMP.
- Open the Original Sized Photo
- If it asks about Converting to RGB Working Space, click Convert
- Go to Image→Scale Image...
- Type a width like 800. The height should automatically adjust
- Press Scale
- Go to File→Export As...
- Select JPG for your Format and you can leave the quality as 100%.
- Click Export to save the file into a folder where you'll remember it. Choose a filename appropriate to your board.
- Click Edit→Undo until you undo the resizing of the image
- Repeat at step 2 for the small sized image, except choose something like 300 for the width
ezgif.com
ezgif.com is a website that provides all kinds of free image manipulation tools. This is a great option if you don't want to install any software on your computer. Here are the steps to resize the image in ezgif.com.
- Navigate to https://ezgif.com/resize in your browser
- Click Choose File and select your image
- Click Upload!
- Type a value like 800 into the width box and 600 into the height box.
- Under If the aspect ratio does not match you can either leave it as Center and crop to fit or change it to Stretch to fit depending on which result looks better to you.
- Click Resize image!
- Scroll down and under the resized image, click save
- It will download as ezgif.com-resize.jpg into your downloads folder
- Find it in your downloads and rename it to something more appropriate
- Repeat for the small sized image, except choose something like 300 for the width
Optimizing Images
Use your favorite image optimization website such as compressjpeg.com which we will cover.
- Navigate to https://compressjpeg.com/ in your browser
- Drag and drop all of your images into the area labeled Drop Your Files Here
- Once they are done automatically compressing, click the Download All button
- Unzip the file that downloads
- If you had several similar filenames for the same board, you can look at the file size to determine the appropriate file.
- Rename the files to the final name you would like to use.
Your images should now be ready for adding a board.
Page last edited March 08, 2024
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