Using Images

Queen's Image Bank

Queen's Image Bank is an image library, available to Queen's employees (faculty, staff, and student employees) for marketing and communication purposes. Use your net ID to log in and search for images of campus and campus activities.

The "Shared documents and guides" area of the Image Bank also hosts a number of related documents:

Photo and video standards: Queen's Photo and Video Standards document includes best practices for planning, producing and managing Queen’s assets, and for building and preserving a collection that serves the university’s digital communication needs into the future

Image consent forms: Photo release or consent forms -- one standard and one for parents/guardians

Notice of filming and photography: Suggested text for notifying event attendees of filming and photography, prior to and/or during events

Taking and using images with consent: A fact sheet provided by the Records Management and Privacy Office

Log into Queen's Image Bank

Basic curating considerations for editors

Content and captioning

Photos can be used throughout your website to draw readers into your content and enhance understanding. Take the time to create and select images that showcase your content and enhance understanding. Take time to explain their relevance by including descriptive captions.

Image size

Ensure images are optimized for online use. This means minimizing both the dimensions and the resolution so that file sizes are small. Doing so will keep your page sizes low and improve the speed at which they can be rendered. This is very important for visitors from rural areas / countries with slow internet connection speeds, and for mobile users (downloading large images can use up a data plan quickly). It also has an impact on search engine optimization.

Most photo processing tools include the ability to crop, resize and save at a lower resolution. The Image Bank also includes optimizing tools to edit your photo selections before downloading them.

In your Siteimprove account (learn about Siteimprove), use the image inventory are to identify image files on your site that have not been optimized for web. Log into Siteimprove and go to:

Quality Assurance > Inventory > Media Files > Images to sort by size.

Images that have been uploaded through the content template fields (i.e. where there is a specific field to upload the image file) are automatically optimised to a certain extent, but images loaded through the WYSIWYG are not. Most large images sizes identified through Siteimprove will be those images uploaded through the WYSIWYG.

Generally aim for 500 KB or less for most images in your site; full width hero images might need to be more then 500 KB in size to render well (and not look pixelated) but should be less than 1 MB.

Quality

Does the quality of your photos create the best impression? They don’t have to be hyper professional, but they should be reasonably good.

  • Are they real? i.e. use true Queen's photos as much as possible and avoid the use of stock images
  • Are they clear / in focus?
  • Is the colour balanced (not too dark, not too yellow, colour-corrected)?
  • Are they well-cropped and straightened?
  • Are they recent?
  • Do group shots and/or collection of images used as a whole illustrate diversity in your community?
  • Are the people pictured looking their best?
  • Avoid the use of selfies. Selfies are obviously selfies.

Copyright and privacy

Do you have permission to use the images on your site, both from a privacy and a copyright point of view?

  • For example, did the subjects in your photos grant permission for their image to be used for this purpose via a photo release form?
  • For any children pictured, do you have permission from their parents via a photo release form?

If you are not the author of photos or graphics on your website, ensure you have copyright permission to use the photos.

Provide image credits as determined by the copyright agreement.

Safety

Ensure that any image taken and used does not depict behaviour that breaks safety protocols or other risky activities – such as a person in a lab not wearing safety googles or gloves as required.

File naming

For tips on the naming of image file, refer to: