How to Display Art Online
By Kelly | June 22, 2007
So, you’ve scanned in your sketches, or you made your art digitally using software. Now, you need a way to share it with the world! But where to start?
Here’s a guide to help you in the right direction.
Formatting Your Images
Digital images have tons of options, and it can be a bit overwhelming when you’re ready to save your image online.
A few quick rules:
72 DPI – this is the standard for web graphics. Anything higher won’t affect the way folks see your image, but it will make the filesize bigger.
Dimensions – Keep in mind, most of the world still uses 1024×768 pixel resolution for their monitors. Some are still using 800×600! I usually size my images to 600 pixels tall or less.
Filesize – Again, not everyone’s on broadband. Keep the filesize tolerable by using 72 dpi, reasonable dimensions, and the appropriate file type.
Digital art can be saved in a befuddling array of filetypes. You’ll know the file type by the three-letter extension at the end of the file, such as .JPG. But what does this cryptic code mean? I’ll break it down according to several factors, including file size, color range, compatibility and quality.
JPG
JPG is the most common format for digital art online. It has a good balance of quality, file size and color range, and it’s almost universally compatible. When in doubt, use JPG!
Compatibility: Excellent
Quality: Best for color photos and illustrations, choose 80 quality or higher. Low quality results in chunky ‘artifacts’
File Size: Medium
Color Range: Good
Best For: Color illustrations, big images, photos
GIF
GIF format is ideal for images with few colors and for small images. It also supports transparency and animation, and is widely compatible.
Compatibility: Excellent
Quality: Low, adjust dithering and matte options for smoother color transitions
File Size: Small, but can be enormous if used for larger or high-color images and animations.
Color Range: 256 colors
Best For: Small images, monochrome sketches, animations, website graphics
PNG
PNG is a powerful alternative to GIF, but doesn’t yet have wide support. It has more sophisticated transparency effects which are not recognized by most web browsers. 8-bit PNG is a good substitute for GIF.
Compatibility: Low
Quality: Good for a range of images, though a high quality JPG is better for big images since the filesize is lower
File Size: Medium, best for smaller images
Color Range: 256 colors for 8-bit PNG
Best For: small images, website graphics, flat color designs
BMP
BMP is the default historical Windows image file type. I’ll just say this- don’t use BMP for images online!
Free hosting – community galleries
You’re not too comfy with HTML or FTP, but you need to put your art online. There’s lots of options for beginners, so don’t fret. Although I think that ultimately, the best hosting option is your own website and domain, if you’re just getting comfortable online then test the waters with a free hosting option first.
JaxPad
An up-and-coming community gallery for anthro art. Content restricted to anthropomorphic art, and no mature content permitted. Multiple galleries, journals, and other community features.
Pros: Clean and easy navigation, community features, web-based interface. Anyone can post art.
Cons: Restricted content, no mature themes, still growing
Deviant Art
A huge art community site. Supports a gallery with plenty of storage space, and seems skewed in favor of younger artists. Lots of anime, cartoons and anthro art. Mature content is supposed to be tasteful and restricted, but DA relies on users to report violations.
Pros: Web-based interface, advanced community features like commenting, journal, mail, etc. All genres of art. Anyone can post art.
Cons: Ads appear for non-premium accounts, unwieldy category system, slow load times for dialup
Artspots
Sibling site to Jaxpad, Artspots is built on the same engine. The main difference is that membership is moderated- artists must first pass a review before they get a gallery. It’s geared toward intermediate to advanced artists and hobbyists. Also has a commission management tool and print shop.
Pros: Clean and easy navigation, community features, web-based interface, quality control
Cons: Moderated membership, restricted content, no mature themes, still growing. Membership reviews have a history of lengthy wait times.
FurAffinity
Similar to DeviantArt, FA is a feature-heavy community gallery . Although geared toward furry art, there are no explicit restrictions in the submission guidelines. Caters toward an adult audience- users must be 18 or have parents’ permission to upload art.
Pros: Community features, web-based interface. All genres of art. Anyone can post art. Anything goes!
Cons: Furry art is categorized by fetish, adults only, poor signal-to-noise ratio for browsing, cluttered interface
Blogger
Easy-to-use free blog. You can upload and attach images to posts- more like a journal than a gallery. Lots of pro artists post work on blogger regularly.
Pros: Easy to manage art blog format, great artist community, customization options
Cons: Limited gallery functionality, lacks features of other similar community sites
Advanced Options
One bad thing about those community sites- they could up and disappear tomorrow, and all your hard work and time invested would be lost. To avoid this, shell out the cash for your own server space and .com domain. A domain is handy because you can point it at a new server, and keep your email address, even if you have to relocate all your files. There are near limitless options for domain registrars and web servers. I’ve had pretty good luck with mine- itsyourdomain.com and phpwebhosting.com. In order to make your own web gallery, you’ll need:
~$10/year : Domain name – yourname.com, or yournameart.com, or whateverworks.com, etc.
~$100/year : webhosting. There are cheaper options – but I like my host since I have access to SQL, PHP, and unmetered bandwidth/server space (within reason of course)
Free : FTP software. Filezilla and FireFTP (for Firefox) are free options. Use FTP software to transfer files from your hard drive to your webserver.
Free : Text editing software, for making your website if you can hack out the HTML from scratch. Some options are Notepad or Textpad for Windows, and OpenOffice for OSX/Windows/Linux.
Free : Blog software. If your server supports PHP and SQL database, then you can install a blog like WordPress. This site runs on Wordpress :3
Free : Gallery software like Coppermine. You’ll need some knowledge of CSS if you want to customize the appearance, but these scripts can add a spiffy web-based interface, automatic thumbnail generation, and other goodies with the click of a button.
Now, actually creating a website from scratch, that’s an entire tutorial on its own… for now, if you’re interested in learning more about HTML and CSS, check htmlgoodies and w3 schools.
Happy arting! 
Topics: Tips and tricks | 13 Comments »
August 18th, 2010 at 9:29 pm
So, what’s wrong with using BMP? Is it the image?
August 10th, 2010 at 5:49 am
add Artician, new website, similar to Deviant Art,but more free
July 5th, 2010 at 2:44 pm
As a suggestion for text editor programs. Notepad++ is very helpful when editing any text files. It has syntax coloring for a large amount of languages and can be useful when looking through a lot of text.