Image Policies

• Upload Size
• Duplication
• Purpose of Images
• Screenshots

The library website is a professional site at an academic institution.  It is not an informal space in which to post images or other media with little or no educational value.  Because of this, we provide the following guidelines concerning the use of images on the website.

Upload Size

Uploaded Images must be under 200K in size.  To determine an image’s size before upload, you may see details in the “details tab” of windows explorer by clicking on an image, by hovering over the file in explorer, by right-clicking the image and selecting properties (details on both the general and summaries tabs), and by various other means. Please note that this size limit is contextual.  When considering an image for inclusion in the site or a page you must take into account the final rendered size and then re-scale the image to reasonably close dimensions outside of the CMS.  This means that if you intend to include a photograph on a page and know that the final size should render as 200px by 200px, you should size it in Fireworks before upload.  Uploading a 2500px by 2500px image for use in a 64px by 64px space, even if under the 300K limit is considered abuse.

Question: Why should I have to do this if the system can auto-size images for me in the browser window?

1. All content is stored within the database, we do not want it to grow unnecessarily large.
2. Just because it is rendered a smaller size, doesn’t mean it is a small size.  By displaying a smaller version of a large image you are “waking up” a large object, telling the program to resize it, and then sending it to the user’s browser.  Doing this for very large images can get “expensive.” i.e. it can take a lot of memory to do, slowing down the site.

Duplication

Do your absolute best to NOT upload duplicate images.  If you find a need for an image in a page, search the website for currently available images.  If one exists already, use it.  If there is some question to the lifecycle, or longevity of the image on the site, speak to the owner/creator of the image.  PLEASE SHARE!  Move commonly used images to a centralized repository (/assets/images at the root of the site is a good place to start).  There is no logical reason why we should have 30 different screenshots of the library catalog homepage.

Purpose of Images

All images added to the system MUST BE CONTENT RELATED.  You should be able to defend your decision to add an image if questions arise.  Be aware that the following kinds of images are considered abusive and may be removed at the discretion of the MMDL.  Repeated violation will result in loss of image and file uploading privileges.

The following image types are prohibited

1. Clip Art of any kind
2. Images intended for use as bullets
3. Images intended for use as decorative borders
4. Images used for background effects
5. Icons or other decorative images accompanying text or links that are not automatically generated by the system.
6. Single pixel transparent gifs, or other similar techniques used to effect textual placement on a rendered page
7. Images intended for private use (intentionally leaving images in a draft state)
8. Images intended for use in rollover menus (control of menus is out of your hands and all javascript is stripped, so just don’t try it)
9. Animated gifs, Inline Flash, Quicktime, or other media-based images not approved by the MMDL.

Screenshots

Screenshots, and other images used for demonstrative purposes, that highlight, or otherwise bring attention to a specific feature of the image are required to meet the following criteria.

1. The image must be of high quality, meaning it must be produced with some degree of professionalism.  Adding/Drawing Lines, Circles, Boxes, or other shapes to highlight specific features should, in most cases, not be done with a freehand tool, but with an appropriate vector tool.
2. Color schemes should, when possible, not conflict with existing styles.
3. When text is present in an image that is intended to be read by the viewer, or you feel the need to add text using an external image editor, you must take special measures to ensure that the text is readable by all audiences (such as the blind). 
1. In most cases, text should not be added to the image itself unless you also add that text to the description of the image object in Plone, and are willing/able to hand code a title attribute to the image tag if including the image in a Kupu editor window.
2. Where possible, write your content to reflect the included text instead.
3. If an image is included in a page and adding some explanation of the image’s text in the page’s body is not possible/practical (rarely will this occur), add an internal link to the image object itself to your included/scaled image and provide a fuller description there.