I'm having a hard time deciding on what size I should use for my photos on my website. If you have a minute would you take a peek and give me some feedback?

It's www.realcakecompany.com  If you look under Wedding Cake Gallery 1 you'll see that I have two different sizes for my photographs on that page. Do you like the photos smaller or larger?

It sort of depends upon what size zoom level you use on your computer. As an oldy my computer is set to 125% but most people use 100%.

I want each image to fill the page, how do they appear on your screen?

thanks in advance.........

I like the larger size. Those are some gorgeous cakes!

I couldn't tell which one was the big one or the smaller one....So I started clicking and they all came up the same size on my computer.    May I ask why they are all black & white?

Thank-you Shanter. ddaige the black and white is my style. Your right, when you click on photographs they come up the same size (on a separate page). But if youdon't click on them and just scroll through my photos they are two different sizes (right now) in my Wedding Gallery 1 page..........that's why I'm asking for feedback.

AI also like the larger sizes, you can probably have at least two columns to maximize gallery space.

B&W photography has its place but IMO the cake photos in your gallery lose something without color. Perhaps you can compromise by using color photos but toning down the saturation.

Thanks for the help Jason! I do get your point about the black & white photos........unforunately I've taken all my own photographs over the years and most of them look horrible in color. Putting them into black an white lets me fix the poor lighting, lacking contrasts and strange room settings, etc...

BUT...........if you have a moment (please)............I'd definately love your further opinion. http://www.flickr.com/photos/66588888@N02/sets/72157627795287898/

Do you think they look alright? I feel like they look horrible.

AThe more recent high-res pictures on Flickr look great as-is, you have nothing to worry about. For future photos you should stage with a backdrop but many of the existing photos are definitely usable in color.

really?............hum,............ I might need to hear more peoples feedback on that. I really feel they are inferior.

Until I started my own business last year I didn't have the opportunity to set up back drops behind cakes. Mostly, I was lucky to take any photo's of my work.

I agree with Jason.  The black and white really hides the quality of work.  The color pictures look great!!

Your color pictures are fine. A few might improve with a little tweaking of color balance or saturation, such as this (it is not perfect; I did it very fast):

instead of this:

Shanter's edit of your cake looks great. I love to see cakes in all their color and glory but in the end it's up to you. The large pictures look best. Your cakes are so lovely!

Definitely with colour!

Stitches:

Color photos are essential.  Use Picasa to do your edits.  Heck, even if you stylize them like you would in Instagram (which Picasa has all that in it now) would be better then B&W.  Your work is way too beautiful to not have in color. And your target audience is Millenials who are already into Instagram and that style of photo, so even if you changed each photo to vignete or amaro, you are speaking their language, making your photos look "cool" and they will be in color.

Studies have shown that webpages with content that fit all on a user's screen with minimal scrolling or clicking do the best.  Having all those images listed one after another like that is a killer!  Your average customer is going to do what I just did - look at maybe 5 the click off your page.

I recommend using a gallery creator like I have on my page, called Simple Viewer http://www.simpleviewer.net/products/.  It's free, super easy to use and add to a webpage.  The only downside is it's Flash so although the thumbnail photos show on iphone/ipad, you can't enlarge the image.  But I love it - it was by far the easiest way for me to quickly add photos to my webpage without having to re-code or mess with anything.

OMG shanter! That looks fabulous!! Good god, I've tried to fix them before and got the junk you see I posted at flickr. Did you play with anything other then color and balance on that photo?

Fromscratch, I still haven't figured out how to use the gallery options I have, I'm totally new to Wordpress. Maybe I should try harder.......

O.k. so this WAS my thought.......everyone has full color photos (and they are marvelous) I thought I was being different (good/artsy) doing black & white. Sheesh everyone everywhere has such nice photos, I thought I couldn't compete. O.k. I'll give it a try working on them. I'll come back and ask for more opinions when I add some color photos.

THANK-YOU everyone, your help is much appreciated!

AOh ABSOLUTELY colour photos!!!!! The black & white pics do *nothing* for your cakes - which are really lovely!

Suzanne x

APhotoshop Elements has an "auto fix" tool that will get you most of the way there. Tweaking the Levels feature to match your photo's black point, white point, and midtone with the displayed histogram should be enough to do the rest.

More on Levels: http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/levels.htm

The colour photos are much nicer.   The black & white is very drab and the cakes don't look as beautiful.

Your cakes are gorgeous.  Go colour.  The colour photos aren't bad at all.

I vote for larger photos and color. Your flickr pics are beautiful!

I've used PicMonkey to edit photos and I love it.

AStiches, if you're on Wordpress then I totally recommend the plugin NextGEN. I use it on my site and you can configure the thumbnail sizes and get the most out of the space on your site. Plus you can do automatic watermarks and add titles/descriptions/tags/alt descriptions and its very easy to use.

Stitches,

I used Photoshop and, as Jason said, it is the same in Photoshop Elements. When I hit Ctrl+L (for levels), the bell curve pops up and you can "sharpen" by adjusting light, dark, and midtones. I've had Photoshop for quite a while, so that's what I know.

As others have mentioned, there are other programs (free ones) that will do similar things.

Your work is beautiful. You should use color pictures and a gallery. Think towards the future and adding more pictures, a gallery would be better.
 

Wow, thanks for the feed back, it really does help to know other peoples opinions. I guess I'm going to be spending alot more time photo editing (man this can be time consuming, my hubby already thinks I live on the computer).