Choose Image Types and Sizes

Rationale

The type of file and size that your image is impacts how it appears in the final output of your edition. This documentation explains LEMDOʼs practices for encoding images to ensure high-quality image appearance in both digital and print editions.

Practice: Choose Image Type

LEMDO currently supports image files saveD in either .jpg or .png format. Which format you save your image as will depend on the type of image that you are adding to your file.
Save images as .jpg files if:
Your image is a facsimile of a source text.
Your image is a photograph, painting, or drawing.
Save images as .png files if:
Your image is a screenshot.
Your image is a digital illustration (e.g., a chart or a graph).
Your image requires transparency (e.g., a logo with no background).
The .jpg format uses a lossy compression algorithm. This means that it uses less data space but that some detail will be lost in compression. The algorithm will extrapolate to fill in the missing data in the output of the image.
See JPEG vs. PNG: Which One Should You Use? for more information on recommended file types and sizes. You can also refer to How to Choose the Best Image File Format for Your Website.

Practice: Choose and Change Image Size

LEMDO recommends saving images at the highest resolution possible in order to preserve high quality across images. The resolution is determined in pixels: the greater the pixel dimensions your image has, the larger the imageʼs size and the higher its resolution.
When choosing the size of images, we care primarily about image width. Images in LEMDO sit in a column that has a set width of approximately 500px. Ideally, you will save your images at a resolution of at least twice that width (1200px1 or larger if possible). LEMDO has processing to fit your image into the set column width. Do not try to scale images up in size, keep the highest resolution available.
The ideal size for images going into the print publication of your edition is 3000px.
Facsimiles of source texts are a special case and should be saved at a very high resolution when possible; see Special Case: Facsimile Images.
If you need to scale an image down in size (i.e., if your image is significantly larger than 3000px), you will require an image editor. There are some freely available online such as:
There is also a plethora of heavy-duty applications such as Adobe Photoshop, Pixelmator Pro, and Affinity Photo that you can use if you wish to learn more in this field.
Regardless of which software you use, the basic steps to scale an image are the same:
Open the image.
Determine the imageʼs current size. You can also do this by right clicking the image file in your computerʼs file manager and selecting Properties.
Maintain the aspect ratio.
If the image is too big, enter the desired width. Because you have selected to maintain the aspect ratio, the height will be calculated by your software. Remember that the desired width you enter is to determine the imageʼs resolution, not how large it appears in the final HTML or print output of your edition.
If the image is too small, do not try to scale the image.
If you are also changing the format of the image from .png to .jpg, export the image as a .jpg file. If exporting, your image-editing software will offer you a compression slider. Select to keep the quality at 100%.
Check the imageʼs new size.

Special Case: Facsimile Images

Facsimile images should be high resolution, in .jpg format, and at least 2000px in size. We will link to full-size facsimile images from thumbnails in an editionʼs semi-diplomatic transcription.

Examples

The image below is a .jpg file of 680px by 475px.

                           A painting of two bearded white men. The one on the left wears a red doublet and robe, a ruff, and a golden chain of office. He holds a pair of gloves. The one on the right wears a red doublet, green robes, and a ruff. He holds a red and gold sword. Both are wearing hats.
The image below is a .png file of 251px by 40px.

                           University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre Logo.

Notes

1. px is the abbreviation for pixels.

Prosopography

Janelle Jenstad

Janelle Jenstad is a Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director of The Map of Early Modern London, and Director of Linked Early Modern Drama Online. With Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Mark Kaethler, she co-edited Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media: Old Words, New Tools (Routledge). She has edited John Stow’s A Survey of London (1598 text) for MoEML and is currently editing The Merchant of Venice (with Stephen Wittek) and Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody for DRE. Her articles have appeared in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Elizabethan Theatre, Early Modern Literary Studies, Shakespeare Bulletin, Renaissance and Reformation, and The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. She contributed chapters to Approaches to Teaching Othello (MLA); Teaching Early Modern Literature from the Archives (MLA); Institutional Culture in Early Modern England (Brill); Shakespeare, Language, and the Stage (Arden); Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate); New Directions in the Geohumanities (Routledge); Early Modern Studies and the Digital Turn (Iter); Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers (Indiana); Making Things and Drawing Boundaries (Minnesota); Rethinking Shakespeare Source Study: Audiences, Authors, and Digital Technologies (Routledge); and Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London (Routledge). For more details, see janellejenstad.com.

Joey Takeda

Joey Takeda is LEMDO’s Consulting Programmer and Designer, a role he assumed in 2020 after three years as the Lead Developer on LEMDO.

Mahayla Galliford

Research assistant, remediator, encoder, 2021–present. Mahayla Galliford is a fourth-year student in the English Honours and Humanities Scholars programs at the University of Victoria. She researches early modern drama and her Jamie Cassels Undergraduate Research Award project focused on approaches to encoding early modern stage directions.

Martin Holmes

Martin Holmes has worked as a developer in the UVicʼs Humanities Computing and Media Centre for over two decades, and has been involved with dozens of Digital Humanities projects. He has served on the TEI Technical Council and as Managing Editor of the Journal of the TEI. He took over from Joey Takeda as lead developer on LEMDO in 2020. He is a collaborator on the SSHRC Partnership Grant led by Janelle Jenstad.

Navarra Houldin

Project manager 2022–present. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA in History and Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. During their degree, they worked as a teaching assistant with the University of Victoriaʼs Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America.

Nicole Vatcher

Technical Documentation Writer, 2020–2022. Nicole Vatcher completed her BA (Hons.) in English at the University of Victoria in 2021. Her primary research focus was womenʼs writing in the modernist period.

Tracey El Hajj

Junior Programmer 2019–2020. Research Associate 2020–2021. Tracey received her PhD from the Department of English at the University of Victoria in the field of Science and Technology Studies. Her research focuses on the algorhythmics of networked communications. She was a 2019–2020 President’s Fellow in Research-Enriched Teaching at UVic, where she taught an advanced course on Artificial Intelligence and Everyday Life. Tracey was also a member of the Map of Early Modern London team, between 2018 and 2021. Between 2020 and 2021, she was a fellow in residence at the Praxis Studio for Comparative Media Studies, where she investigated the relationships between artificial intelligence, creativity, health, and justice. As of July 2021, Tracey has moved into the alt-ac world for a term position, while also teaching in the English Department at the University of Victoria.

Orgography

LEMDO Team (LEMD1)

The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors.

Metadata