NEWS
Why image quality matters more than ever for digital publishing
October 26, 2023
As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. Failing to leverage the power of visually striking content is a mistake that can be easily avoided.
What is the impact of using poor quality images on the website?
An image is a guiding light to readers, drawing them in to engage with your thoughtfully written content, to explore the website and additional stories and share these across the various platforms.
Images set the tone for the viewer and influence the perception of the page and website content. High quality, standout images increase user engagement and recall, making them an essential element of a publishers content strategy.
Readers look at the image FIRST then the content
It’s often stated that the average reader doesn’t see quality. However, we can all subconsciously tell when there’s something wrong with a photo. Whether it be too dark, lacking contrast, being dull and flat or simply something that jars with our natural perception of the image. Readers pay attention to images.
Using these poor quality photos to support any content hinders the overall user experience and perception of the content and brand. After spending hours crafting a story, a bad quality image won’t effectively engage the readership that the content rightly deserves.
What makes an image ‘poor quality’? Visually of course it’s easy to see; grainy, noisy, blocky areas stand out while darker imagery appears as nondescript blocks of colour. There are also technical attributes to consider. Both file format and file size can have unintended consequences to the visual and operational quality of the content and site as a whole.
A punchy, good quality image propels the story, garnering interest in the content before the viewer even starts to read. It portrays a sense of pride from the publisher in their content and across the titles and can quickly differentiate the content from other providers.
How should digital teams change the way they handle pictures?
Essentially the digital teams can quickly, and seamlessly, improve image quality with little impact to their current workflow processes.
With the latest automated software it takes seconds to transform a dull image to something that jumps off the screen, grabbing readers’ attention and drawing them to the story. Most importantly this can all be done without the need for any specialist imaging skills or training.
It is worth noting that many publishers have established automatic image optimisation solutions for their print publications. However, it is not always the case that these solutions are easily accessible, or even known to be available, to their digital teams. Raising awareness of the technology, its ease of use and its positive impact is a key factor to improving image quality. The digital teams are more focused on content creation and timely posting so the demand for improved image quality is a relatively new requirement.
Ultimately, the teams can embrace the power of image optimisation and continue to do what they do best, creating great content.
What are the most common problems with images on publishers websites?
Clearly, a lot of images used in conjunction with the stories are sourced and uploaded without the time, or perhaps awareness, to make the photos look better.
As mentioned above, there are two categories that image quality can be divided into; visual and technical. Both variants have their own impact to the reader’s experience and, addressed correctly, can vastly improve attraction, readership and conversion.
Visual problems are typically obvious and standout – for the wrong reasons. Images that are dark, fuzzy, murky, without much detail do nothing to promote readership. Additionally, there’s an argument for how advertisers see the product if the images are not powerful.
Technical problems can be more impactful than visual issues. A poor choice of file format can deliver unintended results in terms of reduced image quality even if the original is perfect. Inappropriate file sizes can drastically impact the loading times and scoring algorithms in the major search engines ranking factors.
These challenges can be successfully, and easily, overcome with good image optimisation practices and software.
What is the best way of integrating image optimisation processes into a publisher workflow?
There are a number of simple ways to integrate image optimisation into the current publishing workflow.
The most effective approach is to implement an image optimisation solution directly with the existing Editorial/CMS production system. This is transparent to the overall production process and, most importantly, typically requires little end user training so the benefits are almost immediate. Additionally, implementing the software into the photoshop department to assist with the workload enables the team to focus on the more creative side of their craft, resulting in higher quality images overall.
Another successful approach is to deploy the image optimisation as a stand-alone system, albeit still part of the content publishing workflow, enabling more skilled operators greater flexibility with the controls and results.
Either option provides for an elegant solution to work on digital and print images, each with their different requirements, in a fast and managed process.
What are the hallmarks of a good picture?
A good picture is a Call To Action (CTA) for its accompanying content, encouraging the viewer to explore more.
What makes a truly great image is its composition and content. The best images capture a moment frozen in time, taking the viewer on a journey and enabling a connection on an emotional and visceral level.
However, from a technical perspective, a good image is sharp, with excellent clarity and resolution. It contains a broad tonal range with bright vivid colours, contrast and definition. These variables make the image standout wherever it’s seen, capturing attention and drawing the viewer in to its associated content.
Adding a third dimension to this is metadata and image SEO. An unspoken function in what makes a ‘good picture’ for publishers is its potential to appear higher in search results. Attaching appropriate keywords to the filename significantly improves SEO for the major search engines and adding metadata to the images should be an established procedure.
Can publishers assume that AI-generated images are ready to go?
While the results of AI generated images are certainly stunning, the images are not ‘ready to go’ for any publishing medium. AI images are created with only content in mind and in a controlled environment. There's no appreciation for how, or where, the image will be displayed and the inherent limitations.
Take for example the Midjourney created image at the top of the article. As we’ve come to expect, the original is quite remarkable in its realism. However, without the additional optimisation the image doesn’t fulfill its potential - as can be seen by the image on the right. Enhancing the image specifically for the digital environment introduces much more depth, reveals more details and colours are made more vivid and eye catching.
Which version caught your eye as you scrolled down? Image optimisation for any image whether AI generated or traditionally shot, is easy to implement and the result speaks for itself.
What’s in the pipeline from Pixometry?
Pixometry is continuing to support publishers around the world with their evolving image optimisation challenges. There’s ongoing development of the core engine for image optimisation with a key focus on powerful new tools for digital image use and addressing the inherent quality issues when repurposing social media images.
Adding to the success of automatic background removal for images, Pixometry is working with a number of AI technologies that will dramatically expand the capabilities of image optimisation in the service.
Furthermore, new business models will offer image optimisation services to a broader range of publishers, enabling everyone to maximise their image quality for any type of content.
News Hub Media Launches AI4Images.com for Automated Image Enhancement
October 30, 2019
News Hub Media (NHM), an industry leader in software solutions for design production automation and digital asset management systems, announces the launch of AI4Images.com, the Artificial Intelligence for Image Enhancement platform for publishers, entrepreneurs and enterprises.
Powered by the same automated image enhancement engine used by major US and international publishers including the Popular Science®, USA Today® and Organización Editorial Mexicana (OEM), the AI4Images.com turnkey approach for achieving high-quality image optimization combines cloud-based image processing with predictive enhancement algorithms. The result is consistent and exceptional image quality for mobile, web and print channels. AI4Images.com will function as an integral service for businesses and publishers to boost brand and product awareness and advertising sales.
Studies show the value of high-quality images and graphics drive website views, search results, print media sales and mobile device brand and product awareness. As the volume of user-generated and professional images increases exponentially each day, AI4Images.com is the image enhancement platform built to support both high-volume image processing for publishers and enterprises as well as the entrepreneur who is not a designer or photographer however needs pixel perfect images to promote a brand or product.
“Image quality is a key ingredient in creating unique and engaging mobile, web and print content.”, says Richard Laframboise, president of NHM. “AI4Images.com is the high-performance image enhancement platform that delivers high-quality images, total automation and is truly cost-effective.”
AI4Images.com has been developed based on AI technology, cloud-based storage, image file security and automation features. This platform is built-for-speed, high volume and ease of use. Check out AI4Images.com today and Try It Now !
About News Hub Media
News Hub Media is a leader in design production automation and management systems and digital asset management, with over a decade of experience meeting the needs of publishers, corporations and agencies across the globe.
Community Impact Newspaper Company partners with News Hub Media for their editorial and output production needs
November 9th, 2018
News Hub Media, an industry leader and software developer, announces Community Impact will use NHM Suite for their print and web CMS editorial publishing needs. Community Impact’s multiple locations will take advantage of the centralized web based interface for creating and editing their stories for multi-channel publishing. Using a configurable status driven workflow, stories will be automatically positioned into templates for the page designers to save valuable time and permitting them to enhance the look and feel of the publication in confidence of meeting the needs of their time sensitive publishing. Without missing a step, they will be able to publish their content to their newsletters, websites and print publication in any order desired.
Community Impact’s growth in the micro-niche newspaper publishing industry demonstrates their keen focus on choice of efficient and flexible systems to rely upon. Having recently won the best non-daily newspaper website in the industry from E & P, they will benefit from NHM Suite to further grow upon this impressive achievement.
Community Impact has also expanded on their NHM production tools with the addition of NHM Automator Ad Preprocessing for automated advertisement preflight and fixing. Automator Ad Preprocessing will also parse their ad bookings and transmit them to NHM Suite for auto placement of the ads after they have been properly preflighted and corrected for common prepress issues.
NHM WebImposer, used with our standard Automator, and ColorSaver (NHM ink savings software) have been in use since June, 2016 by Community Impact commencing with the launch of their state of the art print facility in Pflugerville, Texas.
About News Hub Media
NHM creates and delivers affordable, innovative systems to establish and enhance automation and efficiency in publishing and media with operations in the Americas, Europe, Middle East and Asia. From the largest newspaper group in the USA to hyper local, weekly newspapers and from magazine publishers, web printers and digital press operations, NHM provides comprehensive personalized services to their customers across the globe.
NHM notches new sales !
September 6th, 2018
PRESS RELEASE
PLYMOUTH, MI - News Hub Media notches new sales for WebImposer with the Dominion Post in WV, and Linco Printing in NY. Our best in class Page Pairing engine, that incorporates the functionalities that other competing systems require separate software vendors to achieve the same. WebImposer handles preflight checking, prepress fixing, page resizing, web growth, softproofing, approval, page pairing, output management and third party deliveries in one unified system.
It is our goal to always keep up engineering and innovation in all our products, including our legacy software line. We are proud that customers continue to see value in the continuous improvement we invest into our long standing newspaper output management suite of products: WebImposer, Automator and ColorSaver.
About News Hub Media
NHM creates and delivers affordable, innovative systems to establish and enhance automation and efficiency in publishing and media with operations in the Americas, Europe, Middle East and Asia. From the largest newspaper group in the USA to hyper-local, weekly newspapers and from magazine publishers and printers to one of the largest automated digital print production facilities in North America.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
- Contact Richard Laframboise richard@newshubmedia.com
- or Mark Wasserman at mwasserman@newshubmedia.com
NHM releases new products !
Plymouth MI - August 30th, 2018
Release announcement:
News Hub Media is proud to announce the release of over 2 years of research and development for the start of our new line of Cloud based tools and software:
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GoMediaHub: A complete Pre-media services management system. The only system that optimizes connectivity between your customers, your sales, their media files and your production systems.
- www.gomediahub.com
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Unique features:
- Self updating and cloud distributed, desktop clients, mobile clients, and Adobe plugins.
- 100% cloud based
- Highly scalable and disaster proof architecture.
- Custom Job Submission Forms creator for customer specific needs.
- Branded customer portals.
- Activity tracking and time clock systems integration.
- Can automate any tool, and optimize any employee or contractor.
- Realtime metrics dashboard and reports.
- Works with identity management systems such as Okta.
- Works with all digital and print media formats (images, logos, ads, videos, etc.).
- No limitations on number of users or files.
About News Hub Media
NHM creates and delivers affordable, innovative systems to establish and enhance automation and efficiency in publishing and media with operations in the Americas, Europe, Middle East and Asia. From the largest newspaper group in the USA to hyper-local, weekly newspapers and from magazine publishers and printers to one of the largest automated digital print production facilities in North America.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
- Contact Richard Laframboise richard@newshubmedia.com
- or Mark Wasserman at mwasserman@newshubmedia.com
News Hub Media Moves To New North American Headquarters
Novi, Michigan — July 10, 2017 — News Hub Media (NHM), a leading global provider of content publishing software and software-enabled services, is excited to announce that it has signed a lease to move its North American headquarters to new, larger offices on August 1, 2017.
The new location in Plymouth, MI will accommodate the organization’s continued growth and evolution in software development as well as supporting the ongoing global sales and marketing operations.
Richard Laframboise, president of News Hub Media said: “We've been looking at this move for some time now. We need the additional space a larger building provides to support our advancement as a company with both the physical requirements of a growing team along with optimizing operational efficiencies. With this move, the company is appropriately celebrating its 10 year milestone.”
News Hub Media’s new address is: 14492 Sheldon Road, Suite 310, Plymouth, MI 48170
About News Hub Media
News Hub Media’s innovative software enables publishing across the globe. From the largest newspaper group in the USA to hyper-local, weekly newspapers and from magazine publishers and printers to one of the largest automated digital print production facilities in North America, NHM is focused on creating affordable, innovative systems to enhance automation and efficiency in the industry.
NHM, previously PuzzleFlow Solutions US, has been located in Novi, MI since its inception in 2007 and operates offices in Latin America, Europe and Asia and Australasia.
For additional information
News Hub Media
www.newshubmedia.com
+1 248.412.8810
Richard Laframboise, President
richard@newshubmedia.com
Mark Wasserman, Director of Sales
mwasserman@newshubmedia.com
WebPairer Renamed WebImposer
NOVI, Michigan — February 13, 2017 — News Hub Media (NHM) announced today that WebPairer has been renamed WebImposer. The name change is part of the company’s rebranding strategy and better reflects the product’s purpose. WebImposer is an intelligent production management and automation system that enables the dynamic pairing of pages without the need for numerous templates. Additionally, WebImposer provides industry standard preflighting, hard and soft-proofing and automated file distribution.
“WebImposer adopts industry terminology that is easily recognized throughout the global web offset market,” said Richard Laframboise, President, NHM. “The renaming speaks to the product’s functionality and worldwide opportunities.”.
NHM offers a full range of software products: SUITE (multi-channel editorial workflow), WEBIMPOSER (page pairing workflow + more), AUTOMATOR (page and ad preflighting and prefixing), PIXOMETRY (automated image enhancement), COLORSAVER (mobile friendly PDF transformation).
About News Hub Media
NHM creates and delivers affordable, innovative systems to establish and enhance automation and efficiency in publishing and media with operations in the Americas, Europe, Middle East and Asia.
For additional information
News Hub Media
www.newshubmedia.com
+1 248.412.8810
Richard Laframboise, President
richard@newshubmedia.com
Mark Wasserman, Director of Sales
mwasserman@newshubmedia.com