I’ve optimized all my website graphics to make them small and fast loading - usually 72dpi or 75 dpi.
The new iPad announced yesterday has an HD “retina” display that Apple claims is 294ppi.
Do I need to resize all my graphics so they don’t look crappy on the new iPad?
If it is best to resize them, my next concern is that they will be more likely to be taken off my site and used without permission.
Can I do anything about that?
There are lots of experiments going on at the moment to work out how best to serve images optimized for various devices, such as this:
http://filamentgroup.com/lab/responsive_images_experimenting_with_context_aware_image_sizing/
No, you can’t. Once someone has viewed your image, they have it in their grasp (because they have to download it to view it). All you can do is watermark it … though programs like Photoshop make it pretty easy to remove that.
It’s better to expend effort on facets of site development that will improve the user experience for the vast majority, rather than rushing out to create bells and whistles for a very small niche.
I’m not just thinking about iPad - I’m thinking about the future for all devices.
Higher resolution is the future. And someday it will be on the majority of devices. The new iPad is just the first.
One really basic solution is to offer all users a low resolution image that links to a higher-resolution version for those who want it. (Probably doesn’t cut it in the high tech arena, but pretty practical, IMHO.)
The thing about the retina display on the iPad is that they are dynamically sizing all content to fit it – so even with the larger pixel per inch existing content is simply scaled to fit. The true ‘advantage’ of the higher dpi is just sharper text (letting the apple font renderer FINALLY not look like someone smeared vaseline on the screen) and less jaggies when rotating/scaling images. For developers and end users no changes to your content should be needed.
It would be a total waste of everyone’s time if it were.
If it really bothers you, use SVG or some other vector image format when possible. That way it really doesn’t matter what the resolution of the target device is, your image will remain crisp.
Yeah. Like ralph.m said, you can’t stop people from taking your images because it’ll be in their cache or computer anyways.
One way that I found was a good deterrent was to switch the image to a different image on hover, so that if they try to right click, it’ll be a bad image. Unfortunately, it was somewhat easy to circumvent with a screenshot.
The best way is to watermark.
~TehYoyo