Images too big for webpage: Adjust width/height attributes or resize?

I've been given around 800 digital photo images that I am to display across many webpages. I can't recall the enormous sizes of these photos, but I know that if you view just 1 in a browser that it takes up nearly the entire screen.

Using the height and width attributes of the <img> tag I was able to adjust the size of the photos as they display in the browser. I then put 20 photos on one page.

When I pulled up the web page it took several long minutes to load. I now suspect that altering how an image looks on a page via the height/width attributes does nothing to decrease the load time of the image.

I have the following questions:

1. If I have a big-ass image on a server that I want to display on a web page and I size-down the height/width attributes of the <img> tag ... I am still downloading that entire big-ass image to the browser, right? All I've done is modify how that big-ass image will appear on the page, correct?

2. If I am correct in my assumption in question #1, then the only way to reduce the load time of the big-ass photos would be to physically create smaller versions (ie; thumbnails) of each image, right?

3. Does there exist a software application (Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, etc) that can reduce all images in a given folder without me having to resize each image manually? I would be expecting to specify some global parameters (ie; reduce each image 80%) and then unleash the software to apply this to each image in the folder.


I would really appreciate any feedback on this issue.

Thank you.

 

Best practice is to resize the picture using a photo editor and also include the height and width within the HTML of the img tag.

1) yes
2) yes
3) yes

 

Thanks for your help.

I'll hunt through Photoshop tonight to find the option(s) that I need to do batch resizing.

Thanks again.

 

- In Photoshop Elements it's under the File tab, look for the "Batch Processing" option.
- Photoshop it's under the same tab, look for "Automate -> Batch".

 

resize is for sure the way to go for many reasons.

any number of programs can do that for you as a batch.

another way to do it in PS(CS2),

FILE--->SCRIPTS--->IMAGE PROCESSOR


and you can convert/resize/specify compression, etc.

 

When your resizing the image, you can also try saving it for the web. It saves it as a smaller file type, that way its not as long of a download.