Lighthouse Images Download
Evie Dobbe
Lighthouse collects all the JPEG or BMP images on the page,sets each image's compression level to 85,and then compares the original version with the compressed version.If the potential savings are 4KiB or greater, Lighthouse flags the image as optimizable.
Another approach is to run your images through an optimizerthat you install onto your computer and run as a GUI.For example,with ImageOptim you drag and drop images into its UI,and then it automatically compresses the images without noticeably compromising quality.If you're running a small site and can handle manually optimizing all images,this option is probably good enough.
Consider using amodulethat automatically optimizes and reduces the size of images uploaded through thesite while retaining quality. Also, ensure you are using the Drupal's built-inResponsive ImageStyles(available in Drupal 8 and above) for all images rendered on the site.
From wide landscape images taken during the day to moody night close ups, all of our images are high quality. Our Lighthouse imagery includes both portrait and landscape sizes. If you would like to turn these images into a design, we have a free Design Wizard Tool for this purpose. Design Wizard allows you to add text, shapes, icons and also has a crop tool to resize your images.
I found a very beautiful website last week with stunning aerial images. The website is called www.marinas.com and shows the worlds largest selection of marine aerial photographs. Included on their website are images of Rhuvaal and the Rhinns of Islay Lighthouse. But that's not all. This website also shows images of marinas, ports, bridges, ferry terminals and other interesting related images from many parts of the world. Take for instance the aerial view of the Kennacraig Ferry terminal which is really beautiful and the view of the Skervuile lighthouse in the Sound of Jura. Other interesting locations in the area are Campbeltown harbour and the Colonsay ferry terminal. Further afield, and one of my many favourites, is Rubha Reidh lighthouse in Wester Ross. But back to the Islay Lighthouses.
Islay is represented on this website with images from both Rhuvaal lighthouse (image right) in the north and the Rhinns of Islay lighthouse on Orsay, off the south west coast of Portnahaven. Each location has several different aerial views to choose from. The special thing about these and other images on this site is the fact that you can zoom in and out with sometimes remarkable detail, send an image as an E-Card or purchase an image and have it framed and shipped to your home address. Another great resource with sometimes stunning aerial photography from Islay, Scotland and the rest of the world.
Keep in mind that's just an average number. Hero and banner images which are meant to cover the half or full viewport of a website is most often at least several 100 times as large as that, maybe even a thousand if poorly optimized.
The image size isn't the only time thief when loading images on web. Images are usually fetched by the browser in a separate network request which means there will be an additional server request which incur additional latency, and the request may even have to be queued for a time by the browser. As we will see later in this article, this fact can have a considerable impact.
While running Lighthouse speed tests at my website, I noticed that I got very different scores on different pages. My main page that lists articles and an article page scored significantly different on the performance metric, even though both pages was built almost in the same way with a profile picture, a lot of text and a few images. At the time doing this, the pages looked similar as today, but they did not have a hero image back then.
Well, I never really considered using a PNG image for the hero image, that's not the way to optimize web images. Although, I do always keep a PNG copy around for other usages. For example, when posting articles on DEV forum, they don't support WebP images to be uploaded as hero images.
Choosing between SVG and WebP was more difficult. SVG images can be really small if the image consists of a repeating pattern or an abstract pattern using only a few colors and shapes, just because they consist of vectors that can be scaled to any resolution. On the other hand, they will grow ridiculously big for graphic-heavy images with many colors and shadows, due to the high number of vectors required to represent the image.
On the contrary, WebP can compress images effectively by predicting and reusing pixels, making it superior to PNG and JPEG formats. So, the decision had to be between a minimal abstract hero image in SVG format or a realistic photograph in WebP format.
To get rid of the extra network latency from fetching an image from a server, I embedded the image as a CSS background in a data URI, which should really only be done when dealing with tiny images because of cache and parsing reasons.
Now, compressing images is not at all what I am good at, I'm sure compression fanatics would have hit me with their compression bible if they hadn't already compressed it into a holy script at a few kilobytes. But I did succeed to compress the image a lot, compressing it into a 2560 x 1707 WebP image of 37 kB. Obviously, I lost a massive amount of quality, that has to be mentioned.
A hero image with a 2K resolution is fine for a 4K monitor, but serving a 2K image to a mobile device is not optimal. Small devices should be served small images. That can be achieved using a HTML picture element with a srcset.
The image component Next.js offer does not only serve images in different sizes. They also support specifying a quality of the image so they can compress it for you. In my case, it didn't compress the image enough, I experienced better results compressing it myself using Photopea.
When working with images, you often have to manipulate images in certain ways. To easier do that, I suggest checking out my list of free image tools. Those tools can be used to resize and reformat images and to generate images and backgrounds. It also presents websites which offers royalty free images.
We also took a look at when to use SVG images and when to use WebP images. I provided you with a list of free image tools which as an example can be used to reformat images in different ways, and explained the importance of keeping the image size low when using images on a website.
If I make a large print or postcards of a privately owned lighthouse and offer them for sale or other commercial use, should I get a property release for it? This particular lighthouse is in a bay off the Maine coast. It used to be government owned when it was in use, but is now privately owned. The only access to it is by boat, however, it is clearly visible to the public from many vantage points in and around Acadia National Park. The photograph was taken from the park during a period of high winds and rough seas (Not that that's relevant, but just to describe why I think the photo is somewhat special).
My inclination is to not bother with the release, since the lighthouse is easily seen by the public, and it was photographed from a public location. Also, considering it's location, it has no doubt been photographed tens of thousands of times before. However, since I plan to try selling this photograph in the general area around Acadia National Park, it is quite possible the owner will see it, and whether he has any legal recourse or not, may kick up a stink about it.
People may take photographs from public places because there is no expectation of privacy for something that is clearly visible to the public. However, that does not confer license to use such images commercially.
Owership of an item doesn't necessarily include ownership of the copyright. You might want to look up the Architectural Works Copyright Protection Act of 1990 (it's incorporated in the copyright laws that can be found on the Library of Congress site). The "public place " limitation permits the unauthorized publication of pictures or other pictorial representations of buildings located in or visible from a public place. However, for a variety of other reasons, I doubt there are any copyright concerns on an old lighthouse designed and built for a government agency well in the past anyways.
As noted, "editorial" or "artistic" uses are protected expressions. So unless your sale or use of the images somehow infringes on any of the owner's rights, like revealing private information, defaming them, implying they endorse some kind of business, services, etc., it's just not an issue.
Wow, this stirred up many more comments and differences of opinion than I had anticipated. In response to Alec Myers points, the owner of the lighthouse is a well known New York interior designer, and presumably has "deep pockets." However, I do not know if he has a "litigous and combative frame of mind" or not. In any event, I doubt that copyright is any issue because the lighthouse was built and owned by the US Government before this person was born. In addition, the photos I've taken cannot be construed to defame the owner or endorse any other commercial business. It does sound, however, like a release would be needed if I were approached by, say, some seafood business to use the photo in one of their sales ads.
They confirm what John said, about "Buildings are objects, not people. Objects don't have privacy rights." However, they go on to say that the owners, who may be identified with the property, may view any use of the images as some form of violation of their privacy, and may be inclined to sue, whether they have a case or not. They acknowledge this is a gray area, but caution anyone who is unsure of exactly where they stand on the issue to get a release.
A huge thank you goes out to the National Archives for making their main collection of lighthouse photos available online! Over 1100 folders of lighthouse images taken between 1855 and 1933 can now be viewed and downloaded from the National Archives digital catalog. A project started several years ago appears to be complete.
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