Here's a special tutorial from our photography pros in the Communications Department. They get a lot of questions about how to edit photos to specific sizes, and this skill is useful for social media and the website managers. Every time you post to your website newsfeed or the rotating photo gallery, you'll need to make your images a very specific way. Schoolmessenger's Design Mode generally won't stop you from uploading incorrect file sizes, but doing so will result in unattractive results on your homepage, as well as excessive loading times for those on mobile devices.

For beginner's, they recommend a simple to use (and free!) image editing application you can use in your web browser at befunky.com. (BeFunky has some paid accounts and the ability to login, but none of this is necessary for editing a basic photo ready to use on your website for articles or rotating photo gallery.) Check out the tutorial video below to see first-hand how you can get your photos trimmed and saved to your computer.

BCS staff and students have access to Adobe Express, which makes it easy to create collages and format photos for different social media platforms. Just visit https://www.adobe.com/express/, click "sign in," then click "Log in with school account." Enter your "UID@k12bcs.net" Microsoft/Zscaler account username and then your computer (my.NCEdCloud.org) password. You will be redirected and logged into the Adobe Express site. In edition to photos, Express lets users easily create short videos and graphic designs using their own clips and photos or a stock catalogue.

For more advanced users willing to spend a few dollars, the Adobe Creative Cloud package has an educator discount. This means you can get access to the professional-grade Photoshop and Lightroom applications for a discounted monthly rate. If you do a LOT of photo editing, need to work with RAW images, and export at higher resolutions, this may be the solution for you. There is a steeper learning curve here, but for those who are motivated, Adobe has plenty of free videos to learn the ropes.

Photos Specifications for Websites
School News Featured Image
Dimensions: 1000 wide x 667 high (pixels)
Target File Size: 125-200k

Rotating Photos on the Homepage
Dimensions: 1000 wide x 464 high (pixels)
Target File Size: 150k

* Only use exact dimensions for these galleries, or you'll see the formatting of your homepage disrupted and the boxes won't line up anymore.

Editing Photos with BeFunky.com