Recommended Image Format for Correspondence

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Best-practice recommendations

• Reports and Letters (Scalable Images)
• Email Banners
• Logos and background images

Best-practice recommendations

• For photographs, use JPEG images and dial up the compression as high as possible without losing quality.
• If your image is mainly solid colours and has text or crests on it, consider using PNG, as it more effectively compresses large areas of solid colour.
• For images that will be scaled when displayed (ie: the size won't be fixed, but will vary depending on the viewing device and screen size), use SVG.
• Test your image across multiple browser sizes to ensure your key content remains visible and legible.

Reports and Letters (Scalable Images)

• Images should ideally be provided as vectors in SVG format  - but PNG is also a viable alternative.  While acceptable, JPG should be considered a last resort.
  • Note: opening a .jpg or .png then saving as .svg format will not create images that are scalable or of high quality.
• Should the school not have access to a programme that will save in a vector format (i.e. Illustrator, Photoshop, Affinity Designer, InDesign etc.), there is open source and free software, for example http://inkscape.org/
• Images should be trimmed to minimise the amount of space surrounding the image.
• Any included text must be converted to a path before saving, not left as a font.

Email Banners

Logos for emails can't be hosted on the school's SEQTA server, as files on the SEQTA server are only available over a secure connection. This means parents/student/staff could not then view them outside of SEQTA, as would be the expectation with emails. In addition, the data size of the image would be counted when sending emails, so you might exceed your ISP's allocation, which could block or slow your connection.

In most cases, if the following information is passed to the School's IT staff or web page administrator they should be able to meet these requirements relatively easily. Once this is done, send the link/URL in a reply to the email customisation request so that the image can be added to the email template.

• Create a directory on your school's web server (or other web host that is controlled by the school) to host your images.
• This directory should be externally accessible, but not able to be seen if navigating your web site.
• Suitable files types are PNG (recommended) or JPG.
• Banners are set to 600 pixels wide.
• It's recommended that transparency is turned on (PNG). This will also allow the background colour to appear.

Logos and background images

• Logos and background images for Teach, Learn, Engage and Tutor can be added using Administration workspace > Application settings > Branding settings.
• Suitable background file types are PNG (recommended) or JPG. Scale your image to 1920x1080: this will look good across the broadest range of devices. Note that images smaller than 1024x768 will be blurred when displayed; you can use this to good effect if your background is abstract.
• It's recommended that transparency is turned on (PNG). This will also allow the background colour to appear.
• The school logo (if PNG or JPG) is best set to 64px tall and 64px wide for a crisp image. The logo is best set to a square aspect ratio. SVG logs will fill the logo space automatically.
• Images should be cropped to provide the amount of space required around the image.