web-friendly photo with text

[ZeBozette]

I know very little about photo manipulation but am having to learn so we can have decent photos on our website. So far I've optimized the photos by setting them to resolution of 72 px, cropped them and used 'save for web' saving them as a jpg with compression set to 60.
My question... we want to add a line of text to each photo to identify the product. Is there a way to keep the text crisp without having to save with the compression set higher?
I'd also be interested to know your thoughts on 'progressive' jpgs. I've read conflicting articles on that.
Thanks in advance

 

[spamjim]

Unless you need some specific font to appear in the photo, I'd imagine it would be much easier (and much more search engine-friendly) if you labeled the photos with HTML... either placing the text directly below the image or layered on top of the image.

If you feel you must put text in the image file itself, look at weighted optimization...

http://livedocs.adobe.com/en_US/Pho...t=WS078C8C90-AEAB-423b-B02E-5ABB3B8C7E25.html

 

[audiopro]

It depends what you mean by web friendly. If you are talking search engines then use actual text rather than text in images.

If they are specific products, consider placing them as background images in divs and then you can put the actual text in the div along with other information ie. prices etc.

Keith

http://www.studiosoft.co.uk

 

[ZeBozette]

Thank you both. I don't need a specific font and am not worried about search engines so will try the layering that spamjim mentioned and the divs that Keith mentioned. That should work better than embedding text in a photo.
Appreciate the help.
Boze