External Image Editors

Edit and resize your images before uploading to Cascade.

Important Note

Do not upload your high-resolution images to Cascade. Check out one of the following recommended image editors for initial edits. To help keep our shared database “sprite” and maintain up to 20 versions of every file in the version history, we still discourage uploading very large files of any type.

Only use text-free graphics and photos to communicate in images unless it is a logo or similar brand mark that is not trying to convey content. This ensures that the text can be resized, read by screen readers, and adapted to different user needs. For more on our specific guidelines, review the Web Accessibility help page.

Adobe Photoshop Elements - Low-Cost Download

Adobe's Photoshop is top-of-the-line software. Photoshop Elements is their scaled-down version and can easily handle the needs of most Cascade users. In fact, for many, it's more than you'll need. But if you'd prefer to purchase software for photo editing, IT offers Photoshop Elements for Windows at a significantly reduced price—about $40 for college-owned computers (no software warranty is implied).

Cascade Image Cropper - Free & Online

While a full-featured image editor such as Photoshop or Photoshop Elements is the preferred method for the highest-quality images, the Cascade Image Cropper is available for editors who do not have those applications. Designed exclusively for William & Mary Cascade editors, the image cropper provides free online cropping with preloaded dimensions tailored to Cascade image assets. Just upload, select your image size, crop and download.

Squoosh - Free & Online

Using large images on your pages can increase the time and data required for a visitor to load your page and reduce their overall experience. Squoosh is a tool that helps you compress a large image file to optimize it for web use. Whether you first crop your image with the Cascade Image Cropper or another tool, if the output file size exceeds 200 KB, you can quickly compress it without compromising image quality using Squoosh.

Tip: If the content of your page will include multiple images, you can optimize your page further by compressing all of the images that exceed 50 KB.

1. Go to Squoosh, select 'Open Image' to choose your file, or paste the image directly.
2. Once in the editor view, the left side (pink arrow) displays the original image. You will see options to edit the image on the right side (blue arrow).
3. On the right side, open the Compress tool and select MozJPEG or WebP.
4. Locate the click-and-drag slider under Quality. As you reduce the quality using the slider, the file size is displayed at the bottom of the tool (circled in the image below). Observe how your image quality changes as you reduce the file size, and select a level that maintains visual quality while reducing file size. The majority of images should not exceed 150 KB.
   
5. Download the revised image.
6. Please ensure your new image is a .jpg or .webp file type and fill in the file name using lowercase and no spaces.
7. Once you save your changes, your image is ready for use in Cascade.