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External Image Editors

Edit and resize your images before uploading to Cascade.

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 editing your photos, IT offers Photoshop Elements for Windows at a significantly reduced price — about $40 for college-owned computers (no software warranty 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 without those applications. Designed exclusively for William & Mary Cascade editors, the image cropper offers free online image cropping with preloaded dimensions specific to image assets in Cascade. Just upload, select your image size, crop and download.

Squoosh - Free & Online

Use of large images on your pages can increase the time and data it takes a visitor to load your page, and reduces their overall experience. Squoosh is a tool that helps you compress a large image's file size to optimize it for use on the web. Whether you first crop your image using the Cascade Image Cropper or other tool, when the output file size exceeds 200 KB, you can quickly compress it without compromising image quality using Squoosh.

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 via the slider, you can view the file size 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.