posted on September 15, 2003 04:15:50 PM new
What is the extention to use for web-based pictures for fast uploading?
(a little background) My business card logo is in a .jpg file format and slows down my download time by 35 seconds - even after I shrink it to a lower pixel setting). My Picture it program will also let me save it as a tiff, gif, picture it format (whatever that is), PC paintbrush, and Targa. Are any of these better (faster)?
posted on September 16, 2003 04:55:12 PM new
ihula,
More than you ever wanted to know about web picture formats!
Your questions seem to be the ones that get me motivated to answer. I guess because you often have web page questions and I somethings think I live my life in a virtual web page. The short answer to your question about the best choice for web picture format is "it depends." OK I am not trying to dodge it really does. (I have noticed some people's eyes glazing over when I start to talk about graphics but I was a teacher for 20 years and can't help myself.)
JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group which is the clue to what kinds of images it does best. It can render photographs or art work with continuous tone very well and reduce the size dramatically. What it does not do as well are flat areas of color like a logo or type on a color background. If your logo has mostly flat areas or color it will look better as a GIF. The GIF format is indexed, that is it uses a set number of colors, from 2 to 256 depending on how many you need to render your subject. The smaller the number of colors (all else being equal) the smaller the file. Your picture program should give you a choice of the number of colors you use. Experiment with different setting till you find the number that give you acceptable quality with the smallest size.
Good luck with your project -----o----o----o----o----o----o----o----o
“The illiterate of the future will be the person ignorant of the use of the camera as well as of the pen.”
Maholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion, 1947
posted on September 16, 2003 05:11:30 PM new
Thanks for the response - funny, I was just working on it as we speak. I found out my first problem. Loading a large picture only to think by shrinking it in Front Page does not reduce the amount of time it takes to load - it only reduces the size of the image. So, I shrunk them all down to the desired size in Picture it first, and then uploaded them - that pretty much did the trick. Beyond that I couldn't see a marked difference between the formats. I loaded them all with the new size and they all seemed ok (well, at least between jpeg and gif.)
posted on September 16, 2003 06:21:20 PM new
ihula,
Not only do I tell you more than you want to know but it turns out I am answering the wrong question. Yes always size the image to the size you are using on the page. Glad you solved your problem.
-----o----o----o----o----o----o----o----o
“The illiterate of the future will be the person ignorant of the use of the camera as well as of the pen.”
Maholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion, 1947
posted on September 16, 2003 06:33:45 PM new
And, when you set your image size, don't forget the DPI or PPI, (dots per inch pixels per inch) Set it first- depending on your camera it could be 150 PPI, 300 ppi or more, which is important for printing. But monitors only show 72 ppi. So set the ppi to 72 (you'll see the size change- set the size to what you want).
For jpgs that's about all you can do to optimize for speed.
Gifs won't make much difference if you use the full range of colors. But some gifs can be quite effective with a smaller palette, and that will minimize the amount of information that has to go to the viewer's browser.
And, you can have gifs and jpegs on the same page, by the way!
(edited to say- Oh, wait a minute- You knew that!)
"and all manner of things shall be well"
[ edited by Dragonmom on Sep 16, 2003 06:38 PM ]
