Malte — Sat, 30 Oct 1999 17:52:00 +0000

A gif image should never have more than 128 colors. I usually cut em down to 4 to 32. You almost never see a difference, but if you do its time for a Jpeg. If the image is bigger than 300x300 pixels and it contains no big one color areas you should always use Jpegs.

By the way: If you are using Photoshop, never use the "save a Gif" function but always the export tool. The files get half as big.

Later,

Malte

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Malte Ubl - [red]Germany[/red] - http://goKewl.com/
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JP Stones — Thu, 28 Oct 1999 04:31:00 +0000

I followed it fine and grabed a few tips
Thanks,
JP

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doren — Wed, 27 Oct 1999 18:41:00 +0000

Opps, maybe I explained this wrong. I was thinking your logos were big and then you reduced the size.

Still the basic in the above post apply. If you have gradiations, and convert to a gif the computer has to interpolate 16,000+ colors to 256.

A .jpg image uncompressed will look virtually perfect. Compression reduces the number of colors in a different way. So the degree of compression will effect the final quality also. Your software may be automatically compressign the final image. Preferences?

The answer is to use only colors from the 256 color palette with no gradiations. If the image is for the web and the client is using a machine set at 8bit you will need to use a Web safe clut which is actually 216? colors because Mac 256 and PC 256 are slighly different and they only share 216 colors. Web cluts can be downloaded free from several website. However 90% of people use monitors with 16,000+ colors now.

Need more clarification?

doren — Wed, 27 Oct 1999 18:30:00 +0000

First, what platform Dude?

Ok this could be a long one.

When you reduce the size of an image your computer has to figure out how to turn x pixels into x pixels.

In other words if you reduce the size to 50% your computer takes 4 pixels and interpolates it into one.

The computer has to make some choices. What if 3 of those pixels are black and the remaining pixel is white?
Under these circumstances you'll get a blurred edge (assuming it was an edge).

NOW, if you make the reduction something other than a multiple of 2 (50% = 1/2 ,25% =1/4) weird things happen.
If you go with a 66% reduction your computer has to figure out how to turn 3 pixels into 1. Think about it.
4:1 the four pixels are a square 3:1 the pixels are some kind of 'L' shape. NOW, if you do an even less even reduction, say 55% your computer has to figure out how to change ? pixels into 1 pixel.

OK the upshot of this is you must PLAN ahead. Use image sizes that can be reduced by an even multiple of 2. OR use a vector program (illustrator, freehand) to design the image. Vector programs do not draw with pixels, they use mathematical formulas and hence reduce and expand better. But that is another story.

JP Stones — Sun, 10 Oct 1999 03:28:00 +0000

Can we see these two versions?
JP

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Ken Elliott — Thu, 07 Oct 1999 17:07:00 +0000

The best program that I can think of, to help with your dillemma is Ulead Smart Saver Pro ...download it from tucows.
http://download.tucows.com/perl/selectRegion.html?Target=adnload/dlusspro.html

just pick your area to download from...this is a free trial..

It should intergrate perfectly with PSP...

Hope this helps..

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