BMP or JPG?

Need help

[modega]

Hello everyone,

I have finally created my main template for my webpage. I have a dummy column to the left for links. I notice that my bmp images take a while to load (and I am on cable) but jpg loads very fast.

The bmp images are much clearer then the jpg. So with your experience, would it be bad for my to use bmp images for a main template for those dial-up users?

Thanks.

[martinibuster]

Gifs are best for images with solid blocks of color, without gradients (shading or fading). Gifs work best with text and most illustrations.

jpegs work best with photographs. Try a gif and see how that works.

[bondjamesbond]

I would strongly advise that you do not use BMP for the web. They can be extremely large files and can take a long time to download. As martinibuster suggests use GIFs or JPGs. If you use a good graphic editor application (I like Photoshop) you can create good quality JPG's at very small sizes. There is different advice to what settings you use on JPG's, but I recommend that you dont go below 50% compression otherwise the image quality does degrade too much.

[choster]

Try increasing the quality settings (JPEG) or color depth (GIF) to improve the clarity of your images. Or, you can try exporting to those formats using different software from what you've been using.

Both are compressed formats, so they exchange some quality to reduce file size, but the compression can usually be done in a way so that the quality reduction is invisible to human detection.

Yet another option is the PNG format (portable network graphic), which was specifically designed for delivery over the Internet. See [webmasterworld.com...]

[dillonstars]

Another tip for optimizing JPEGs is to use Macromedia Fireworks or a PhotoShop plugin such as BoxTop ProJpeg to compress the image, rather than the native PhotoShop tool (which gives noticeably poorer results).

[SupaDucta]

When making graphics for web in PhotoShop or ImageReady, ALWAYS use Save for Web function.

Using Save for Web saves GIFs, PNGs and JPEGs.

Saves JPEGs as JFIF which 'strips' all the information from the JPEG that are not standardized for web and readable by browsers, and has far better compression control over standard Save As... function. New Adobe CS supports JPEG 2000.

There are a several tools on the market which support selective compression - you apply different compression ratio to various parts of an image which is very good, especially if you have some time to spend selecting and compressing.

See ex. Xat JPEG Optimizer, it provides good results.

See [dcs.ed.ac.uk...]

for a good JFIF definition.

[DaScribbler]

I've found I've been migrating more and more into PNG's than Jpeg or GIF.

[union_jack]

I have a annoying problem, can anybody help?

When going to a website and trying to save pictures, it is only letting me save them as Bitmap format. There is probably a setting somewhere but I can't find it.

It has only recently started doing this and it has happen on 2 different computers. With 2 different operating systems. (ME, XP)

Any thoughts!

[sem4u]

If you are using IE then clear your internet history. This happens to me all the time.

[union_jack]

Top man! Thanks :)

[limbo]

If you are using IE

You would not get this problem with Opera! ;)

[sem4u]

Or Netscape :)