Can I view the settings of a GIF/JPEG etc

[terrybarnes]

I have some images from a client that I would like to view what settings they originally used when optimizing the graphics i.e. Amount of colours, transparency on or off, jpeg image quality etc. Similar to when you take a photo on a digital camera and it keeps settings such as date, exposure settings etc.

Is there any way of doing this or is this information embedded into the image and therefore no way of retrieving it?

[thecoalman]

Amount of colours, transparency on or off,

You can figure that out for .gif by opening it with a decent editor.

As for .jpg just a suggestion but have you tried an advanced exif reader like exifer? Exif data can be quite extensive but I don't know if image editing applications save things like that and for the web they usually drop it all together for a smaller file size.

[limbo]

Is there anything in particular you were hoping to achieve? The learning curve for image optimisation isn't too steep.

[terrybarnes]

I do understand how to optimize images in various formats but what I was hoping to achieve is to find out what settings were used for a previously optimized image. I have a few images from a client and I would like to know what settings the previous web developers were using i.e. amount of colours, transparency on or off, dithering etc etc etc

[rocknbil]

Well, it's not an optimal solution, and later versions of Photoshop may have a better way. If you open any image in Photoshop and go immediately to "Save As," it will display the current jpg settings. For .gif/png, you convert the image to RGB then switch back to Indexed color, it will display the index it was at before you opened it.

[terrybarnes]

That's a good way to find out how many colours for the gif/png but the jpeg method doesn't work if the file was previously saved using the Save For Web option in Photoshop. Thanks for your help though.