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Comments on: Make Internet images good

Editing images for the Web just isn't the same as for print. Here are tips and tools for capturing and optimizing Internet graphics.

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What about PNG?
by gp84rules June 23, 2007 2:02 PM PDT
I thought that PNG was the ideal format for web images. PNG 8 can do everything a gif can (except animation) for less space. Also PNG 24 takes up less space than jpg and can hold the same amount of colors. Space is very important in web pages because some viewers will have dial-up or other very slow connections.
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Images with limited colors present better as PNGs!
by ma-da-lin June 25, 2007 2:24 PM PDT
PNG has some advantages over GIF:
- PNG is free.
- compresses better than GIF in almost every case (5% to 25% in typical cases)
- variable transparency, cross-platform control of image brightness and color correction
- two-dimensional interlacing
- PNG is a modern new graphic format (was developed around 1995 and has became a W3C recommendation in 1996)

Now let's talk about GIF
- The biggest issue surrounding the GIF format is that the LZW algorithm is protected in some countries by a patent held by the company Unisys.
- compresses worst than PNG in almost every case
- GIF was developed in the late 1980's. It's an old standard.

As for animations ... better use macromedia flash!

So... as gp84rules already told us ... images with limited colors DOES NOT present better as GIFs.

Images with limited colors present better as PNGs!
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I still say JPG makes smaller images
by bubazoo June 25, 2007 5:13 PM PDT
I still say JPG format makes smaller images.
I am horrible with graphics. I have a hard enough time trying to get images to upload on forums that have a 9kb size limit on attachments. On those sites, the ONLY format I can use is JPG, because JPG is the "only" format that will compress down lower then 20kb in size, farthest I've ever gotten a GIF down to is 60k, PNG the farthest is maybe 30k at best, but JPG I've gotten down to as far as 4k before, using all identical images, so I don't agree with those comments at all above.
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good software
by modhanji June 25, 2007 5:58 PM PDT
looks like a good programe to save web images!! thanks
and best of luck...:)
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bubazoo the discussion was about PNG versus GIF...
by ma-da-lin June 26, 2007 5:03 AM PDT
bubazoo the discussion was about PNG versus GIF. You can not compare PNG to JPEG, simply because those formats are designed for diffrent images types!

PNG (and GIF) was designed for images with LIMITED colors. In order to gain from using the PNG file format you have to reduce the number of colors in the image. Any decent image editor can do this. PNG it's better to use for images with no more than 256 colors and big plain surfaces having the same color (icons, buttons and other stuff like this).

JPEG is a lossy compression technique for color images. As compression goes better the JPEG image lose quality. You can easily notice "JPEG artifacts" on images with big plain surfaces having the same color. PNG compression is based on reducing the number of colors in the image. JPEG is based on losing informations from the image using math. If a image use only 64 colors, for example, saving the image as PNG you will preserve the original image unaltered. Saving as JPEG will probably output a mess...

You should chose JPEG if:
- the image is a big image (width/height)
- the image is a true color image with a lot of colors
- the image does not have big plain surfaces using the same color
- you don't care about altering the original image by JPEG "artifacts"
Usualy photos fit in this area.

You should chose PNG if:
- the image is little (width/height)
- the image has no more than 255 colors
- the image has big plain surfaces using the same color
- you do not want to alter the original image with unpredictable artifacts
Usualy icons and other website background images fit in this area.
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misrepresentation of Paint.NET
by illusionaryz June 30, 2007 9:33 PM PDT
In this article and the video in which you demonstrated Paint.NET, misrepresented the capabilities of the red-eye removal tool. Y'know that red halo around the eye after you used the tool? Well, here's the thing. Did you notice how the halo EXACTLY followed the edge of what you had selected at the time of using the tool. Amazing, yeah? You need to select the ENTIRE eye to remove the red from it! If the entire eye is not selected, the tool ignores any pixels outside of the selection. Try again, using the tool CORRECTLY, and you'll find that calling the tool "weak" is hardly appropriate. All this and more is in the documentation, so next time, please make sure you KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING before you criticize something, okay? Cool.
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