jpg tips

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	These notes are extra tips, be sure to read basic general stuff on file formats too	Magazine flip

JPG tips

Don't reduce colors on JPGS, it won't shrink files.

This adds more bookkeeping data making files bigger & degrading their quality.

Compressions Use the jpg export feature to view & choose the best compression rates for your jpgs.

Keep a close eye on your preview window at a 2x magnification. Now, crunch crunch crunch until your image just starts to turn to crap, & then back off some.

Back at normal viewing you should see a pretty decent looking jpg with serious yet reasonable compression.

Remember that your original image sitting there is still completely unchanged by the jpg export.

You'll need to open up a freshly saved jpg to see what you've really wound up with.

Never open jpgs for edits and resaves. Always do any subsequent jpg edits/saves from your Master. (It can get trashier and trashier with every subsequent edit and save.)

Remember... the more details or the sharper those details the larger that file.

Cropping & Erasing

Crop or erase away any nonessential background material that you can whack away.

Use Smart Size to resize.

He does extremely well at assigning the best method choices for resizing our images. Trust him for all formats.

Got a big combo image with both (jpg & gif) types of content?

Dice it up & save each chunk into the most appropriate format. Reassemble in HTML & enjoy the best of both worlds. Better quality with faster loads.

A problem
is when gradients & soft edges
and texty large solid areas of colors
go marrying up together in the same image.

Another problem
Some screen captures are just too darn big &
we certainly do need gradients intact when
they are essential to the actual point of the image.

More bad news
Resizing huge images makes them blurry
Resharpening that blur increases file size

If you're doing webpages this feature (there's one for JPGs too) makes the upgrade to PSP6 worthwhile.

GEEZ, now what?
well ... choices & compromises get made

28k to 8k

Point to Point Selection (feather set at 8)
Click to outline the subject
Leave a nice fat margin for the feathered blend area

Invert Selection & cut away all extra background.


My image & web backgrounds refuse to match? Colors change during SAVES based on our settings formats & compression choices
Grab a tiny sample of that original image & save it to the same darn format (use the same settings as the original image) to insure a perfect match. Tile that sample for your page background. One looks pretty good, but neither of those spheres perfectly matches its cell background in all browsers. To guarantee the best match for everyone's eyes, Make a custom background tile as your web page or cell background.

This page weighs in at a hefty 89.5k
The best loading pages stay below 50k (including html) a couple of k adds up fast and drags downloads into dental pain.
Not every visitor has that luxury of a good connection.