Re: GIF vs JPG

[P3D Larry Berlin <lberlin@xxxxxxxxx>]

>Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 
>From: P3D Marvin Jones  comments:
>..........................
>May I suggest running test instead of just accepting this "common
>knowledge" without question? When I first started working on my website I
>tried doing several photos in both GIF and JPG in several degrees of
>compression. It was my experience that the GIF pictures were almost always
>far superior to the JPG images, even at 100% (which I found produced much
>larger images than the comparable GIF). 

*******  It kind of depends on the type of image. There are aspects that a
GIF will do better, but GIF's just don't cut it for most photo type
pictures. The other problem with GIF's is that the same image presented as
GIF will generally be larger than in JPG. So, to keep pages loading faster
and file sizes smaller, JPG's are far and away *better*.


>........I still often use JPG images on the
>website because at a medium compression they are smaller than GIFs, and
>size equates to speed of download, of course. But whenever picture quality
>is important to me, I still usually go with GIF. 

*********  I've seen many images that are smoothly colored and attractive,
but converted to GIF, develop a graininess that detracts from the overall
effect. Due to this tendency, I steer away from GIF when I want image
quality. I'll use a lower compression on a JPG and still have a smaller file
than GIF.

>........(There's also the
>consideration that many, many of your visitors at a website will only have
>256-color monitors, and the inferior dithering capabilities of most
>browsers will make your 24-bit JPGs look like last week's garbage!)

That can just as easily apply to your 256 colored images too. Netscape's
palette isn't particuarly flattering to 80% of the images I've seen that
used it. The usable palette for absolute safety in color is only 216 colors.
For best results on a web page for viewing with an out of date 256 color
system, you have to make sure each image on a particular page all use the
same exact palette. This is accomplished by putting them all in one big
file, which is saved in GIF. Then the pieces are cut out again and saved
individually, with the common palette intact. It speeds the loading of a page. 

But let's be real here. It doesn't cost very much now-a-days to get, at a
minimum, an inexpensive video card that will provide 16 bit color. That is a
*minimum* standard for anyone who cares to look at the graphically rich
computer content of today's world. If you don't have it, maybe you didn't
know it was so cheap to acquire? More than one friend of mine hasn't even
known there were more colors than 256 available. They wondered why pictures
were always changing to weird colors at strange times. As soon as he found
out what the problem was it became high priority! It didn't cost much to
upgrade and what a difference!!!!

Larry Berlin

Email: lberlin@xxxxxxxxx
http://www.sonic.net/~lberlin/
http://3dzine.simplenet.com/


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