Image/Avatar Help! :(

[stormbind]

I use Advanced GIF Optimizer to reduce the size of GIF files, and it normally works great but it can do nothing with this file...

Can anyone help? I might wish to use it as an avatar.

 

[Silverflame]

This should work. I tested it and it came out fine.

 

[Plexus]

When in doubt, use .png

 

[Vancouver 2010]

I don't publish PNG avatars since there still are a few computers out there that have web browsers that don't display PNG files.

What I do is I publish GIF avatars if they look good and are at <4K. If they don't, then I publish JPG avatars (my version of yours is JPG) and I adjust the quality so that the file size is just under 4K. Unless you zoom in, there's no visible difference, and most can be cranked up to 90 Quality and still be < 4K. (Yours had to stop at 87.)

Of course, if transparency is required, then I have no choice but to publish a GIF avatar (remember, I don't publish PNGs).

 

[Plexus]

If a person's browser does not display .png, then I think they should consider moving away from Mosaic 1.0 and maybe to a nice IE3 or Netscape 4.

 

[Vancouver 2010]

Yeah, that's what I think. But are you gonna make them?

 

[Plexus]

Nicely... yes.

 

[Vancouver 2010]

I'd like to see you try.

 

[stormbind]

JPG also compresses it well but like PNG is without transparency and is therefore going to change the image.

Also, I don't have a PNG Optimizer and the image editor doesn't make good use of it.

Erm, I tried the GIF posted. It's 4.20Kb - the same as the one I posted

Help?!

 

[Ankka]

JPG makes it usually small enough...

 

[Hurricane]

Ok, here are two compressed GIFs (with transparency):

2.717K:

And 3.987K:

 

[stormbind]

That's awsome Hurricane! Which program did you use? I'm always looking for better compression

Sadly, erm, I made a new avatar while waiting. I have the same problem though.

I'm currently using a high-resolution compressed (9%) JPG. That's the closest I could get with the least amount of image destruction

Can you do better with your cool program? Any format is good for this one

Here it is as a PNG but it's way over the 4Kb limit...

 

[Hurricane]

Ok, here is the new avatar. GIF format, size 3.488 Kb.

And the same as PNG, size 2.698 Kb.

I use Photoshop CS for the images.

 

[FireBall]

I use PSP 8, though I reccomend 7 over 8, 6 is good too.

 

[Plexus]

And for the record, PNG does have transparency, even partial transparency.

 

[stormbind]

I thought that was only in MSIE?

MSIE has filters which it can apply to any object. Images are objects. Opacity is one of the filters.

The Chroma filter can be used to swap one colour for another; transparency included.

Chroma cannot be applied to JPG/GIF because that requires the formats to be reverse engineered but it can applied to PNG because it's open source.

That's my assumption based on observation.

 

[Hurricane]

This is what Photoshop says about PNG:

Developed as a patent-free alternative to GIF, Portable Network Graphics (PNG) format is used for lossless compression and for display of images on the Web. Unlike GIF, PNG supports 24-bit images and produces background transparency without jagged edges; however, some Web browsers do not support PNG images. PNG format supports RGB, indexed-color, grayscale, and Bitmap-mode images without alpha channels. PNG preserves transparency in grayscale and RGB images.

 

[Plexus]

Alpha Transparency is not fully supported in IE.

While in Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape and Opera it is.

http://www.webcolors.freeserve.co.uk/png/png-alpha-transparency.htm