Preserved Topic: Lowering an image's size

Any suggestions in lowering a .jpeg image size without lowering it's quality. My site has a 400k+ bg and takes about 20-30 seconds to load on 56k which is a bit over than what i was hoping to get.

Moving without WIT.S

400k for a screen-resolution JPEG? That's insanity. That image is what, 1600x1200? More? Either that or it's at a higher resolution than 72dpi, but if that's the case, it would look huge on your computer screen, or I miss my guess. If the "JPEG Medium" optimization setting in Photoshop or Imageready doesn't yield a file size lower than, say, 50k, you should rethink just how much you need that image.

Photoshop: File >> Save For Web. Optimization settings will be in the upper right. This window shows you a preview of your optimized image, and should show file size right below it.

Imageready: Just open the file. Optimization settings will be in the Optimize palette, probably in the upper right by default. Click the "optimized" tab of your main document window to see a preview of the final image.

In each case, the optimization options are very similar -- ImageReady has a few extra things that might help you squeeze an extra few kb out of the image... weighted optimization comes to mind. But you want to start out by playing with the options given and see what happens.

Note: If your image has few colors, and sharp transitions between them, you should make it a GIF instead of a JPG. Then you can raise or lower the number of colors, and adjust the dithering method, until you've struck a balance between quality and file size.

Hey, the logo on the link you posted, benev.neopages.net, has only a 44k jpg... if that's what you were talking about, you're not really in bad shape. 44k is a decent size for an image that large.

benev: The image is good:
http://benev.neopages.net/tint/back.jpg

but it really is too big and slow to use as a webpage background. I'm not sure how you got it to be so big as it is 800x600. Follow PT's tips there and if you can't get the balance between size and quality then think again. To be honest it isn't going to work well as a background (too much contrast) unless you put your content in boxes with a (pos. semi-transparent) background colour which rather spoils the point so you might want to go for something smaller which tiles. Put the picture in a gallery section.

[edit: The problem mentioned above should be obvious as your text on this page: http://benev.neopages.net/tint
is unreadable and you will struggle to find a colour which will work against hat background]

Also you've gone a bit of a round about route to make that a background image - use CSS or assign it to the body tag.

Sorry not much help on the file size problem but that has already been dealt with - more of an attempt to get you to look at it as part of a working page.

Emps

[This message has been edited by Emperor (edited 02-18-2002).]

Oh- sorry, i posted the message around 1:30 am, was a bit dazed. Thanks for the tips, i was able to get the image faster loading, though with emperor's suggestions, i will try and create a more formal design. Thanks.

Moving without WIT.S

dear me.... you always come around with that resolution stuff? it doesnt matter... the pixels are the only thing that is saved...

jpeg pre-compression is what todays programs use to make normal jpeg compression have more effect. saving as jpeg cant actually "compress" the image. it only saves it in a way that is different than your average bmp saving.
what programs do is modifying the image so that it will require less information to write it in this saving mode.... losing quality in the process, of course. Normaly 20% of pre-compression is more than enough... also, try it in png format, maybe you'll get lucky.
Personally, i use mr. psp for saving for web.
PS treats images all the same, while in psp you can define which image type will come out, while still working on it. A lot more intuitive.

"PS treats images all the same, while in psp you can define which image type will come out, while still working on it. A lot more intuitive."

PaintShop Pro??

Yep.

Moving without WIT.S