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For those of you with sig pics...

33K views 34 replies 27 participants last post by  adamsmitt 
#1 · (Edited)
For the love of all that you hold dear, compress those bitches! It's not just for us poor souls still on dial-up ... it also helps Chris out tremendously with the bandwidth usage. He's already had to ban the use of the Image File Hosting for remote pics (ie: pics you use on other forums) ... I'd hate to see him have to ban sig pics all together because you people don't compress them.

Jeremy, I'm not picking on you, just using your sig pic as an example.

Original @ over 100k


70% Compression @ under 40k


50% Compression (Used "Save For Web" feature) @ under 20k


It's amazing, isn't it? Without close inspection they look identical. Even with close inspection they look almost identical.

Not every sig pic will have the same results ... for instance ones that use a lot of red colors, as red tends to get blocky under compression. All images get blocky under compression, but red seems to go to a higher extreme, and at less compression.



BAD: Compression of 10 - 12 (12 was added with Photoshop 6 and higher, used to max at 10). There's no need for this level of compression unless you're archiving images ... and you shouldn't be archiving images in Jpeg format in the first place.

BETTER: Compression of 6 or 7. This is adequate for most cases. Red's also don't look terrible at this compression level (70%)

BEST: File > Save For Web, Compression Medium (30% normally, raised to 50% to clear blockiness) (Photoshop 5.1 introduced this handy feature, and all versions after also have it ... SO USE IT!). This tool pulls up 1 to 3 windows, in addition to a window with the original image in it. It allows you to play with different compression settings, while being able to see the final results in real time. So you can compress the holy fuck out of something, and compare it to the original image... if it's suitable, save it and post. If it's too compressed (blocky), then fuck with it some more until you get something that's both acceptable to you, and as small as you can get it.

(The screen caps were reduced in physical dimension to 75% of their original size. This image was also saved using "Save For Web", at High compression (or 60%), to keep the reds from fucking up. Dimensionally, it's about 6 or 7 times the size of the sig pic ... and it's still smaller in file size than the original sig pic above... )

When you can compress an image down to less than 1/5 of it's original size, and not fuck up the image quality ... there's no reason not to.
 
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#4 · (Edited)
ClockwrkOrangeSS said:
good post, I just choose to not put mine in every post instead :)
:D That definitely helps too.

One more thing I've come across is the animated sigs/avatars:

Original @ nearly 250k


Using only 32 colors @ 110k


Or cutting the frames in half (double delay between frames from .1 to .2 seconds), and using only 64 colors @ 71k


To do this, there's a program that comes with Photoshop (started coming with version 5.1) called Image Ready. It's Photoshop for animated .GIF's.

You can resize, change colors, add/subtract frames, adjust brightness/contrast, etc. Most of the basic tasks you can do in Photoshop, you can do in Image Ready. For the stuff you can't do, you can save the .GIF as a .PSD (Photoshop's file format), open it in Photoshop (each frame becomes a layer) and do whatever you need to it in Photoshop. You can then open the .PSD in Image Ready, and re-add each frame (layer) to the Animation bar, and save it back to an animated .GIF.

Just reducing the number of colors often helps a lot.
 
#13 ·
I Stang U said:
what difference does that make... once its downloaded into you cache it doesn't download it again ;-)
Because cache's never get cleared... especially since that's one of the most basic troubleshooting steps for slow connection problems, and getting rid of spyware :p

And besides, it's only been about 3 days since I've come to this thread (and only since I saw a new reply, from ya). In that time, I've been here, and one other forum that I frequent (one where no one has sig pics, only small 50x50 avatars), and Gmail (my browsing habits are quite limited since I don't like spending hours downloading, even webpages, on dial-up). Coming in here today, I had to re-download the three Whiteboy sigs again. I've got my cache set at 20 megs, and I haven't cleared it in a few weeks. So it doesn't take much for that cache to cycle out and you inevitably have to re-download the sig pics again :D Unless you like IE taking up 10% of your hdd for cache :eek:
 
#21 ·
clean ya cache is all ya need to do...on photobucket you have option of avitar,email,thumbnails ect to down size...

defrag ya files...
 
#27 ·
Says the dolt replying to a post from 2004 and assuming nothing at all has changed since then.

It's still a relevant guide and piece of advice, despite broadband being far more prevalent and affordable now. I won't disable sigs, because some of them are actually pretty good. I do add the worst offenders to my AdBlock list though.
 
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