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Site Graphics Tune-Up/Tune-Down For Dummies, OR, How Even I Managed To
Shave Significant Amounts Of Bandwidth Usage AND Loadtimes Off Of My Old
Fat Graphics,
   By PlanetDweller
   +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
   Even though I'm consider a bit of a geek by some, I'm a real dummie when
it comes to graphics and such, so let me share how I "tuned up" my website,
actually it was more of a tune-down to reduce the size of all my graphics
in order to help conserve precious bandwidth.  Keep in mind I reduced the
overall through-put demand from my graphics by at least half to even
two-thirds, depending on the fractional number of total page accesses and
which pages were actually accessed.
   The software I used:
   1) Image Expert.  This software came with a Toshiba digital camera I
bought about four years ago, now long broken and discarded but I liked this
particular graphics software program.
   It's simple enough for a simpleton like me to use without pulling my
hair out is mainly why I like it.  It allows me to save .jpg graphics in 24
bit, 8 bit/256 colors which is all most browsers can handle in most cases
when accessing web pages anyway, or greyscale.  It also allows me to do
"save-as" as all graphic programs do, in high quality (which makes for the
fatest files), medium quality by default, or low-quality which makes for
the smallest file size and I dare say not one person in a thousand can
notice the difference between a .jpg saved in high-quality format and one
in low-quality format when placed side-by-side.  Starting to see where I'm
going?
   There are many other similar programs out there, some more complicated
and some less, and it doesn't matter which one you have as long as it gives
you more or less similar options to the ones mentioned above, for purposes
of my discussion.
   The one thing I don't like about it is that it can't open .gif files.
   So, I bought a copy of Paint Shop Pro, which you can download from many
sites for free as shareware and which the "free" version of gives you
almost as many options as the full-feature one does when you register it.
   BTW, I bought a then-$500 copy of Corel Draw 9 about 4 years ago and
it's so damn complicated to me even after four years of screwing with it
that I don't attempt to use it except in the rarest of cases.  See why I'm
calling this thumbnail tutorial a "Dummies" one?
   2) Paint Shop Pro.  This is useful to me ONLY because my old Image
Expert program only opens and manipulates .jpgs and I did have several .gif
files that needed "right-sizing".
   With PSP, I can open .gif images and then do save-as's to .jpg format
while keeping the same file name, only the file extension names being
changed.
   ~~~ What I Did To Tune Down My Graphic Images ~~~
   Using Image Expert, I simply opened up each image one at a time, tried
to reduce the color palette for the image from 24-bit to 8-bit when I
could, sometimes I couldn't for some reason, like the 24-bit color scheme
was locked and when that happened I didn't sweat it.
   When the color palette reduction did "take", the only difference I
noticed was that the brightness of the image actually apparently increased.
Yes, a little, teeny-tiny bit of contrast was lost but it was barely
noticeable.
   Then I did a save-as for the image, choosing the lowest-quality/highest
compression setting option, overwriting the old image.
   For larger images, say 70K in size, these two steps would result in the
image being shrunk way down to around 20K, obviously a huge savings in
bandwidth and loadtimes too.
   The smaller the file size, the seemingly less you can shrink it down
fractionally, but even a 30K image can often be sliced down to less than
20K by doing those two simple steps above.
   By keeping the same file name, you don't have to change the HTML code on
your pages, you simply upload the newly-compressed and smaller images to
your author's directory within the ASSTR and visitors to your pages won't
be the wiser.
   Oh, on .jpg images that are B&W line drawings or similar, that don't
have, aren't color images, by saving them as "greyscale" instead of 8-bit
color, you'll shrink image size down even more.
   In one case, two similar graphics I had which were both scans of black
pen line drawings which were saved as greyscale and then re-compressed to
so-called low quality, went from approximately 36K each down to 8K,
literally, no kidding, with absolutely no loss to these eyes of image
quality at all.
   NOTE !!!  ~~~~
   Those two images mentioned above were originally .gif files that I had
to use Paint Shop Pro for to open up and do save-as's as .jpg formats,
which took all of maybe a minute each to do that.
   When you do save-as's from .gif to .jpg format, THEN you'll need to
change the file extension names of your "src" HTML code on the pages that
they appear in, from "name.gif" to "name.jpg" and re-upload the slightly
modified page(s), but that's no big deal.
   It took me a little over an hour one night to re-work the maybe 25
images total I had on my site, doing things as described above.
   Since Rey said that with the new regulations that files 5K or less in
size would accessed directly and not off the new choke-pipe graphics
server, I didn't bother to try to squeeze out 1 or 2K of file size from a
5K or less graphic, I mean, I am anal at times but not THAT anal, Smile!
   Reworking my graphics to reduce size down to as small as practical as
possible, even with my usually low-traffic site, will at least help in the
effort to keep bandwidth costs down for ASSTR as much as possible, in some
small but meaningful way even if to no one but myself.
   Other tips, tricks, questions, comments about how to reduce the size of
web graphics are welcome, please post them in the Member's message section,
and Thanks, SMILE!, Yours, Planet

   ~~~ To visit my homepage where you'll find more interesting stuff like
the one above, please click on:
https://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/PlanetDweller/www
   And Thanks!, Yours, PlanetDweller ~~~
   
  
Site Graphcis Tune Down For Dummies Short Tutorial