Sea Foam

[Bent-Winged Angel]

[aluminumstudios]

You're images are nice but seem to be really heavily jpg compressed.  Can I suggest not compressing them so much that JPG noise starts to degrade the image quality?  I think they would be easier to enjoy then.

[Bent-Winged Angel]

Thanks aluminumstudios!

jpeg

png

bmp

^ my choices when saving in my files.  Now with rendering (choas Pro) I have the choice of png  usual setting or can switch to jpeg I jsut checked can go to higher quality.  encoding in standard or progressive. Optomize coloring, forced baseline... I think I had it set for the quicker less accurate.  Previously have only concidered commpression when it comes to making animations.

[Sockratease]

My advice:

Stick to png if possible.

It's lossless and has good compression.  Plus - it supports alpha channel  (transparency).

STAY AWAY from bmp for the web!!  It's a windows only format and some mac users (and maybe even some linux users) will have issues even viewing it.  And the file sizes are needlessly HUGE!

I rarely use jpg for anything unless I want to post a very large image.  Then the png file size can be unfriendly for the web, and jpg compression is not *that* bad if the settings are above 90% Quality.

[kram1032]

jpeg shouldn't be much faster than png. It's not quite a rendering-quality question but rather a question of saving quality. The render should look identical in both cases.

[Sockratease]

jpeg shouldn't be much faster than png. It's not quite a rendering-quality question but rather a question of saving quality. The render should look identical in both cases.

For web use on single images, yes, you are right.

But I notice big differences in quality on both animations compiled from png sequences (vs jpg sequences) and on large sized renders.

I'm not certain why large images lose detail, but the reasoning behind the animations quality is obvious - recompressing to compile.  Compressing an already compressed image invariably causes issues  (especially if uploading to sites like youtube).  png compression is lossless, thus minimizing the problem.

[kram1032]

Sorry, I didn't actually reply to what you said but rather to Bent Winged Angel when saying, she chose the faster, lower quality option.
It shouldn't be noticably faster, just because you choose jpg for saving, rather than png...

Yeah, clear. Well, png shouldn't only minimize it, the problem should be gone, even...

jpg2000 is supposed to be capable of that aswell. It saves without lowering the quality twice if you use the same settings. At least, that's what they say...

[Bent-Winged Angel]

jpeg shouldn't be much faster than png. It's not quite a rendering-quality question but rather a question of saving quality. The render should look identical in both cases.

OK sooo showing & comparing will do nothing?  Saving quality over time?  Does this have anything  to do with how yoou tube seems to (at times) lose quality of images?

[kram1032]

jpeg is just a (lossy) image format.
png is just an image format.
bmp is just a (crappy) image format.
There sure are quality settings but the image format is not actually one of them. There should be pretty much no time benefit for choosing one of those formats.
They just mean, how the image gets saved in the end. Lossy formats will not safe the exact rendered image but there is some quality loss, depending on the settings. Jpeg can be quite good if it uses quality setting around 90-100 and all the way down to 80, the effect still is kinda bearable.
All, this setting does, is to save used-up disk-space, not time.
Png doesn't have such a quality setting because it will just always do well. - Being lossless means, the saved image should be identical to the original one.

[Nahee_Enterprises]

    JPEG is just a (lossy) image format.
    PNG is just an image format.
    BMP is just a (crappy) image format.

Actually, the Microsoft Windows Bitmap (or OS/2 Bitmap) file format is not really "crappy".  It is just NOT one of the formats for storing compressed data; it is not one of the "lossy" formats, such as the typical JPEG.  Uncompressed bitmap files are typically much larger than compressed image file formats for the same image.  Uncompressed formats are generally unsuitable for transferring images on the Internet or other slow or capacity-limited media.

The simplicity of the .BMP file format, and its widespread familiarity in Windows and elsewhere, as well as the fact that this format is relatively well documented and free of patents, makes it a very common format that image processing programs from many operating systems can read and write.

See:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMP_file_format
    http://www.faqs.org/faqs/graphics/fileformats-faq/part3/section-18.html
    http://www.fileformat.info/format/os2bmp/egff.htm
 

[aluminumstudios]

Many people will talk about JPG as lossy or bad.  It is a great format for distribution on the web.  If you set the quality high when saving a JPG, the loss is only noticable upon close inspection, the size is much less than other formats, and it is universally compatible/viewable.

JPG isn't good for your master copy of an image, but for the web it's great when you save with high quality.

On your seafoam image however, it looks like it might have been set to as low quality (small file size) as possible however.

[Bent-Winged Angel]

JPG isn't good for your master copy of an image, but for the web it's great when you save with high quality.

On your seafoam image however, it looks like it might have been set to as low quality (small file size) as possible however.

I am still using JPG, but with the higher quality options!  Did a lil comparrison & can definately see the difference.   

[cKleinhuis]

quality settings of about 80% are a good average for quality and file sizes!