Format Question

[Phil J]

Using Mandelbulber or Mandelbulb3d, which format do most folks save their images/animations in?  PNG or JPEG?
And why do they choose that particular format?


Looks like withMandelbulber allows:
JPG
PNG
PNG 16-bit
PNG  16-bit with alpha channel
or TIFF.

 With Mandelbulb3D the options are:
PNG
JPEG
or ZBUF.

thanks!

Phil J.

[Sockratease]

Using Mandelbulber or Mandelbulb3d, which format do most folks save their images/animations in?  PNG or JPEG?
And why do they choose that particular format?

As with all things, it depends on what you want to do with the final images.

I always use png because it is a lossless format.

jpg makes smaller file sizes, but is lossy.  You wont see much difference on the image, but if you compile an image sequence into an animation using jpg, you are recompressing a lossy format, introducing more loss of quality.  png also shows some quality loss depending on what video format and codec you use.  In general, video is going to cause some quality  loss unless you go with uncompressed video, but that can run 4 GB for about 30 seconds.

So it's a huge compromise.

Ideally, just stick with png.  If file size becomes an issue for posting images online, then use jpg at various qualities until you hit the file size you want.

Sadly, there is no easy answer since things change depending upon what you want to do with the images.

Hope that helps! 

[Phil J]

Many thanks for the quick reply!  I have been saving as PNG and experimenting with animations that way, so it seems that is the right track to be on generally.

thanks!

Phil J.
 p.s.  - this is some of the most fascinating fractal software I've ever seen...15 minutes of "playing" with it can easily turn into several hours....