I'm currently putting together about 20 b/w prints for a web page and was wondering if anyone could help. Obviously I would like the page to load quickly but what I need to know is gif better than jpeg? Also is 5x7's better to scan than 8x10's? Any input would help. Thanks, Bob

-- Anonymous, February 21, 1997

Answers

Hi Bob! Let me start the responses off. My wife says the gifs are smaller and will load faster. Hope others give some insite into how the size of the original prints can effect the final file. Good Luck!-Fred

-- Anonymous, February 24, 1997

GIFs vs JPEG

My experience was just the opposite. The jpeg files (all RGB at 72dpi for B&W in photoshop) were about 1/3 to 1/2 the size of the gif files (all indexed color at 72dpi, again in photoshop) of the same image at the same image size (in inches). The gifs were about 30K, and the jpegs were as small as 8-10K for the same image. My problem was the look of the jpeg files, which completely fell apart. Whatever subtle gradations a 72 dpi images can hold on the monitor were gone with the jpegs. I went back to the gifs. They hold together much better, though they do take a little longer to load. Still, no comparison to a well made B&W. I love good prints. Jim

-- Anonymous, February 26, 1997

web page design

I guess some of us are needing the same help. I have re-made my site with smaller file sizes down to 70k from as much as 200k! I am not pleased with the result but may have to live with it. The size of the origional scan doesn't seem to matter - some of mine were quite large. Regarding jpeg v. gif I still don't know for sure what is best. Take a look at this excellent site:

www.mysticseaport.org/public/collections

They use jpeg files to get 35k pseudocolor black and whites that look very nice to me.

My site will be re-loaded in a few days at www.keva.com/lookaround The first version is probably still there with its huge image files.

good luck.

-- Anonymous, February 26, 1997

Web page design

I just completed my first site, and started with gif files, all sized to about 2X2.5 inches at 72dpi in photoshop, simply to get the load times down to reasonable levels. The files were on the order of 25-30K. After a friend suggested that jpegs were smaller (they are) and would load faster (they do), I converted my gifs to jpeg, and was very disappointed by the look on the screen. Dithering is a bad thing when it comes to B&W on the web, and jpegs are dithered to beat the band. No subtle gradations, and very quirky looking images. I have gone back to gifs for the time being. The best suggestion is to realize that images printed on paper (any kind) will always look better than what the video screen has to offer. There is no comparison between a print, well made, and what you'll see on your monitor. Please check out my site at "http://www.earthlink,net/~jrschoppie" to get a feel for what a small gallery effect can be. I'm more concerned with showing images that simulate what the fine art prints look like. The monitor just can't represent a well made print at 72dpi. For the sake of all of us, keep your file sizes small. Try for 30K as the biggest. I looked at a site the other day )a publisher, no less) that had one 2x2.5" image on the opening page, and the file was 471K at 300dpi! It took over three minutes to load, and was only the cover of an Alumni magazine. The publisher could have use a 25K gif at 72dpi, and got the point accross quite well, in under 20 seconds. As far as what size to scan from, all my images were from 4x5 & 5x7 prints, because I knew the images on the screen were never intended to be any bigger than that. Scan from whatever you have, and work toward getting the file sizes down to a usable level. Thanks for letting me make a few suggestions. Jim

-- Anonymous, February 26, 1997

Gifs vs Jpeg

Some softwares let you control the quality (and size) of your jpegs when you save them. The biger the file the better the quality. I can cut the size of a gif in half and lose very little quality by transfering from gif to jpg at 39% quality factor on Corel Photo.

-- Anonymous, March 04, 1997

GIF vs. JPEG - the real poop

JPEG is definitely the way to go for photographs. GIF files are by their nature limited to 256 colors (or 256 grey tones in the case of greyscale images) to compress the image. JPEG JPEG (which stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group) was expressly developed for continuous-tone images such as photographs that would suffer if reduced to 256 tones/colors.

JPEG works on "sequential encoding" where each image is encoded in a "single pass" from left to right and top to bottom. The new Progressive JPEG standard encodes the image in multiple scans, with a coarse scan first, then succesively improved scans.

JPEG allows you to set the level of compression, which directly affects the quality of the image. If you got poor-looking JPEGs, you must have compressed the hell out of them. A JPEG at the lowest compression setting is virtually indistinguishable from its Photoshop original.

If you surf by my gallery at http://www.interlog.com/~chrome you can see images where I've used High Quality compression, which is the second least compression level.

Cheers, Martin.

-- Anonymous, March 05, 1997

All of the above answers should help you, but let me make one more suggestion. After your scan your image,it's best to save it as a TIFF(uncompressed!) The reason is this--any time you save a compressed image, it loses a little detail each time you decompress it. This is true also for JPEGS. While you are working on it in Photoshop or some other photo enhancing software, you should save the image after ever couple of changes you make to it (make a COPY of the original TIFF--work on this copy), so you really don't want to lose any detail, right? Only after you get the image the way you want it should you save the copy as either a GIF or a JPEG (the web doesn't support TIFF's--too bad! --at least not yet). Most (all?) monitors only display at around 72 DPI anyway, so use that resolution. As far as scanning size, scan at the size which your intended output will be. If your want to output the image as an 8X10, scan at 8X10. If your scan a 5X7 and try to print it out at 8X10, the image won't be as sharp (for the same reason that a 110 film doesn't enlarge well to an 8X10--the image will be grainy. The larger scan will take up more disc space, but the results will be better. You can allways resize the image, but again--resize a COPY--keep the original!

-- Anonymous, April 15, 1997