RE: GIFs vs JPEGs

I don't recall the original post to which you are referring.
GIFs and JPGs each have their own places. If you have 256 or fewer
colors, GIFs will normally be smaller (in my experience - although
it depends on the quality setting for the JPG), plus GIFs are lossless
meaning they don't get the funny artifacts that you see in JPG files.
This is important for crisp text, etc. However, for photographic
images, JPG is by far the best, due to the fact that it can handle the
range of colors, plus the artifacts in JPG don't really show up much
within photographs, where the colors and intensities tend to be
smoother variations and not hard changes. Of course, there is also
the obvious thing that GIFs can support animation, if desired.
My personal preference is to use GIF so long as the colors are
sufficient, although each image must be considered individually.
Any images with crisp edges will suffer under JPG.

Gary


> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-hwg-basics(at)hwg.org [mailto:owner-hwg-basics(at)hwg.org]On
> Behalf Of Sharon Elix
> Sent: Tuesday, October 05, 1999 3:49 PM
> To: hwg-basics(at)hwg.org
> Cc: abhay(at)kushwaha.com
> Subject: GIFs vs JPEGs
>
>
> Abhay
>
> Quite a few posts ago, you listed the three occasions only, you
> would choose
> GIF over JPEG. I'm wondering if a fourth situation is possible.
>
> For a site I'm working on (which unfortunately is currently only on the
> internal development server), I have a background vertical JPEG.
> It consists
> of a coloured block at the top followed by a pure white column. On top of
> this, I've placed a photographic image with a 3D effect. Not sure of the
> effect of placing a JPEG image with a white border on top of a background
> white JPEG, I converted the photographic image to a GIF with a transparent
> background (thanks to my newly acquired knowledge of the joys of
> transparency
> with Photoshop).
>
> Putting a white bordered JPEG, on top of a white background JPEG,
> looks fine
> on my system. However, the white background JPEG appears spotty on older
> systems/browsers, I believe due to support of a smaller range of colours.
> Anyway, I thought the GIF option was best. Let me know if this is
> not the case
> and there really are only three occasions when one should use GIF... ;-)
>
> Cheers
> Sharon
>
> ____________________________________________________________________
> Get your own FREE, personal Netscape WebMail account today at
http://webmail.netscape.com.

HTML: hwg-basics mailing list archives, maintained by Webmasters @ IWA