Compression is Depression

[Harold]

Howdy folks! I know you are a knowledgable bunch in here so there must be a few of you that can explain compression techniques. I hear a lot of "too bad compression killed it" comments in the screenshots sections, so I like to find out how compression works and if there's a way to get a good mix between compression and quality ...

Any tips?

[lilley91]

one easy way to stop too much compression in a pic is to crop out of the picture the bits that you dont want, therefore there is les picture and the file size will be smaller, this will result in less compression to get it under 100K

Or, if you're using irfanview (thats the one i use so i am not sure about anything else) you can go into
Image >> Resize/Resample... >> then you can put in what dimensions you are looking for.
BUT
you must check on the bottom "preserve aspect ratio" otherwise you will come out with a picture that has been squashed or stretched!

after doping this the file size will be smaller and therefore less compression will be neded to bring it under 100K

this probably sounds like a lengthy explanation but it is very simple o do and is very effective.

hope this helps
james

[Tweek]

this probably sounds like a lengthy explanation but it is very simple o do and is very effective.

Effective, but it's not really a compression method. I find that, on 1152x864 desktop resolution, with 17" monitor, anything below 800x600 pixels just looks too small on the screen. I know for a fact that there will be a good deal of people with higher resolutions/smaller monitors than me, and so the size of the picture will be reduced ever more.

Whatever it may be, screenshots or photos, if I'm posting them online, I'll stick them at 800x600.


Back to the original question...

You may find that when shrinking an image in Irfanview, it tends to make the picture much softer than before. This can also give the impression of heavy compression (no rhyme intended!), what with the edges in the picture being less defined. The best thing to do, is to find a program that doesn't soften the images (i.e. Photoshop, or any freeware alternative), resize the image, then open it up in Irfanview and compress.