When viewing web pages, your customers are at
the mercy of their browsers and their computing
platforms. Windows and Macintosh have very different
color palettes, and this can affect the way your graphics
will appear. There is a standard web palette of 216
colors that will appear the same on either platform.
There are other ways of managing image colors that can
affect the way they load. The four images that follow
look similar but are very different to your browser.
 |
 |
This example was saved with a pallet
of millions of colors. This approach is excellent
for photo-realistic material but not appropriate
for this banner.
File size: 9,000 bytes. |
|
|
 |
This example was also saved with a
pallet of millions of colors, but with
compression to make the file smaller.
Unfortunately, this type of file compression
causes the image to "smear" around the
letters.
File size: 3,000 bytes. |
|
 |
This example was saved in a different
file format with fewer colors. However, the
colors are not "web safe" and may look
blotchy on some computers (simulated above).
Also, the color pallet has not been optimized for
this design.
File size: 4,000 bytes. |
|
 |
In this example the colors fit into
the 216 "web-safe" colors, and the has
pallet been optimized for this particular image.
It looks very similar to the first image above,
yet is 22% of the size.
File size: 2,000 bytes. |
|
|
The example below shows another way graphics
can be adjusted to download more quickly. The picture is
divided in half, with different graphic settings for each
half. The left half uses settings that would result in a
total file size of 98,000 bytes; the right half's
settings would result in a total file size of 20,000
bytes. While there is a small difference in visible
quality, the left-side version would require nearly 5
times more download time.
 |
 |
best
quality, larger file
(98,000 bytes) |
medium
quality, smaller file
(20,000 bytes) |
|
