© 1996 by Matt Giwer, 1/22
To GIF or to JPG
After you can guarantee image
quality the next concern is to get an image file as small as
possible to minimize transmission time. Until fractal
compression shows up (currently suggesting two to four times
better than JPG) in all browsers, JPG (JPEG for non-IBM folk,
unless you are Win95, unless ... to hell with it. You know who
you are,) is the best current best choice ... but not quite.
A couple of rules of thumb
here.
- When the size of the uncompressed image gets below something
like 5k, you have to test the image in both GIF and JPG to see
which is the smallest.
- When the image has lots of sharp transitions such as text
with one color on another color, test both formats no matter what
the size.
If you have any other rules of
thumb, please contact me.