Graphics Issues

There're a lot of issues: we're going to cover the basics.

Background

  • types of image files (vectoral/meta/object, bitmap)
  • Vector/Bitmap comparison

    File formats

  • GIF Graphics Interchange Format
  • GIF Anatomy of a GIF
  • Animated GIF, GIF 87a, 89a,interlacing and transparency
  • JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)
  • Others--Quicktime, MPEG (Motion Pictures Experts Group), Shockwave, FutureSplash

    Tools

  • Photoshop
  • GifBuilder (Mac),Gif Animator and others for PC, Gifsicle for Linux
    For those of you trying to do animated gifs, try looking here
  • The Others -- Macromedia Director, Adobe Premiere, FutureSplash Animator

    Compression techniques

  • lossy and non-lossy
  • RLE (BMP)
  • LZW (GIF,TIFF)
  • JPEG algorithm
  • Delta animation techniques

    Basic Photoshop tips

  • scanning
  • toolbox
  • saving
  • modes
  • selection tool
  • adjustments

    ICONS

  • Concerning icons.
  • Size is not an advantage where web imagery is concerned: those of you who have large or inappropriately scaled images should try to rework them with Photoshop.
  • Some, icons could benefit from a change of format (gif->jpg)
  • Some animation (107k) could be made smaller with different configuration of the GifBuilder (or other similar) software.
  • One can use the height=75 width=75 parameters of the IMG tag to force images down to the right scale, but this is not a good solution