Page 29 - DCAP109_GRAPHIC_TOOLS

Graphic Tools

Notes verify you’re capturing the largest, highest quality images possible. Check your camera’s
instruction manual to find out where the image quality option is in your camera’s menu system.
The highest quality setting is usually labeled “Large”.
One thing you need to abstain from doing whenever plausible is re-saving JPEG files repeatedly..
Every time to open and re-save it, you’ll add significantly more compression to the image, and
it doesn’t take long for things to get ugly. Once the picture part is gone, you can never get it back.

.GIF

The GIF file format, which stands for Graphics Interchange Format, has been around even
longer than JPEG, and its the format of choice for web illustrations. Notice I stated web
illustrations, not web photographs. GIF records can just show up to 256 shades, far less than the
many colors would have been wise to convincingly duplicate a photographic picture (and far
less still than the millions of shades backed by the JPEG organization).
In terms of web design, however, the GIF arrangement is basic. The files are decently suited for
site page layouts, banners and buttons, especially if they contain large areas of solid color. All
major web browsers support GIF files and their small file sizes load quickly on the screen. GIF
also allows web designers to create simple animations. One major advantage GIF has over the
JPEG arrangement, and an additional reason for why its so reason why it’s so essential for web
designers is that it upholds transparency, even though it upholds a single level of transparency,
significance a pixel is either transparent or its definitely not. This can result in harsh edges
around graphics if the edge color contrasts from the color of the background it’s placed over. For
higher quality transparency effects, a better choice is the PNG format.

.PNG

PNG (Portable Network Graphics) was originally meant to replace the GIF format (PNG also
stands for “PNG not GIF”). That never happened and GIF files are still in wide use today, yet the
PNG format improves upon the GIF format in nearly every way. It even improves on the JPEG
format. While JPEG files support 24-bit color (16.7 million colors), PNG files support up to 48-bit
color, giving us more than 1 billion possible colors! That may sound impressive, but even JPEG
files support more colors than the human eye can see, so any real world differences between 24
and 48-bit color are minimal at best.
The biggest advantage over JPEG is that PNG is a lossless file format, meaning that even though
it still compresses images to reduce file size, the compression method it uses does not result in
a loss of image quality. You can even re-save the same PNG file multiple times without degrading
its quality, whereas JPEG files look worse each time you re-save them. With over a billion
possible colors and lossless compression, PNG is a great choice for saving digital photos as high
quality originals. The downside, though, is that PNG is not as widely supported as the JPEG
format, and PNG does not support CMYK color, which means commercial printers can’t use
them. For everyday viewing and sharing of your digital photos, the JPEG format is still more
useful and convenient, even if the image quality isn’t as good.

PNG’s main advantage over GIF files, besides far exceeding GIF’s 256 color limit, is that it can
reproduces full 256 levels of transparency compared with GIF’s single level, giving us smooth
transitions around edges without having to worry about matching the edges with the background
color. PNG files are also usually smaller than GIF files, so they’ll load even faster in a web
browser. Unfortunately, older web browsers may not support the PNG format, which means
GIF is still the safest choice when browser compatibility is your main concern. Also, while GIF
supports animations, PNG does not. PNG files are most often used in multimedia programs like
Flash as well as Keynote and PowerPoint presentations.

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