Joop wrote:
>Thanks a lot for the kickass reduction of my graphics load at
>http://www.pacificlithium.com (only the front door is uploaded, for now.
>The lawyers are still looking for nits in the text pages.)
>I would like some more feedback about the download qualities. Here from NZ
>most things from US based servers run a bit glacial, so I never get a good
>idea how it runs closer to the backbone.
You're welcome. Your page timed at about 40-45 seconds at 28.8..
There is a small gap between the right edge of the left row of graphics and
the big graphic. I haven't looked at the source, but my guesses would be
that you could clear that up by 1) adding cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 to
your table tag, and 2) making sure there are no line breaks between any
your table elements.
I can't remember what country you mentioned in a previous post, only that
you have some severe bandwidth problems. Another place you could pick up
some speed is by eliminating or reducing your company logo at the bottom of
the page. You could, for instance, make a *tiny* GIF of just the eye part
of your logo, using flat colors instead of textured or gradient color.
Then, use hypertext to say "Made by (eye logo) Imachination"
>I am not sure if your mail about Web Ready made it to the list.
>A lot of list members may like to hear about its usefulness or its
>shortcomings.
Actually, the program I used is called Adobe ImageReady.
Several week ago I posted several emails to the list raving about
ImageReady, so here's a quick overview:
Basically, my favorite feature is the high degree of control IR gives you
over your GIF color palette. Rather than just the usual 8, 16, 32, etc. bit
depths, it lets you choose any level in-between the standard bit depths.
Even more useful, is that it allows you to drap unwanted colors to the
trash. If, for instance, you have a nice array of shades of blue, but
there's a funky yellow pixel that came from outer space somewhere, you just
drag the yellow pixel to the trash.
Also, a tremendously useful feature is the ability to combine adaptive and
Web colors in the same image. This is handy if, for instance, I want to
combine a flat color, non-dithering logo with a photograph. With
ImageReady, you first select 'adaptive color' then use the eyedropper to
select any colors that you want to convert to the Web palette, then drag
their swatches to a Web color icon. I used this feature extensively
throughout http://www.endlessriveradventures.com/
On most of the photos, I reduced the color depth of the images to speed
load time, then converted the logo to Web color.
Normally when working with photos, I make JPEGs. But to maintain flat
colors in logos, I would have to use large, high quality JPEGs. If JPEGs
are an efficient size, the flat color logos collect artifacts which make
them look muddy. For comparison, check out
http://www.endlessriveradventures.com/links.html . I happened to build
this page during the period after our demo copy of ImageReady expired,
before we figured out how to fake it out so it would run, and before UPS
delivered our legit copy. See how muddy the logo is in contrast to the
crisp, sharp logos on the other pages?
You can also go to the Staff page
http://www.endlessriveradventures.com/staff.html and say hello to my son,
Craig Parks, the great looking guy at the bottom of the page :-)
I built the images for the portraits in Photoshop 4 since Photoshop 5's
typesetting feature is flawed. After doing a lot of work to bring Juliet's
and Craig's faces out of the shadows, I converted all these images to JPEG
in ImageReady. They range from 8k (Craig and Doug's portraits) to 15k
(Ken)--not bad for images this large. Craig and Doug's are smaller because
they mostly have only shades of green in their backgrounds. (It also helps
that this site is on WiseEarth, a very fast server.)
Another nifty feature is that you can easily convert images from Mac to
Windows gamma. You can also slice & dice images and automatically generate
the HTML. (Fireworks does the same thing, and you can create rollovers too.
However Fireworks rollovers aren't widely browser-compatible so we don't
use the Fireworks Javascript.) With IR you can easily see image dimensions
(width x height), weight, etc. without actually saving the image, and you
can easily compare the results of converting the same image to JPEG or GIF
formats. It also makes transparency and progressive formats. I'm not sure,
but I don't think it'll let you use a channel to create a transparency
mask, a handy Photoshop feature.
Dave loves IR's GIF animation features, but I haven't used them yet.
Also, I should point out that you can eventually figure out how to do most
of these same things in Photoshop. But in ImageReady, all are *much* easier
and faster. IR and Photoshop also work interactively together. IR's paint
tools are limited, so you can make your changes in Photoshop, then IR will
notify you of the change and ask permission to reload the updated image.
You can launch Photoshop from within Photoshop.
IR is *not* a replacement for Photoshop; instead, it's an essential partner
to it. There have been discussions on other lists about how some designers
are unhappy that Adobe didn't just add these features to Photoshop rather
than creating a second expensive program. Since our income is primarily
from print design, we are satisfied with the current approach. Photoshop
has a lot of features that are useless to Web designers, and vice-versa for
ImageReady. If all these features were rolled into one, Photoshop might end
up being so large, unwieldy and expensive that no one would want to use it.
We bought IR from MacWarehouse, which was offering it for $99.95 when
purchased on the same invoice as Photoshop 5. I believe the normal price is
$200. It is such a great timesaver that I would have happily paid the full
price if necessary.
Suz
Suzanne Stephens, Stephens Design; Ashland, Oregon
541-552-1192 http://www.KickassDesign.com/
CyberCircus Grand Prize Winners http://www.thecybercircus.com/
Web Page Design for Designers Design Resources: http://www.wpdfd.com/wpdres.htm
Clip Art: http://www.freeimages.com/artists/
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