GIFs and other things.

[Alfryd]

.
So.
I was thinkin' that given the kind of bandwidth-scrum headaches his loyal readership have been giving the site of late, it might be advisable for Rich to consider .png format for posting his work. It's apparently superior to .gif in just about every way. The compression algorithm is lossless and well-suited to the medium- nice, crisp contrasts and lots of uniform colour in OOTS.
As an experiment, I was able to use a little utility called PNGOut to reduce 423's filesize by 25%. Just saving in Preview on the Mac cut down by 15%.
Observe. (http://home.graffiti.net/alfryd:graffiti.net/OOTS0423PNG.png)


And now for something completely different.

What if V were really fat? I was just thinking of some way you could easily androgenize the character while I was doing some sketches, and it occured to me that nothing can conceal underlying anatomy quite like mounds of turgid blubber.
V is quite short, and also seems wider the rest of the crew, yet able to cross zer legs during meditation, which argues against low dex. Perhaps a laughing-buddha-sort poise?
Messes with yer heads, don't it?


We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

I've sent Rich a PM on the subject, but he's ignoring me. And that does nothing to stoke my ego, which is the important thing here. :smallannoyed:

[Tolkien_Freak]

LOL, unanimous vote for PNG.

And V's width is because his robes don't conform to his body, not necessarily because he's fat.

[Mawhrin Skel]

SVG may be possible too, depending on the software Rich uses.

[Demented]

Trying it with just Adobe Photoshop, I can't get any better than 10%. Ah well, so long as the image is identical

[Fus.Weapon 1337]

I have Psion levels!

Only because I'm completely indifferent.

[TinSoldier]

I voted PNG (and I've suggested it to Thunt as well who uses JPEG) but I've read that Photoshop has sub-optimal handling of PNG compression.

Even though I use Paint.NET I have to resort to command line tools to shrink files down to optimal size. I don't think that many commercial tools can produce optimal PNGs yet.

[Fale]

Yea, I always wondered about that. I'm sure that Rich could save a great deal of bandwidth if all the images were converted to PNG, and even more when compressed with PNGOUT.

It'll also be good for us readers. Faster loading time and a much, much better colour range.


SVG may be possible too, depending on the software Rich uses.

Yes, but unfortunately many browsers don't support that yet.

[xyzchyx]

Indeed. PNG supports 24-bit color, while gifs only support an 8-bit palette of up to 256 colors. Although it's probably true that a stick figure webcomic doesn't need truecolor, it certainly wouldn't hurt... especially since PNG is fairly consistently smaller in filesize than GIF anyways.

Shouldn't this question be on the "board and site issues" forum?

[phlip]

I feel I must clarify xyzchyx's post...

PNG can have 24-bit colour, and it can be smaller than GIF... but this is generally "choose one"...

A PNG is generally smaller than a GIF of the same picture at the same colour depth, but upping the depth will increase the size (since there's more info to store).

Incidentally, The GIMP seems to output near-optimal PNGs most of the time... I've tried running pngcrush on the PNGs outputted by The GIMP and it rarely has any noticeable effect.

Not saying that Rich should change his workflow to use The GIMP, just saying that a program with good PNG does exist.

[Mawhrin Skel]

[SVG]Yes, but unfortunately many browsers don't support that yet.
Adobe has had an SVG plugin for Idiot Exploiter Internot Exploder Internet Explorer for a few years, and there are other plugins. It's also possible to have fallbacks - if a browser does not support SVG, it can fall back to PNG, and then to GIF.

Granted, the different SVG engines are not necessarily compatible, but we're not asking for anything complicated.

Edit: Support:
http://wiki.svg.org/Viewer_Implementations

OOTS' art style is clearly conducive to vector graphics. Given the option of falling back to other formats, IMHO the only reason not to offer SVG is if Rich's software won't export it (or won't export it well). I'm not going to suggest Rich changes software.

[The Giant]

I've sent Rich a PM on the subject, but he's ignoring me. And that does nothing to stoke my ego, which is the important thing here. :smallannoyed:

You sent a PM on Thursday...and you posted this on Saturday. I think you have an unrealistic view of my ability to read and respond to messages. However, in the future, sending a PM twice and starting both with the phrase, "You should really be posting your work in .png format," is not likely to persuade me to do so. I don't respond well to people telling me what to do.

------------

However, that aside, PNGs are not a viable option at this time. Converting my Illustrator files to a PNG at the 8-bit color depth introduces dithering to the images, and I already set the GIFs to avoid dithering whenever possible (I sometimes need to use it if I added a blend, such as when the Monster in the Darkness was in Xykon's lair). And using Photoshop, an 8-bit PNG of OOTS #424 is only 224 KB, certainly not worth the trouble over the 252 KB GIF that went on the site. Switching to PNG's 24-bit color depth, and even that minor size benefit vanishes. OOTS #424 as a 24-bit PNG would clock in at 568 KB, more than double in size.

Using Preview for the Mac to convert images is a waste of time. Preview converts Illustrator files to PDF when it opens them instead of rasterizing them, and it does not do so particularly well. It usually screws up the various transparency and overprint settings I build into the Illustrator version. And if I run it through Photoshop, then save in Preview as a PNG, we're back to a 580 KB PNG file for OOTS #424.

But more to the point, I already NEED to run it through Photoshop for various reasons, such as converting it from CMYK to RGB properly. (I produce the comic in CMYK, for the book printings.) I don't trust any other software for this task. So taking on another step is...another step. Your "experiment" was taking the GIF and converting it to a PNG, not taking the original and converting it to a PNG--and at that point, I've already introduced any loss of graphics into the image anyway. If I need to have the loss associated with GIF in my file, I'm going to stick with what I'm doing now. I don't have time to learn a new program or research which is the best to make PNGs (and no offense to anyone, but I can't take anyone's word for it that Program X works great, I need to see it for myself). Hell, I don't have time to be making this post, I'm putting off work just to respond to this.

All of which is moot anyway, since the scripts that display the comic won't work with PNGs without being modified, and I'm not about to ask the fine webfolks to do that right now. Frankly, I have a list as long as my arm of tweaks to the site that need to be implemented long before this, because a day of their professional time actually costs me more than a month of bandwidth bills (and I am programming illiterate). Rob and Jamie asked for us to use PNGs for Erfworld, and we had to request that they save it as a JPG because of the scripting issue.

So until Photoshop spontaneously begins making better PNGs and my programmers have finished every improvement I have in mind for the site and are willing to tinker with the existing code pro bono, don't expect to see PNGs for OOTS.

[I don't know]

2 cents worth:

In my experience with photoshop, png8s are usually better sizewise when you have more than 16 colours - the more colours, the more likely it is that png is the better choice. I don't see why you get dithering, though - I never do.

Svg should definitely be the thing of choice in a couple of years, though. Unless Rich doesn't want readers to have access to vector versions of his comics.

[phlip]

It's good to know you've considered PNG... that's all anyone can ask. I'm not going to try and convince you otherwise. Though, I still think I should clear up a misconception you have:

Your "experiment" was taking the GIF and converting it to a PNG, not taking the original and converting it to a PNG--and at that point, I've already introduced any loss of graphics into the image anyway. If I need to have the loss associated with GIF in my file, I'm going to stick with what I'm doing now.
GIF and PNG are both lossless formats - compressing an image with GIF and then recompressing it as PNG doesn't lose a generation. The only losses caused by saving to GIF are the drop to 8-bit colour, and that would happen anyway saving to PNG (there's no real need for 24-bit colour in OotS, and, as you say, it makes the files a lot bigger).

So saving as an 8-bit GIF and converting to PNG should have no more loss than just saving it directly as a 8-bit PNG... indeed, the final images should be identical.

The dithering issue is odd... if I knew anything about Photoshop I'd probably know what option needs to be pressed to get it to work right, but I don't... it probably is just a case of an option somewhere needing tweaking.

As for the site code... I'd be willing to look at that for you... but I'd be surprised if you'd want Random McInterneterson poking around in your code...

[Totally Guy]

There has only been one comic that I have considered as noticeably a gif. Comic 105 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0105.html).

One out of four hundred and then some is not bad.

[Demented]

The dithering issue is odd... if I knew anything about Photoshop I'd probably know what option needs to be pressed to get it to work right, but I don't... it probably is just a case of an option somewhere needing tweaking.

You can save images to No Dither.
Problem is, if there are images where he needs dither, his Photoshop version might not save PNG and GIF the same way, and is much more aggressive in everything it dithers when it saves PNG files. I wouldn't know about such things, though—my photoshop version works quite fine. /puffchest

[Grod_The_Giant]

I have Psion levels!


high five, bro!

[I don't know]

PS has different settings for dither. Pattern, noise and... the one I don't remember. If you want dither - don't choose pattern unless you really want it to look like it was drawn in windows 3.1 paint :p

Experiment with the different ways PS has of assembling the pallette (perceptual, web, et.c.) and the two other ways of dithering.

[Alfryd]

You sent a PM on Thursday...and you posted this on Saturday. I think you have an unrealistic view of my ability to read and respond to messages. However, in the future, sending a PM twice and starting both with the phrase, "You should really be posting your work in .png format," is not likely to persuade me to do so. I don't respond well to people telling me what to do.
Ah. My apologies.

Your "experiment" was taking the GIF and converting it to a PNG, not taking the original and converting it to a PNG--and at that point, I've already introduced any loss of graphics into the image anyway.

PNG can have 24-bit colour, and it can be smaller than GIF... but this is generally "choose one"...
Very true, but if you're producing GIFs anyway I still don't see the drawback. And Preview seems to work just fine converting those.

I don't have time to learn a new program or research which is the best to make PNGs (and no offense to anyone, but I can't take anyone's word for it that Program X works great, I need to see it for myself). Hell, I don't have time to be making this post, I'm putting off work just to respond to this.
Much appreciated. On the subject of learning programs, I might be able to whip up a small drag'n'drop utility or script for PNGout that would streamline things without resorting to the command line.

...a day of their professional time actually costs me more than a month of bandwidth bills (and I am programming illiterate).
Damn.


Shouldn't this question be on the "board and site issues" forum?
I thought it was reasonably specific to OOTS, since I honestly thought .jpg was better suited to Erf.

And V's width is because his robes don't conform to his body, not necessarily because he's fat.
Yeah, looking back, it seems to be a standard look for robe-clad characters. No official word on the subject?

[fwiffo]

Much appreciated. On the subject of learning programs, I might be able to whip up a small drag'n'drop utility or script for PNGout that would streamline things without resorting to the command line.

Irfanview (my favorite graphic viewer and basic graphic manipulation program) has a PNGOUT plug-in which lets you save images in PNG and control a lot of PNG parameters via a visual interface. But, since Giant doesn't really want to do, it is kinda moot.

[xyzchyx]

And using Photoshop, an 8-bit PNG of OOTS #424 is only 224 KB, certainly not worth the trouble over the 252 KB GIF that went on the site. Switching to PNG's 24-bit color depth, and even that minor size benefit vanishes. OOTS #424 as a 24-bit PNG would clock in at 568 KB, more than double in size.Woah! If that's what photoshop is producing for PNG, then photoshop definitely isn't doing PNG right. And I can certainly agree that if your tools aren't really supporting the format well, it's not worth your time or effort to worry about it.

In actuality, oots424 as an 8-bit png should come in under 200k, and as a 24-bit png should be approximately 270k.


However, that aside, PNGs are not a viable option at this time.That's a good enough reason for me. Thanks for at least considering it.

[Mordaedil]

I definitely have Psion levels and absorbing the comics and storyline directly through the weave to read is more than enough to enjoy it for me.

Although PNG files are not always better than GIF. Sure, they both have transparency, GIF has certain limitations in graphics, but Illustrator is a hard program to work with for images. GIF also support animations, which PNG does not.

[Alfryd]

I definitely have Psion levels and absorbing the comics and storyline directly through the weave to read is more than enough to enjoy it for me.
I'm so happy someone got the oblique reference.