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    Best extension for an image when posting a snapshot to a forum

    Hi

    I use a lot of snap shots when I have a question and would like to post it to a forum

    Normally I save snapshot with jpg extension when I took a snap shot and upload images to tinypic or any other websites

    But the quality of images are not very good after uploading them.

    Any advise what would be the best extension when save such snapshot ?

    Thanks

    #2
    As far as I can see, TinyPic doesn't change your image unless it has a dimension bigger than 1600 pixels, so probably it's not their fault.

    To have a good quality it's important to choose wisely the image format.
    If the image is a photograph (or it's similar to it, i.e. it has lots of irregular gradients, no definite borders, few areas filled with the same color, ...) the best format is JPEG. Keep in mind that JPEG is a lossy format, i.e. to compress your image it loses some data and introduces some artifacts, that aren't usually visible if the image is a photo, but can become really disturbing if you use JPEG to compress "graphic" images. JPEG also features a "quality" setting (high settings=>better quality, but bigger image): for important photos I usually stay over 95, for web publishing I may move it down to 85-80. Under 75 often the artifacts are too visible, at least in my opinion.

    If your image, instead, is "graphic" (large areas filled with the same color or with a "regular" gradients, strong, definite borders, ...), which is almost always the case for screenshots, the best format to use is PNG. PNG uses a lossless compression algorithm, which means that no data is lost in the compression process. For "graphic" images it compresses much better than JPEG and it also yields much better results, because it doesn't introduce the fastidious artifacts in the image, which are most annoying to see in large areas of the same color and on borders.
    PNG also supports different color depths than 24 bpp (JPEG instead supports only 24bpp and 8bpp grayscale), so, if your image is just a piece of a larger screenshot, you may be able to squeeze it more by decreasing the color depth. To verify if this option is viable, you may want to check the total number of colors actually used in your image by using the "Information" dialog of IrfanView (press I).
    Last edited by MItaly; 22.08.2010, 11:21 AM.
    IrfanPaint developer
    The latest stable IrfanPaint version is the 0.4.13.70.
    IrfanPaint is now open-source (released under BSD license).

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      #3
      Thanks MItaly

      Most snapshots that I take are related to computers and programs and i believe those snapshots would be categorized under " graphic " not " photograph " therefore I believe we have to save them in PNG format rather than JPEG format.
      Last edited by zillah; 22.08.2010, 12:33 PM.

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        #4
        See this thread for more discussion
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