poll: do you use .png's? (graphic artists and web designers specifically)

[stev0]

just curious

personally i do, but i'm now being told that i shouldn't be using them.

 

[amnesiac]

Yes, because in many cases .png has great advantages over jpg and gif.

What kind of numbskull is telling you to not use png?

 

[AFB]

They take up a lot of space compared to JPG.

 

[stev0]

Originally posted by: amnesiac
Yes, because in many cases .png has great advantages over jpg and gif.

What kind of numbskull is telling you to not use png?

the teacher of my multimedia class.

edit: erm multimedia as in: webdesign (css only cause he won't teach us anything else... i guess everything else is a waste...) and director

he told me not to use them because older browsers don't support png's, iirc those same browsers wouldn't support css. maybe i'm wrong though

 

[SportSC4]

i use png whenever i make new graphics that would otherwise be in gif format.

 

[stev0]

Originally posted by: amdfanboy
They take up a lot of space compared to JPG.

my webserver has a lot of space and an ungodly amount of bandwidth, thus i could care less of the size. personally i'm all for quality, i would rather have a large site with quality graphics opposed to a small one with cruddy looking graphics

 

[Electrode]

Originally posted by: SportSC4
i use png whenever i make new graphics that would otherwise be in gif format.

 

[Amorphus]

Could someone outline the advantages of PNG other than generally very subtle and more or less unnoticeable quality preservation?

 

[CaseTragedy]

Originally posted by: stev0

Originally posted by: amdfanboy
They take up a lot of space compared to JPG.

my webserver has a lot of space and an ungodly amount of bandwidth, thus i could care less of the size. personally i'm all for quality, i would rather have a large site with quality graphics opposed to a small one with cruddy looking graphics

personally if the content of the site doesn't make high image quality a necessity--i'd opt for faster page loads.


-Case

 

[Amorphus]

Hey, I have an idea! Just change the file extension to .jpg, but leave the file as a png!

 

[AFB]

Originally posted by: CaseTragedy

Originally posted by: stev0

Originally posted by: amdfanboy
They take up a lot of space compared to JPG.

my webserver has a lot of space and an ungodly amount of bandwidth, thus i could care less of the size. personally i'm all for quality, i would rather have a large site with quality graphics opposed to a small one with cruddy looking graphics

personally if the content of the site doesn't make high image quality a necessity--i'd opt for faster page loads.


-Case

Its best to use them selectively.

 

[Ornery]

Originally posted by: Amorphus
Could someone outline the advantages of PNG other than generally very subtle and more or less unnoticeable quality preservation?

Typical Usage

I still don't see the point! My digital camera saves in JPG or TIFF. 99.9% of the images I take from the Web are JPG, and the balance are GIF. WTF do we need another format? It doesn't even handle animated images for crying out loud! :disgust:

 

[dawks]

I use them where the fit. IE5-6 on Windows doesnt display transparent PNGs properly (they work on IE on the Mac though).
On my site, I use PNG's for the navigations buttons, but for the screenshot of my desktop, I used GIF (it was like 25kb in PNG, or 8kb in GIF IIRC).

PNGs are lossless compression. Its similar to taking a BMP or other 'uncompressed' image format and Zipping it, no data is lost, but the file is smaller (and of course, files are un-zipped on the fly). PNGs work great on images where one or just few colors are used in a large portion of the image. For example, PNG is great for screenshots of text. I compressed a 1024x768 screenshot of a webpage down to something like 25kb, the same image in jpg was closer to 175kb and you could see lots of compression artifacts. The PNG was as clear as the original. On the other hand, I tried to compress a more complex photo I had taken this past weekend with PNG, the file size was 1.6megs, and only 180kb in JPG.

There are two versions of PNG, 8bit and 24bit. 24bit is of course true color. 8bit is GIF's counterpart. It works along the same lines of just using 256 or fewer colors, but doesnt support animation. I've noticed 8bit PNGs are just a tad smaller then the same image using GIF compression.

 

[gistech1978]

yes i dont have the plugin for LZW compression for a piece of software we use.

 

[amnesiac]

Here's a good site that explains the differences between JPG/PNG:

http://www.r1ch.net/img-formats/

 

[jjones]

Depends on the graphic. I use whatever format produces the best appearance and the smallest file size.; sometimes that happens to png, but most of the time I'll use jpg for photos and gif for simple graphics.

 

[fs5]

Originally posted by: jjones
Depends on the graphic. I use whatever format produces the best appearance and the smallest file size.; sometimes that happens to png, but most of the time I'll use jpg for photos and gif for simple graphics.

same here, there's a lot of people out there on 56k

 

[alkemyst]

Originally posted by: Amorphus
Could someone outline the advantages of PNG other than generally very subtle and more or less unnoticeable quality preservation?

The real reason for .png is that it's royalty-free. .gif was/is trying to form an action where they get a cut for each and every .gif.

Å

 

[beatle]

Originally posted by: alkemyst

Originally posted by: Amorphus
Could someone outline the advantages of PNG other than generally very subtle and more or less unnoticeable quality preservation?

The real reason for .png is that it's royalty-free. .gif was/is trying to form an action where they get a cut for each and every .gif.

Å

In addition, it allows for editing and saving without recompressing the file and introducing more compression artifacts, as jpg would do. You can do this with gif as well, but you're limited to 256 colors.

PNG is great for desktop shots.

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: stev0

Originally posted by: amnesiac
Yes, because in many cases .png has great advantages over jpg and gif.

What kind of numbskull is telling you to not use png?

the teacher of my multimedia class.

edit: erm multimedia as in: webdesign (css only cause he won't teach us anything else... i guess everything else is a waste...) and director

he told me not to use them because older browsers don't support png's, iirc those same browsers wouldn't support css. maybe i'm wrong though

If you need to work with old browsers, you're screwed. Netscape 4? :disgust:
GIFs offer more compatibility, but if you need greater than 256 colors, or are using any CSS, go for PNGs. IE4 (with updates) even supports them. Of course allow the page to work fine w/o images, too.
If you rally need compatibilit, your only opton is straight HTML 3.2 w/ GIFs or JPGs. t's good to make things work on crapp browsers, but you'll pull your hair out getting everything to work.