Save as a GIF and save space in your hosting account!
By Courtnie
First, I want to clear up any confusion – an image you take with your digital camera should never be saved as a GIF (more on this below). This Tips and Tricks will teach you how and when to save as a GIF rather than a JPG.
What is a GIF?
GIF stands for Graphics Interchange Format.
“The format supports up to 8 bits per pixel, allowing a single image to reference a palette of up to 256 distinct colors chosen from the 24-bit RGB color space. It also supports animations and allows a separate palette of 256 colors for each frame. The color limitation makes the GIF format unsuitable for reproducing color photographs and other images with continuous color, but it is well-suited for simpler images such as graphics or logos with solid areas of color.” Wikipedia
As you can see from the text above, there are limitations when savings as a GIF. A GIF only supports up to 256 colors – this is why you should never save photos from your digital camera as a GIF, or any color photograph for that matter. Not only would a color photograph saved as a GIF look worse but the file size could also be larger than if you had of saved as a JPG, yikes! It really is all about learning to use the right format for the right images. Just a note, while GIFs can only have 256 colors – it can be any colors, you are not restricted to web safe colors.
See the choppy lines in the sky on the GIF?
GIFs work awesome for stuff like logos/text/computer drawings – images with few and solid colors. For stuff like logos saving as a GIF will result in a cleaner looking image as well as giving you the smallest file size.
Saving as a GIF is strongly recommended when you have simple images of text or basic computer drawings with just a few colors. Like I mentioned above, the file size is going to be smaller and the image will be cleaner. What do I mean by cleaner? Sometimes saving a JPG can result in a dirty looking image (see below). See how the image is kind of fuzzy around the text? If I save it as a GIF that clears right up, making the image/text much crisper – and again, the file size is smaller.
You can really see how “dirty” the JPG is when you are zoomed in.
It is not always recommended using GIFs for images with drop shadows or gradients – in this case you probably want to save as JPG or a PNG. Drop shadows and gradients use a lot of different colors to create the given effect. So when saving as a GIF they can result in a choppy or pixilated look because they contain more than the 256 colors (like the sunset image in the first article). It is hard, because sometimes a simple drop shadow or gradient on a basic image can save fine as GIF. Playing around with saving as different file formats really is the best way to get a feel for it.
GIF’s do come with two major advantages over other file types: animations and transparent backgrounds. By saving as a GIF you can create animations or save your graphic with a transparent background. PNG files allow for transparent backgrounds and as well offer better image quality, but file sizes generally tend to be larger.
What about BMP/Bitmap? We see a lot of members saving their images as BMP. The problem with Bitmap is that the file sizes are massive compared to GIFs making them not recommended for use on the web. By saving as an GIF instead, you can greatly reduce the size of your image, thus taking up less of your disk space and using less of your bandwidth. This is really important for all of our free hosting members. If you are looking to reduce the size of your website and you have Bitmap files, try saving them as GIF’s instead.
Above you see three image samples. The first of each sample is a BMP, the second is a GIF and the third is a JPG saved at 80% quality. We can see that in every example the file size of the BMPs are larger – and by a lot for such small images. Just think how big the file size for a larger BMP would be! Looking at the first two examples, the butterfly and the girl, we see that the GIF looks the same as the BMP for a small fraction of the file size of the BMP. Looking at the girl example again, we see that the JPG (80% quality) is even smaller than the GIF (but not by much). The third example is a color photograph of Las Vegas; here we see that the JPG is giving us the best quality and the smallest file size.
In conclusion, using GIFs whenever possible (in the right situations) is going to give you the smallest and best quality. If a GIF is not going to work for your image then save as an optimized JPG (reduce size and quality.) For most of our members out there, this should really help you in reducing the size of your websites. Of course other file formats are allowed; however, GIFs and JPGs offer the smallest file sizes and should work for most of your images when used correctly. PNGs (Portable Network Graphics) are also another common and good choice when saving images for the internet; look for more about PNGs in the future!
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