How can the quality of digital images be maximized while minimizing the file size and storage requirements?
• Make the picture smaller by cropping or shrinking. Reducing a image by half reduces the memory requirement by a factor of four. For example, a 240 X 320 image in “millions” of colors (24 bit) takes only 240 X 320 X 3 = 230400 bytes (230 K). Even a modest 30% reduction in image size reduces the memory requirements by half. • Save in a compressed file format, such as JPEG format for photographic images or GIF format for line drawings, graphs, and cartoons. For example, a 480 X 640 color photographic image might take up nearly one megabyte if saved without compression, but if saved in JPEG format might take only 40 or 50 Kbytes of disk space (depending on the complexity of the image). A 475 X 323 pixel KidPix drawing would take 151 Kbytes if saved without compression but only 6.5 Kbyes as a GIF file. Those are big savings! • Adjust the compression settings of JPEG photographic images. When you save a JPG image, you will usually have some way of adjusting the amount of image compression.
