Image on Net

Some years ago, a lot of specialists did emphasis the importance of image for the Internet. A few even suggested to use low quality image to meet the traffic of Internet. To make the image flat and dull just for the inefficiency of the Internet is definitely a fallacy. This self-destructive idea is a pity for imaging because it should be the duty of those network providers to meet the growing demand of images on net. Something they knew for a long time but failed to meet in time.

Of course, the downloading will be affected by a lot of factors, including the file size, MODEM, ISP, district network, regional backbone etc. With the fast development, it would not be easy to solve all problems. Broad bandwidth and wireless will be the definite candidates for the future, if not today.

Besides websites, personal or commercial application will need the transmission of images on net. The balance between image quality and downloading speed is an ambiguous choice. For commercial websites, the most important requirement is to let visitors seeing the whole page fast for business. The sacrifice of image quality is a natural choice. In this case, the best is to use strong colors and high contrast.

The image quality problem can be checked from following images:

In comparing Image 1 & 2, a quick glimse may find Image 2 more appealing, Image 1 is in True Color and PNG format, Image 2 is in 256 Color and GIF format. Size of Image 1 is 213K and Image 2 is 71K. The choice of Image 2 may be correct.

Image 3 & 4 is the area of the face of Image 1 & 2, we can see Image 3 has excellent gradation and high image quality, and Image 4 has patchy gradation and low image quality. This is because the area of face in a full frame of Image 1 & 2 is very small and not easy to see clearly. If the image is major in gradation or texture, GIF should not be considered for its limitation.

Image on Net P.1/2