P-N-Gs, I love you so, but you're too big, so you must go!

[Schot 407]

Just a quick heads up that I've turned off the ability to upload PNGs, and coming from me, that's pretty funny. Back in the day when browsers turned up their noses at PNG images and simply would not allow them to function, I was scouring the net for ways to force them to work on our forum via javascript hacks and whatnot. PNGs were my "big thing" then because PNGs allowed for images with partial transaprency. This was excellent for skinning. The cost of using such an ability was very large file sizes. With regards to skinning this was a minor problem because the difference was affordable based on the fact that skinning images were tiny.

Flash forward to present day complete adoption of PNG by all browsers and suddenly fullscreen PNG(-24) images are common place. This however is a downside. PNG really shouldn't be used for screenshots and such because there's really no way to get them down to a reasonable file size when compared to JPG or GIF, (or PNG-8 which is like a GIF). It's 3 times larger, or more, than JPG and sometimes 10 times more than GIF where appropriate to use GIF. The basis for concern primarily is because we only have so much space to contain all our forum and wiki assets. I did manage to shave off a couple gigabytes of extra space for us recently which is great but I'm planning for the future. Over the years we've had growth spurts, thanks to all of you being as excited about wiki work as we are, and we have plenty more growth spurts to come. Sacred 3 for example. And yes, it's coming, heh. No word on when yet... The other important reason is the advent of the mobile. With mobiles we want as streamlined an experience as possible. This means we want our pages to be as low in file size as possible so that readers aren't aggravated by load times aaaaaand, for those using data plans, so their mobile bills are as low as possible too!

It's with a heavy sigh that I throw the switch that ends the life of PNG on SacredWiki. I can make occasional exceptions if need be but we'll be using JPG and GIF from now on.

Simplest way I can think of is to use the built in Windows tool "Snipping Tool" to capture/crop/save whatever it is on your screen to save as JPG or GIF. Or to use Irfanview with the Save for Web RIOT plugin. If you use Irfanview then 70-80% JPG is fine.

 

[Flix 5,116]

Edited February 9, 2014 by Flix

[gogoblender 3,069]

lol

aww, Schot so harsh with that data - starve whip on us!

gogo

[Ysne58 236]

I much prefer Fraps to Irfanview. It takes them in BMP format. Then I just open with paint, crop as necessary and then save as JPG.

[Sneak0r 33]

/sign!

I pretty much don't like the idea to cut off our main page just to be compatible with mobile devices. How does pages like wikipedia handle that out? I'm pretty sure all mobile devise users are forwarded to an other page like "de.m.wikipedia.org" on my iphone and without "m" on my desktop) and there is the mobile device compatible stuff for them. Dunno how that works exactly but we work for the sacred wiki pages that ppl view on there desktops, right? So why should we care about that?

I srsly can't get the point for that. Hope you can explain me that a bit more

Maybe we can get some extra free gigs on the server, that is the only point I understand that far.

But I have some pngs that ARE smaller or has the same size than the same jpg on my hdd.

 

€dit checked out sacredwiki.org on my iphone and got the whole page viewed. So we actually have no extra portal/pages for mobile devices.

I'm pretty sure that noone realy wants to do the work to put a complete new sacredwiki onto the net just for mobile users...

But I don't like the idea to cut back everything, sorry.

Edited October 20, 2013 by Sneak0r

[Schot 407]

I can understand your feeling Sneak0r. It's about server space and our host is very strict on this. He already gave us extra about a year or so ago and with the plan we are on now we are already beyond what anyone else would be allowed. Thanx to gogo's talent with tha talky talky. The problem is that PNG is the most difficult to optimize so we tend to end up with very large upload sizes. The common PNG is designed to be a lossless quality image that can not be compressed like a jpg can. So that's a brief reason why I disabled png.

 

The bigger point though is that there actually isn't any reason why we need to use png. jpg and gif are more than enough. Is there a reason you have that we need png?

[SX255 630]

Only if you need a picture with alpha/transparency and 24-bit visual quality. PNG beats JPG and GIF in that.

God help you if you use the original uncompresed BMP or TGA.

[Schot 407]

That was my thinking as well when we began many years ago. That was also before we had a custom skin and everything was white, haha. Since that time I've promised never to change the background color of the content area which means any image will look good on the wiki as long as it's outer color/transparency is made to match the wiki background color. #F0E0BE. As for 24-bit visual quality I used to be an avid supporter but in the past couple years I've found it's possible to get near identical quality using jpg and sometimes gif is even better.

[Sneak0r 33]

That was my thinking as well when we began many years ago. That was also before we had a custom skin and everything was white, haha. Since that time I've promised never to change the background color of the content area which means any image will look good on the wiki as long as it's outer color/transparency is made to match the wiki background color. #F0E0BE. As for 24-bit visual quality I used to be an avid supporter but in the past couple years I've found it's possible to get near identical quality using jpg and sometimes gif is even better.

 

Now I understand why you don't like all my backgroundless images and why you put that colored borders around the runes...

And tbh I did not know that the webserver runs outa space. Maybe that information was very much important before I start working on here. We could've saved alot of time on picture editing and readding and deleting.

Edited October 22, 2013 by Sneak0r

[Schot 407]

Actually I LOVE small PNG icons. In terms of server space they don't make a lot of difference. More to the point though is that for small icons gifs are very efficient for small images with few number of colours. Yes! We have a limit that we must always be watching for. Well... That I must always be watching for, lol. So every once in a while this conversation comes up as it has over the years in different topics.

 

The more important issue is when PNG is used for large images. If you look at tortured soul image you'll see what I mean. It's a 467 KB PNG. If it were saved in JPG it would be about 80 KB. Add all the big PNG images on the wiki up and that will end up in a lot of disk space used. In addition... The images that are saved in PNG aren't providing a significant benefit. Personally, I only find PNG beneficial when the image is a round or curved shape and needs to be put on top of a multi-color background. On the wiki that only happens with Templates.

 

We live and learn.

[gogoblender 3,069]

This was a solid decision. the Wiki now's the best it's ever looked, and this "diet" you've put the site on for sllimming down all the space is really gonna help out with space for Sacred 3, as well as, probably most importantly, great guidelines and in-place strategies and policy for the wiki team that's working in those future years.

 

 

 

gogo

[Silver_fox 397]

A bit of necromancy with an old thread...

Now I have a zombie topic to ask one question: With that anti-PNG campaign that you a running, what should be done about existing files of that extention? In the days past I was as entusiastic about them as Schot was (if not more) so I'm guilty of bringing quite a few weighty PNGs to the wiki. I still have all the files I was working with, so I can resave those images into slim JPGs and reupload, if you'd like me to.

[Flix 5,116]

A bit of necromancy with an old thread...

Now I have a zombie topic to ask one question: With that anti-PNG campaign that you a running, what should be done about existing files of that extention? In the days past I was as entusiastic about them as Schot was (if not more) so I'm guilty of bringing quite a few weighty PNGs to the wiki. I still have all the files I was working with, so I can resave those images into slim JPGs and reupload, if you'd like me to.

 

I'd be interested to hear the response to this too.

 

Schot briefly set me and Knuckles on a project like this, a few months ago. We cut down several hundred MB of space over a couple days, but we didn't get them all.

 

I actually remember Schot stopping us because he said it might be possible for him to do a batch-convert on all the PNG/large Wiki images, and re-upload them all at once, which would save time. I don't know if that ever came to anything.

[Silver_fox 397]

As far as batch-converting goes, it surely was not completed for PNGs (at least the ones I brought up are still there), but I wonder if something along those lines was applied to some JPGs. I was checking set pages for Mutation sets - main pictures are still the same large PNGs but JPGs that were used to display stats of Glimborin's Garments of Mutation: http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:Glimborin%27s_Garments_of_Mutation and some others look distorted. I'd like somebody else to check them, but in the images displayed for me the amount of JPG artifacts and color noise is so big the text is not entirely clear. Versions of these images that I have sitting on my hard drive don't look like that, so I guess it might be a result of some optimization done by the wiki. Pages that were done with GIF images for stats (like Arbereth's Garments of Mutation: http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:Arbereth%27s_Garments_of_Mutation) look perfectly fine, but JPG ones are a bit messy. This is another reason why I thought of re-uploading some images - as GIFs are both smaller and better-looking, I'd rather make all set pages have them.

 

By the way, why is the forum refusing to link those pages when I try to insert the links using 'Sacred 2 Wiki' tag? I know that ' (%27) symbol is what breaks it, but I have a feeling it worked better before.

Edited February 7, 2014 by Silver_fox

[Flix 5,116]

I was checking set pages for Mutation sets - main pictures are still the same large PNGs but JPGs that were used to display stats of Glimborin's Garments of Mutation: http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:Glimborin%27s_Garments_of_Mutation and some others look distorted. I'd like somebody else to check them, but in the images displayed for me the amount of JPG artifacts and color noise is so big the text is not entirely clear.

 

They look pretty good to me, and compared to most item stats pics I've seen on the Wiki they look great. But I take your point. A lot of what's on the uniques pages makes me cringe every time I browse through them:

http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:Dwendorik%27s_Vanquisher

http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:Seyr%27s_Klinge

http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:Raging_Ire

http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:Skullsplitter

[Silver_fox 397]

I checked those pages you listed and started to suspect something... So I went through some of Unique listings (such as All Classes Uniques and High Elf Uniques for comparison) and noticed two things that surprised me quite a lot:

 

1. I swear to the God above, these pictures didn't look that bad two years ago! Granted, they weren't perfect, but they were readable. This quality change is a strange thing to notice as the pictures are obviously the same. At first I thought I was mistaken and my memory fails me, but I checked CM patch Unique page - and the pictures there don't match the quality that was uploaded. What's worse, filesizes don't seem any smaller than they were, so quality change gives us nothing positive.

 

2. There are quite a few pictures that still look perfectly clear and a nice as you please - Slicing Scythe and Shugrok's Illusion for example. All of those pages have either PNG (as in the first case) or GIF (as in the second) for stat pictures.

 

Summing up: What is wrong with JPGs nowadays? Does it mean that we should remake Unique, Legendary and Set item pages using GIF files in order for the stats to be clearly readable? After all those are the pages that get a lot of visitors (maybe the most visited on the wiki) so they should look good enough.

[gogoblender 3,069]

A lot of what's on the uniques pages makes me cringe every time I browse through them:

omgod, owch

so much stuff and pix that need updates... in those days, so many peeps were uploading to the Wiki, and it was enormously important to have as much cataloged as possible Asap

 

 

gogo

[Schot 407]

Oh boy. I got a lotta esplainin to do! Somewhere around here I posted about a fairly extensive batch process of all our jpgs. Since it was a batch not all the jpgs benefited but most did. We had a lot of jpgs that were not saved for web but rather in the old "save as" kind of jpg. Not sure if that makes sense... But in the end I managed to reduce space used by over 2GB. In hosting/server terms, that's a lot. JPG is great. I just needed to optimize the ones we had. It was the biggest easiest impact I could make in terms of saving space. PNG was the next step but I can't batch process PNG since it's a near lossless compression. The only benefit would be to replace png with jpg but in order to maintain contribution credit I would need editors to update their own images. There's a lot of details. I'll try to find that other topic I posted some time ago about all this.

[Schot 407]

As far as batch-converting goes, it surely was not completed for PNGs (at least the ones I brought up are still there), but I wonder if something along those lines was applied to some JPGs. I was checking set pages for Mutation sets - main pictures are still the same large PNGs but JPGs that were used to display stats of Glimborin's Garments of Mutation: http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:Glimborin%27s_Garments_of_Mutation and some others look distorted. I'd like somebody else to check them, but in the images displayed for me the amount of JPG artifacts and color noise is so big the text is not entirely clear. Versions of these images that I have sitting on my hard drive don't look like that, so I guess it might be a result of some optimization done by the wiki. Pages that were done with GIF images for stats (like Arbereth's Garments of Mutation: http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:Arbereth%27s_Garments_of_Mutation) look perfectly fine, but JPG ones are a bit messy. This is another reason why I thought of re-uploading some images - as GIFs are both smaller and better-looking, I'd rather make all set pages have them.

 

By the way, why is the forum refusing to link those pages when I try to insert the links using 'Sacred 2 Wiki' tag? I know that ' (%27) symbol is what breaks it, but I have a feeling it worked better before.

Can you link to jpgs that you suspect looked better in the past please? I have all images backed up from before I ran the batch process. I'm curious about how much change occured.

 

As for the Sacred 2 Wiki' tag problem... It's our forum software. It happened somehwere along the way of updating the forum with official patches. Even on the dev site for our forum software this function is broken. I made a biiiiig public stink about it on their customer forum, lol. A real big stinky public display of their... FAILURE.

[Flix 5,116]

So you DID run a batch convert, I thought so.

 

Schot, the 4 I listed in post #15 look especially bad, you might check those to start with.

[Silver_fox 397]

The only benefit would be to replace png with jpg but in order to maintain contribution credit I would need editors to update their own images.

 

That is exactly why I resurrected this thread. I'll do it for the sets and quest dialogs would take care of themselves as we apply the new Template. I know there were other contributors who won't do it as they are not currently around, but I can at least clean up after myself. Might as well replace JPGs to GIFs for item stat images - they are smaller and look the same if not better.

 

Can you link to jpgs that you suspect looked better in the past please? I have all images backed up from before I ran the batch process. I'm curious about how much change occured.

 

The one that tipped me, personally, was this one:

http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/File:Megalcarwen_bonus.jpg

Not a horrendous image, but quite messy and reported filesize is 89KB.

The one I have on harddrive looks like this:

The filesize is... 88KB! Means, no space saved.

Not that I encourage you to run a restoration with any of my files, as I intend to replace them anyway (GIFs for such images weight about 8-9KB and that IS some improvement).

 

The ones Flix listed were exceptionally hurt by the conversion - mostly because they were quite bad to begin with and the change made them illegible. In fact, I'm thinking about undertaking a project to make new images for Unique items - for some of those picture replacing them is the only way to make a difference. Not sure how good of idea it is though, but if you won't be able to do a thing about the current quality in may be necessary.

Edited February 9, 2014 by Silver_fox

[Flix 5,116]

I support your idea to make new images, and to make GIF the standard format for images with stats/text. I can help if you want.

 

In terms of preserving contribution credit, notice that for the unique items, most images are from the "pre-modern" time or whatever you want to call it, in the early days when a ton of images were added all at once into the Wiki's database. They don't actually HAVE a proper image page with an uploader credit. They're just kind of...there, not searchable and unable to be formatted like the newer images.

 

NOTE ABOUT FILE SIZE: The Wiki seems to display the old file size, even when it's actually changed. For example, the Megalcarwen's image that used to be 88kb and seems to be still be the same size, is actually 20kb when downloaded to my computer. So there was a file size improvement.

 

The question is, was it really worth having shabby looking images? Saving 60k, even a thousand times over, is only 60MB.

Edited February 9, 2014 by Flix

[Silver_fox 397]

I support your idea to make new images, and to make GIF the standard format for images with stats/text. I can help if you want.

Thank you for your suggestion, Flix, I'll keep it in mind. As of now, I'll start on my own (by editing my own past contributions) and see how it goes. Thing is, there are a lot of item pages that can use new stat pictures - most of Uniques, all Unlocks and some Legendaries - about 200 (yeah, two hundred, probably more) total. At the first glance it looks like enough work for everyone, especially considering that GIFs are only good looking when they are custom-tailored (if you simply save a screenshot as GIF without editing, its 256 color limitation would show its downside). On the other hand, once I make a couple os stat GIFs, I'll have a solid template for them and the rest would be fast to make (It was this way with set stats, that are heavily edited, but after the first few were very easy to do). So the best way seems to start and see how fast I'd be a getting them done and how fast they would be at getting on my nerves. If I find myself being too slow or get tired of looking at similar pictures for days on end, I'd let you know. Besides, you probably have other ongoing projects or just ideas you want to implement and they should have priority over re-doing something that already exists.

 

 

The question is, was it really worth having shabby looking images? Saving 60k, even a thousand times over, is only 60MB.

That's an old question and I remember myself and Schot discussing it for quite some time... to little actual result. Sacred Wiki is very picture-heavy resource, which on one hand demands those picture to be smaller on order to make pages load faster, on the other hand - it is exactly graphic side of the wiki that first catches reader's eye and defines the first impression. And, sadly, if the quality of these pictures is lacking, the first impression is that the contributing team is lacking editing qualities and can't make these things better... which is as far from being true as it can get. What's worse, our subject does nothing to redeem the situation - I mean, Sacred is not WoW or Diablo or DOTA - so people sort of expect that a not-so-hyped-up title of dubious reputation would have nobody but a couple of crazy freaks caring about it. It would have been really cool if wiki was able to change this opinion, like people seeing very well-done site and thinking that a game that has such talented community must have something to it.

 

Sorry, I digressed. I always wondered if it's worth trying to save space by reducing quantity, not quality. Mind you, I'm not proposing to reduce the amount of images, by maybe reducing the filesize by lowering picture's resolution instead of over-compressing it is a viable solution? I mean, some time ago Schot said that the wiki is meant to be viewed at 1280 width, so do we really need to have full HD pics stored? The quest template is meant to display camera images with no more than 400px width, so I guess that 640x480 or even less is enough for pictures uploaded for this purpose (nice to have it a bit bigger for those who couldn't quite puzzle the picture out on quest page and went to image page for details, but no use making it bigger than preview wiki generates here). What do you think? Can such approach be used for having crisp and clear images without demanding too much space?

Edited February 9, 2014 by Silver_fox

[Silver_fox 397]

Well, I have one more question for you, Schot: What exactly is this switch you turned to restrict the upload of PNG images? I understood it as applying a file-extension and file-size filter on upload, which prohibits big PNG files from being loaded into the wiki. Is it so? Or is it more complex than that? Or you just personally advised us not to do it in the future but applied no technical restrictions? It's just that some time ago you thought about using PNG-8 instead of GIF, and I wonder just how much it is possible. Little PNG icons that are less than 10KB load fine (I already added a couple of Dialogue portraits that weren't in your gallery), but what about bigger things? What kind of restrictions do we have to comply with while uploading PNG images?

 

On a side note - for item stats PNG-8 and GIF make for almost identical filesize (plus or minus half-KB is not a considerable difference), so I can just stick to GIFs. Still, sometimes (not always, for some reason) PNG-8 turn out slightly smaller, so it's useful to know how much welcome they are.

[Schot 407]

So you DID run a batch convert, I thought so.

 

Schot, the 4 I listed in post #15 look especially bad, you might check those to start with.

 

Yup! I did. I think I posted that somewhere else in the past 2 weeks somewhere. Thanx for the pic reference!

 

The only benefit would be to replace png with jpg but in order to maintain contribution credit I would need editors to update their own images.

 

That is exactly why I resurrected this thread. I'll do it for the sets and quest dialogs would take care of themselves as we apply the new Template. I know there were other contributors who won't do it as they are not currently around, but I can at least clean up after myself. Might as well replace JPGs to GIFs for item stat images - they are smaller and look the same if not better.

 

>Can you link to jpgs that you suspect looked better in the past please? I have all images backed up from before I ran the batch process. I'm curious about how much change occured.

 

The one that tipped me, personally, was this one:

http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/File:Megalcarwen_bonus.jpg

Not a horrendous image, but quite messy and reported filesize is 89KB.

The one I have on harddrive looks like this:

The filesize is... 88KB! Means, no space saved.

Not that I encourage you to run a restoration with any of my files, as I intend to replace them anyway (GIFs for such images weight about 8-9KB and that IS some improvement).

 

The ones Flix listed were exceptionally hurt by the conversion - mostly because they were quite bad to begin with and the change made them illegible. In fact, I'm thinking about undertaking a project to make new images for Unique items - for some of those picture replacing them is the only way to make a difference. Not sure how good of idea it is though, but if you won't be able to do a thing about the current quality in may be necessary.

 

Thanx you two. I pulled up Seyr's Klinge from my backup of images preserved before I ran the batch process and this is how it used to look like:

 

And how it looks now:

 

It was indeed in rough shape from the start though the conversion didn't help. Overall though, had we known then what we know now, they never would have been uploaded as jpeg. Granted, things were moving so fast. There was just no way I could control the flow, lol. Ultimately, we decided "flow" was more important than accuracy at the time. A lot has changed now. We know so much more and S3 will be different. ^^

 

I support your idea to make new images, and to make GIF the standard format for images with stats/text. I can help if you want.

 

In terms of preserving contribution credit, notice that for the unique items, most images are from the "pre-modern" time or whatever you want to call it, in the early days when a ton of images were added all at once into the Wiki's database. They don't actually HAVE a proper image page with an uploader credit. They're just kind of...there, not searchable and unable to be formatted like the newer images.

 

NOTE ABOUT FILE SIZE: The Wiki seems to display the old file size, even when it's actually changed. For example, the Megalcarwen's image that used to be 88kb and seems to be still be the same size, is actually 20kb when downloaded to my computer. So there was a file size improvement.

 

The question is, was it really worth having shabby looking images? Saving 60k, even a thousand times over, is only 60MB.

 

 

 

 

I support your idea to make new images, and to make GIF the standard format for images with stats/text. I can help if you want.

Thank you for your suggestion, Flix, I'll keep it in mind. As of now, I'll start on my own (by editing my own past contributions) and see how it goes. Thing is, there are a lot of item pages that can use new stat pictures - most of Uniques, all Unlocks and some Legendaries - about 200 (yeah, two hundred, probably more) total. At the first glance it looks like enough work for everyone, especially considering that GIFs are only good looking when they are custom-tailored (if you simply save a screenshot as GIF without editing, its 256 color limitation would show its downside). On the other hand, once I make a couple os stat GIFs, I'll have a solid template for them and the rest would be fast to make (It was this way with set stats, that are heavily edited, but after the first few were very easy to do). So the best way seems to start and see how fast I'd be a getting them done and how fast they would be at getting on my nerves. If I find myself being too slow or get tired of looking at similar pictures for days on end, I'd let you know. Besides, you probably have other ongoing projects or just ideas you want to implement and they should have priority over re-doing something that already exists.

 

 

>The question is, was it really worth having shabby looking images? Saving 60k, even a thousand times over, is only 60MB.

That's an old question and I remember myself and Schot discussing it for quite some time... to little actual result. Sacred Wiki is very picture-heavy resource, which on one hand demands those picture to be smaller on order to make pages load faster, on the other hand - it is exactly graphic side of the wiki that first catches reader's eye and defines the first impression. And, sadly, if the quality of these pictures is lacking, the first impression is that the contributing team is lacking editing qualities and can't make these things better... which is as far from being true as it can get. What's worse, our subject does nothing to redeem the situation - I mean, Sacred is not WoW or Diablo or DOTA - so people sort of expect that a not-so-hyped-up title of dubious reputation would have nobody but a couple of crazy freaks caring about it. It would have been really cool if wiki was able to change this opinion, like people seeing very well-done site and thinking that a game that has such talented community must have something to it.

 

Sorry, I digressed. I always wondered if it's worth trying to save space by reducing quantity, not quality. Mind you, I'm not proposing to reduce the amount of images, by maybe reducing the filesize by lowering picture's resolution instead of over-compressing it is a viable solution? I mean, some time ago Schot said that the wiki is meant to be viewed at 1280 width, so do we really need to have full HD pics stored? The quest template is meant to display camera images with no more than 400px width, so I guess that 640x480 or even less is enough for pictures uploaded for this purpose (nice to have it a bit bigger for those who couldn't quite puzzle the picture out on quest page and went to image page for details, but no use making it bigger than preview wiki generates here). What do you think? Can such approach be used for having crisp and clear images without demanding too much space?

 

The batch process was defintely worth it. Just a few kinks to work out. It was more for resizing the large jpeg quest screenshots and such than for the stat boxes that we saw a big benefit. Many screenshots were 1-2MB and came down to about 300-500kb.

 

I agree with both your takes on the importance of quality at SacredWiki. It's something I always strive for. I don't always get it "right" the first time but that's the beauty of SacredWiki. There's always room for improvement. I'm also a fan of less pictures and less than full screen sized images at HD and I think that should be done for Sacred 3. We'll need to work out some standards for sure...

 

Well, I have one more question for you, Schot: What exactly is this switch you turned to restrict the upload of PNG images? I understood it as applying a file-extension and file-size filter on upload, which prohibits big PNG files from being loaded into the wiki. Is it so? Or is it more complex than that? Or you just personally advised us not to do it in the future but applied no technical restrictions? It's just that some time ago you thought about using PNG-8 instead of GIF, and I wonder just how much it is possible. Little PNG icons that are less than 10KB load fine (I already added a couple of Dialogue portraits that weren't in your gallery), but what about bigger things? What kind of restrictions do we have to comply with while uploading PNG images?

 

On a side note - for item stats PNG-8 and GIF make for almost identical filesize (plus or minus half-KB is not a considerable difference), so I can just stick to GIFs. Still, sometimes (not always, for some reason) PNG-8 turn out slightly smaller, so it's useful to know how much welcome they are.

Well the most relevant answer to your question is probably that this topic should be closed and is no longer valid, lol. However, I've kept it open to allow everyone to voice their opinions in case I needed to change my mind. Which I did. I do like using png for certain things like icons. At the time of this topics creation I had in fact been working on a set of png icons so I needed to re-enable png upload. After some time editors understood the importance of file sizes and this png problem became less of a problem. What I've learned over the years though is that old problems can reappear when new editors join the community. For the most part it requires us to teach the same lessons every so often. I'd love an easier solution to integrate new editors. An Editor's FAQ would be handy. Though I haven't had the time to get into that.

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In conclusion I advise that we only use PNG-24 for icons which, in general, should be no larger than 20kb in file size(I think). PNG-8 or GIF for images that have 256 colours or less such as stat boxes and should be not larger than 40kb in my experience. In determing when to use Gif or PNG-8, my personal "rule of thumb" is if I think I can count how many colours are in the image I want to save then I should use GIF or PNG-8. And then JPEG saved at 75%(or lower?) for screenshots that are no larger in dimensions than 1280 by 1024 and no larger than 300kb in file size.