Saving Images & Formats
Just a mini-tutorial on saving your images and formats. I see a lot of people using .pngs and I am kind of at a loss as to why. Hopefully this will help those not in the know out with the whole image size/etc issue.
First of all, anyone making a sims 2 story usually has an editing program of some kind. Most, if not all, give you some sort of option for saving your images so they optimized for the web. What this means is it compresses your image so that it isn't ridiculously huge and loads quickly, even on the slowest of connections. It also saves you or your host a considerable amount of bandwidth and space.
A lot of people are under the impression that PNGs are superior. They are not. They are a step up from GIFs, which usually were animated images or had some sort of transparency. If your image has neither, you have no business using a PNG. They are big, bulky, and generally load very slowly. You might as well just throw a BMP up there, too. PNGs are also utilizied for web layouts, but uh, what's that have to do with sim pictures? You can check out wikipedia.org for more info.
For some reason, people are under the impression that JPEGs equate poor quality, pixelation, and graininess. This is not true. When you're putting your image through compression or optimization, you can choose the level of quality. All my images are saved as JPEGs and they usually have a quality of around 80 or so (via Photoshop). I only have Photoshop CS3 and Paint Shop Pro X2, so I can only show you how to save in those formats, but I assure you, almost every program has the ability!
Adobe Photoshop
A typical image for me is usually several megs in size. After I crop it down and edit it, it usually reduces a bit, but it still something ridiculous. Saving for Web in Photoshop is very simple.
You find the option under File > Save for Web and Devices
Which presents you with a lovely dialogue box... the important part is circled.
I've found that using a quality of 84 whilst ticking Optimized works best for me and my pictures. And if you can, notice how much smaller the image is now. Feel free to experiment with whatever works best with you and your picture size.
Paint Shop Pro X2
It's been awhile since I've used older versions of Paint Shop Pro, but I'm pretty sure that the more recent versions should come equipped with this option. If not, let me know and I'll look into it. I mostly only use PSP for my challenge pictures, because I use a batch file and they don't require much editing! But given my huge resolution, they still end up being several megs in size raw.
PSP refers to it as exporting. You'll find it under File > Export > JPEG Optimizer
You'll then be presented with the following dialogue box. PSP's option isn't nearly as great as Adobe's, but this is why I use it for challenge images. They don't have to be works of art. Unfortunately, I'm not using my Sims installation to do this tutorial, so I don't have my normal settings. This was about as close as I could get them, though.
You could probably also try to use the PNG optimizer if you were using PSP for pictures you needed to be high quality, but still small. Unfortunately, as a rule, I don't mess with PNGs unless necessary, so I'm not quite sure how that would work out.
But hopefully this was at least semi-helpful as to saving/etc images so they're not ridiculously huge and unwieldly. Even when I had a super fast connection, I still liked it when people took the time to actually consider their readers and save responsibly. ;)
First of all, anyone making a sims 2 story usually has an editing program of some kind. Most, if not all, give you some sort of option for saving your images so they optimized for the web. What this means is it compresses your image so that it isn't ridiculously huge and loads quickly, even on the slowest of connections. It also saves you or your host a considerable amount of bandwidth and space.
A lot of people are under the impression that PNGs are superior. They are not. They are a step up from GIFs, which usually were animated images or had some sort of transparency. If your image has neither, you have no business using a PNG. They are big, bulky, and generally load very slowly. You might as well just throw a BMP up there, too. PNGs are also utilizied for web layouts, but uh, what's that have to do with sim pictures? You can check out wikipedia.org for more info.
For some reason, people are under the impression that JPEGs equate poor quality, pixelation, and graininess. This is not true. When you're putting your image through compression or optimization, you can choose the level of quality. All my images are saved as JPEGs and they usually have a quality of around 80 or so (via Photoshop). I only have Photoshop CS3 and Paint Shop Pro X2, so I can only show you how to save in those formats, but I assure you, almost every program has the ability!
Adobe Photoshop
A typical image for me is usually several megs in size. After I crop it down and edit it, it usually reduces a bit, but it still something ridiculous. Saving for Web in Photoshop is very simple.
You find the option under File > Save for Web and Devices
Which presents you with a lovely dialogue box... the important part is circled.
I've found that using a quality of 84 whilst ticking Optimized works best for me and my pictures. And if you can, notice how much smaller the image is now. Feel free to experiment with whatever works best with you and your picture size.
Paint Shop Pro X2
It's been awhile since I've used older versions of Paint Shop Pro, but I'm pretty sure that the more recent versions should come equipped with this option. If not, let me know and I'll look into it. I mostly only use PSP for my challenge pictures, because I use a batch file and they don't require much editing! But given my huge resolution, they still end up being several megs in size raw.
PSP refers to it as exporting. You'll find it under File > Export > JPEG Optimizer
You'll then be presented with the following dialogue box. PSP's option isn't nearly as great as Adobe's, but this is why I use it for challenge images. They don't have to be works of art. Unfortunately, I'm not using my Sims installation to do this tutorial, so I don't have my normal settings. This was about as close as I could get them, though.
You could probably also try to use the PNG optimizer if you were using PSP for pictures you needed to be high quality, but still small. Unfortunately, as a rule, I don't mess with PNGs unless necessary, so I'm not quite sure how that would work out.
But hopefully this was at least semi-helpful as to saving/etc images so they're not ridiculously huge and unwieldly. Even when I had a super fast connection, I still liked it when people took the time to actually consider their readers and save responsibly. ;)