Compression in PSP

Compression in PSP

PSP7 Basic Class: Download bear1.psp file. Flatten the image. Copy it three times. Save one copy as a .jpg with 10 compression, bear1a.jpg. Save the other copy as a .jpg with 40 compression, bear1b.jpg. Compare what .jpg compression does. Save the last copy as bear1.gif file and compare the kb size and quality versus your two .jpg files. Send in the file which you think is the best quality despite the kb size. Use the name from your email address in front of the name of the file, bear1a, bear1b, bear1c.

Download bear2.psp file. Flatten the image. Copy it three times. Save one copy as a .jpg with 10 compression, bear2a.jpg. Save the other copy as a .jpg with 40 compression, bear2b.jpg. Compare what .jpg compression does. Save the last copy as bear2.gif file and compare the kb size and quality versus your two .jpg files. Send in the file which you think is the best quality despite the kb size. Use the name from your email address in front of the name of the file, bear1a, bear1b, bear1c.

What have you learned? Please state this in your email when you turn in your images.

PSP Files

Let's start with the .psp format. When you go to save your psp file, click on Options. On the Save Options, check LZ77compression. This will make a smaller kb file size without any loss of quality. You should also check at least the Save as PSP6 compatible file box. Many people are still using PSP6. I haven't run into that many people still using PSP5.

JPG Files

When you go to save as a .jpg file, once again go to Options. The Compression factor that I urge people to use is 10. At a compression of 10, there isn't any major loss of quality in your graphic image. If you are dealing with a very large kb size file, you can go to a compression of 15 and still not be into major quality loss. Past a compression of 15 you really start to lose quality.

If you have a very important file, or one that has a lot of red colors and text that still needs to be a .jpg format, I suggest turning the compression all the way down. That factor will be a number 1. There is no 0.

GIF Files

It really is a mistake to call it compression on a .gif file. What you really do is to lower the color number. Instead of using 256 colors, you can use 128, 64, 32, 16, 8 and 2. I wouldn't advise going down to the number 2 unless it is a pure black and white image. Most .gif files can be lowered to 128 with no major quality loss.

Go to File/Export. Export as Gif Optimizer.

Ok, remember I said you wouldn't have any major quality loss at 128? You need to change some of those settings.

Set the method of color selection to Optimized Octree.
Include Windows' colors.

Note: Use this only if you want to reduce the number amount of color in your gif file. Once again I will state that you need to go over my File Saving tutorial to see how to save a perfect gif file everytime. The export feature in PSP doesn't have as many options as when you reduce to 256 colors. Use the File Saving Tutorial to reduce your bears to a gif file for the lesson.

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