Until recently, the only way to reduce the size of bitmap images bound for the Web was the old-fashioned way - by hand. Devout Web designers would carefully index colors of Photoshop images, pixel by pixel, removing those that didn't pull their weight. The others ... well, you probably didn't wait for the download.
But bloated Web images have been put on diets lately, with designers using more automated compression applications. June saw the introduction of two automatic image compressors: HVS ColorGif and HVS JPEG from Digital Frontiers and WebRazor from Ulead. And with Tuesday's release of Emblaze WebCharger from GEO Publishing, it's become a full-blown category that should spell relief for harried Web artists.
"I've gone through and hand-worked over files pixel by pixel to get the smallest possible GIF ever on the planet," said Margi Smith, a member of the implementation team at WellEngaged, "and then seen [HVS ColorGif] do it better over what I had tweaked." Smith said she had seen the software deliver a 100 percent improvement in file size over a straight Photoshop GIF.
Emblaze WebCharger is a standalone application that may raise the bar even further. Its proprietary compression algorithms deliver a JPEG-compatible file format, which is accepted by all current browsers, said Brad Grob of GEO Publishing, which claims its product can produce 16- or 24-bit images 400 percent smaller than a standard JPEG. It offers the added feature of spot reduction, so that in a photograph of a person, the face could remain decompressed to retain optimal clarity. The software, for Windows 95 only, will be officially unveiled next week at Comdex.
HVS ColorGif 2.0 and HVS JPEG 2.0 work as plug-ins with most major paint programs, and the compression algorithms are based on how the human eye sees color, said Doug Frohman, Digital Frontiers' president. The application discards any colors we wouldn't see anyway, and eliminates Photoshop's dithering - the mixing of adjacent pixels to simulate additional colors, which adds bulk to compressed files.
While these new applications may not solve the bandwidth problem, they'll certainly make graphics run faster - which is ultimately the most attractive image for Web surfers.
