I'm just starting a new website, and had an idea to use a great looking image
as a background - a bit like this :

http://www.sunflowergardening.co.uk/

That's an 80% JPG, but looks a bit blurry - most noticeable around the edges
of the sunflowers. That's already 92K though. Bumping it up to 90% improves it,
but increased the file size to over 200K.

Any tips on how best to optimise an image like this would be appreciated.

Cheers.

It looks pretty good to me. I think I'd be happy with it. 92kb is already on
the big size, remember not everyone has a broadband connection yet.

You could have a play around with the 'Selective jpg' feature (Modify >
Selective JPG > Save Selection as JPEG Mask) and save the areas with the
transparent white areas at a lower percentage (try 60) but to be honest I'm
not sure it would be worth it?

Peter
______________________
"Iain71" <webforumsuser@macromedia.com> wrote in message
news:g2dg9f$kmv$1@forums.macromedia.com...
| I'm just starting a new website, and had an idea to use a great looking
image
| as a background - a bit like this :
|
| http://www.sunflowergardening.co.uk/
|
| That's an 80% JPG, but looks a bit blurry - most noticeable around the
edges
| of the sunflowers. That's already 92K though. Bumping it up to 90%
improves it,
| but increased the file size to over 200K.
|
| Any tips on how best to optimise an image like this would be appreciated.
|
| Cheers.
|

I agree it's mostly OK, but if you look around the yellow petals, there's a bit
of fuzziness I'd hoped could be improved.

Given that so many websites look so all singing and dancing, I'd have thought
it should be possible to get it looking a bit better without ramping up the
file size too much.

It's only an initial placeholder, so the text I'll redo as separate images so
that should look better.

Ok, in that case I would try using a jpeg mask around the sunflower and
upping the percentage to 90 and to balance the increased file size you could
do the same thing with the rest of the image, or the sky at least and
dropping it to 60/70 %.

I agree that a lot of sites have some very nice images, but have you checked
the size of those images? I have recently been at university studying as a
mature student, and I can promise you most of not all of the students are
simply unaware that filesize is a potential problem. Obviously if you know
who your target audience are that is a major , but as one who was stuck
with a 56kb dialup service until only a couple of years ago, and still know
of people who are in a similar position, it is still an issue.

Peter
___________________


"Iain71" <webforumsuser@macromedia.com> wrote in message
news:g2dtkb$4on$1@forums.macromedia.com...
|I agree it's mostly OK, but if you look around the yellow petals, there's a
bit
| of fuzziness I'd hoped could be improved.
|
| Given that so many websites look so all singing and dancing, I'd have
thought
| it should be possible to get it looking a bit better without ramping up
the
| file size too much.
|
| It's only an initial placeholder, so the text I'll redo as separate images
so
| that should look better.
|

Cheers - that worked as a pretty good compromise - that wasn't something I'd
used before, so was a good street.

You're right of course about file sizes - I was thinking more of big name
companies that have fairly fancy looking sites - but would have thought big
name companies more than anyone would rigorously stick to web standard
guidelines for that sort of thing.

The next thing to do is add a title image, so needs to be transparent to see
the background around the text. Now on to my next issue - I've started a new
thread about it...

ok whats the url to the new thread? let me see if i can solve the problem

I think I will be happy with it.i hope to tell soon the results