Well here goes another long winded posting by me :) I have noticed when i save any work i do in bryce, it saves the .br5 file along with a .bmp image of the work. Now other than using another image editing program such as PS, ACDSee or anything others like to use to convert the image from .bmp to .jpg, is there anyway to save it to .jpg using bryce. Reason for me asking this is i am annoyed at the way an image i saved from bryce then converted to .jpg turned out. It looks 100% better in the .bmp format that in the .jpg one.

As I know, Bryce can save images as JPG, compression quality is not up to my liking... PaintShopPro, as far as I know, has the most intuitive and efficient system for it (Painter as well, dunno Photoshop, I do not have it). IMHO, if you gonna do any postwork on your image, JPG is not a good way to start, cuz compression degrades quality of the image ! :)

You can save an image in formats by going to file > save image as, then change the file type to jpg or something else. Bryce compression is pretty bad, though, so I don't recommend it. I always compress the bmp to jpg in photoshop, whether I do any other postwork or not, because I like the save for web feature, you can see exactly how it will look at different amounts of compression.

Remember: even if Bryce is used to save the .jpg file, there will still be image degredation (that's just the way JPEG compression works). You're better off going with a program dedicated to 2D images, and playing with the .jpg compression options (as others have mentioned).

If you absolutely can't stand the way .jpg compresses a file, you can use a lossless compression scheme (such as .png). Unfortunately, this scheme isn't accepted everywhere (Renderosity won't allow you to upload files in this format, for example) and results in larger file sizes than JPEG (because PNG is lossless). It is web-safe in most instances, however.

One last note: bitmaps are a lossless digital image storage format. This means that the bitmap is exactly the same as what you see on your screen when your render is complete... So the act of converting to .jpg with an external application does not introduce a loss of quality (although the application itself may introduce quality loss... Get it?).

Message edited on: 10/27/2004 23:12

If you File>SaveImageAs you can select jpg, bmp, psd, pct, tif. and set the compression level on jpg(lousy). If you File?ExportImage you can select bmp, psd, mov, htm, tif. If you save the file, there is a setting under...Edit>Preferences, ImageWithScene Open/Save.(turning this off will reduce file size) I think this is what you are talking about. This saves a bmp of anything rendered so far, in the .b5 file. Don't worry about this, always SaveImageAs, when you've done a final render. I'd save as a bmp and convert it in post.

Yeah, Bryce saves jpgs in worse quality than even Photoshop does, and that's saying a lot. .bmp's are an uncompressed format, so yeah, they will look "better" than a jpg. Bryce will always save it's scene file along with a .bmp, there's no way to change that. And, I usually suggest using the freeware utility "Irfanview" (www.irfanview.com), and open your .bmp with that, and use it to save your jpg, with a quality of around 85%-95%. Hmm, Irfanview's website is down, but if you want it, you can find it at www.download.com; http://www.download.com/IrfanView/3000-2192_4-10311994.html?tag=lst-0-1 AS

Thanks guys, i think you all gave me more than enough information to help me out. AS, i have Irfanviewer already as well as ACDSee. I use ACDSee for my main image viewer and some editing. I worked out where i was going wrong with just a little bit of the information you gave me. I was forgetting to change the quality settings when converting from .bmp to .jpg, now i have set the default quality setting to 95% the images look good. Thanks again all for your help. LunarTick.

Not trying to argue here, but if I wasn't right about the ImageWithSave Open/Save , then I'm really confused. Checked the manual and it seems to agree with me (pg 25). So I opened a Bryce file, there was the rendered image in bitmap mode. I turned off that option and saved as a new file. When I opened the new file, there was no rendered bitmap. Just rechecked, opened the file with render, ohh pretty, checked to IWS O/S saved over the copy from before that didn't have the bitmap, reopened the just saved file, and bitmap. Doesn't really help LunarTick, but she seems to have her answer. I'm just really confused because AS is saying onething and my eyes are telling me another. I don't know who to believe.

If you save as jpg make sure in options that it's on the highest quality, I do it all the time and it saves constant conversion and resizing.

xenic i understand where you are coming from, that is why i asked on here because i to was getting confused with the manuals explanation on it. xenic, don't tell anyone on here not even my girlfriend, i'm a male ;)

If you have PhotoShop you can get a plug-in called "Pro-jpeg",It can take an image of around 4megs, and bring it down to 100k-200k with quality settings of 100%, and 0% smoothing.I use it on all my images, It makes jpeg's the most viable internet format IMHO.But, its PS exclusive plug-in(and it costs money).

Isn't it doing the JPEG 2000 or JPEG PRO format? It's different than the regular jpg.

I use PSP7 to convert bmp to (save as) jpg. I think I get pretty good results.

I usually use Irfanview.... Might have to check out that Pro-JPEG though TwistedBolt

Yes xenic101 you are correct, disable that option and Bryce will not save a BMP with the scene file. You will also not be able to stop a render, close the project, then resume the render with this options turned off. The best JPG compressor ( IMO ) is Photo Impact, it beats PSP, and PS in file size and quality.

I use Photoshop and Painter and blah and blah... but the best image converter I've ever used is this program called Riptide. It converts between 65 or 70 different image types. Also, it will let you project your .jpg size. For example, if I have a 10 MB .bmp file, and I'm uploading it to the gallery, I set it to about 450 or so at the most. If it's for a forum, thread, I'll set it to 150-175 KB. It's amazing, really... Company's called Vorton, the program is Riptide. Might be a demo or freeware version out nowadays, if the company even exists anymore. But if you see it at a thrift store, pick it up, it's invaluable. Also does batch editing and converting.

mmmmmmmmm, batch editing.