Attached Link: This Quickie Tutorial Brought to you By (let's hope i can remember my url this time...)

heyas; we all use jpg files to transfer texture images; it's cross-platform, and it's compressed. but the image quality can be lousy. here's how to get maximum compression and minimum smeariness. (note: you'll need jpeg opimizer, which is available from www.zdnet.com) open your texture file in jpeg optimizer (if you use tifs, they have to be uncompressed). make sure advanced mode and the wizard are both on. crank the quality slider up until the colour preview window shows no loss. (75-100, depending on your image.) now, in the wizard window, click on 'select all,' then slide the 'extra compression' lever up to max. the greyscale compression map should turn completely a rich, ruby red. your preview pic should turn all icky and lossy. (uncheck the 'work on region box' to deselect.) well, now click on the no compression icon in the toolbar and use the line/rectangle/freehand selection tools to 'decompress' the texture bits, while leaving the 'emtpy' space between them hugely compressed. after you do this, you can play with the overall quality slider some more, and decide on the best setting for it. ta-da! unused portions of the pic are compressed, and used portions are uncompressed, giving you a balance of file size and quality.

Now there's a handy trick! Didn't know compression levels could be split up within a single jpeg file. Save file size - and it's shareware! Parsimonious nirvana!! -frugal floydd

Nice hint and helpful link. I usually use SmartSaver from ULEAD on JPEGs but it's not shareware. Forgive me if I drift off-thread a tad but your hint brings us a question that I've had for quite some time now ... I see hours and hours of work being put into poser textures, and the size of the map blown huge to get minute detail, and then the resulting map is saved as a JPEG. JPEG is a lossy format that, by it's nature, blurs colors and detail. To add insult to injury, if the map is touched up and resaved, the image quality suffers another generation of loss. Ok, so what am I missing? For me, it seems more productive to keep the files in .TIF format and keep the overall map size smaller. Maybe it's just me but the savings in file size (on more detailed textures) isn't worth the blurs JPEG adds. Anyhoo ... I've been wondering about that a long time now so I just had to ask. - RJ

I agree. Tif/LZW for masters & exchanges. First generation .JPG's for working copies.

heya; i use lzw compressed tif's for my stuff. but for web transfer, i make jpgs. like i said, it's compressed and cross-platform. (mac tifs and pc tifs have differing headers or something.) so that's why you see texture jpgs everywhere. but as for reworking and resaving the jpg, yes, that is death. :) remember kiddies, every time you resave your jpg, you pile another round of loss on it! (actually, that is also why i use gifs, especially for 256 shades of greyscale for the bump/transparency maps. not to mention, the two-colour templates.)