I've noticed a lot of posts to the forum that really suffer from going down to the 200K limit imposed on a post. Many photo editing programs have a feature where you can optimize for a web pallet or a pallet that is optimized for your picture. Optimizing for your picture is best! Also you should look at the dithering setting and the lossy setting if available. This post only uses 256 colors! and yet it looks almost identical to my original which is 4 times as large. I often see a lot of banding where there are similar solid colors like in skies. There are also artifacts of noise and patterns in some posts. If you are going to take the trouble to get feedback on your art, naturally you want to show it off as best you can given the constraints.

The original 140KB

A gif file 1/4 the original size. Notice the sky, no banding. this file is only 256 colors uses an adaptive pallet, 100% dithering and a lossy setting of around 28%

In photoshop 6. File | Save to Web and you get this dialog box.

a closeup of my settings. How does anyone else do this with programs other than PShop.

dending on your screen settings and the browser you use, the original jpg may look worse. you can right click and save it and examine the file sizes. the smaller size file is .gif the adaptive pallet makes it use colors more efficiently.

OK, you have an excellent tutorial there. You should put it up on a web site so it doesn't get lost! Let me make all this easier for you. If you stick to the normal Poser default render settings (640x640MB image size, 72dpi, and save as the default jpg size), your posted image will go through without a hitch. I know many folks wish to really do good renders. You can still do that for your gallery. But you need to compromise a bit for the forums.

Attached Link: http://www.jpegwizard.com

Here is a free program that you can use online, or download to your desktop

It's called JpegWizard

It will optimize your images

One thing you need to know: Just about any graphics program out there now has options to save for the web (in other words, "optimize" your images). This optimization isn't always the best if you want to enter a contest, or post to your Art Gallery. So use the tool that you need at the time.

right ronknights you only want to do this type of optimization when posting to the forum. When you have the luxury of sending a larger file it will naturally display better. hey thanks welcomesite for the input. there are so many freebies out there it is nice to know when someone has already kicked the tires. ;)

thanks for the compliment ronknights i'll try to save this out to acrobat :) I'll try to get back on your tutorial site with acrobat tomorrow. regards

Hey, everyone, you're going to think I'm picky here. But bear with me. My "username" here is ronknights. I use that because frankly I didn't want to think of an alias to use. ronknights is my name: Ron Knights. You guys can call me Ron, ok?! Jamball77, I very much appreciate your support and your idea... but please don't bother yourself with it. My tutorials, in their new format ought to be ok as is.

OK, one thing I'm good at is finding the easiest way to do something. Unless I am totally mistaken, you can use these settings to render your Poser images for the forums. These are pretty much the default Poser settings for a new window. Of course, most of us want to use Anti-alias, as indicated in the screenshot. Bear in mind that you can use "better settings" for your Gallery postings, etc.

What? Web palette? Why? Gif? Why? I don't know how to put this without seeming to come off as Mr-know-it-all, but the only application for GIF on color web images is where you use some of its special features, like transparency or mutiple images, typically for animation. Take my word for it, as somone who created the first mutiple image GIF, ever (I was involved with Compuserve when the GIF89a format was developed). JPEGs will always have better qualitly for the same file size, at least fot full-color images. The "Web palette" is for 256 color displays, circa 1990, everybody has 24 bit (16.8 million) colors these days.