The Poet's Image Guidelines |
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folks, let's lay down a few guidelines for submission of images to the
Logan and Ororo Shrine or the Weapon's Legacy. First off: I want your images.
Particularly, I
want stuff that you have drawn or painted yourself. Photomanipulations are
welcome also, but in the main I prefer original pieces. Don't let these
guidelines scare you off. Let's begin, shall we? Formats This is the bit that most people screw up on. Depending on what sort of image you're
working with, you want to save it in a different format. It's all pretty easy to remember,
actually. The two formats (the ONLY two formats) that we will be dealing with are Compuserve's
Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) and the JPEG Group's format (JPG). These have different
strengths and capabilities. GIF format is best for very simple images. It is an indexed colour format, which means
(in this case) that it has a palette of 256 colours to choose from when it saves and
displays your image. In manages this by comparing the colours in your images to its own
palette, selecting the best colour for it, and then adding bits of black and white to make
the colour it uses close to the original. This can take up a lot of space with an image
that has a lot of different colours. So, if you have an image with a complex colour scheme,
GIF format may not be your best choice. On the other hand, if it has a relatively simple
colour scheme, GIF is probably the best format because it will end up taking very little
space on your hard disk. JPEG format is better for images with more complex colour schemes. Like GIF format, it
is an indexed colour format of sorts, but it has a much larger choice of colours to choose
from. It selects the 256 colours from its palette that best represent your image, and
then uses that palette in much the same way that GIF does. Anyway, for photographs and the
like, JPG format can give you truer colour and in much less space than GIF would take to
do the same job. However, since it saves the palette that it uses with the image, it is
sort of a waste to use JPG format with an image with a simple colour scheme. A GIF would
do the job more efficiently. GIF and JPG formats both work well with black and white images. In the main, a GIF
file of a simple black and white image will be smaller, but a JPG will render a truer
and smaller grayscale if you've got lots of shading in it. Take your pick. If you want to submit something in a different format (like TIFF, or PICT, or gods help
us, BMP), then send me an e-mail about it. I will likely suggest a freeware or shareware
utility to help you change the format of your picture. And remember, friends don't let
friends work with BMP format. Compression Now, apart from issues of image quality, the main reason to choose carefully between
the two formats is image size, right? So that brings us to the next question, which is
compression. No, I'm not talking about image compression. Most modern graphics programs
will do image compression automatically. Rather, I'm talking about compression formats
such as ZIP, LHA, CPT, and SIT, which you use when you're archiving something or mailing
something. I use a Macintosh, but that doesn't keep me from using ZIP format. It's the most
universal format, and it's a gooder. Windows users can use WinZIP (shudder) or a DOS
ZIP utility that uses the pkzip or gzip routines. I can decode any of these. If you've got LHA compression, it's okay, I can read it. You know who you are. CPT and SIT compression are primarily Mac formats, but Windows users can go to
www.aladdinsys.com to pick up a compression/decompression utility for PCs that uses
Stuffit format. I like 'em. Use 'em if you've got 'em. The whole point to compressing images before you send them as attachments over e-mail
is to save time when you're sending it and I'm receiving it. I'm using modem service
over here, so it'd be great if you could make the files smaller for me. If any of this
is unclear, you can contact me at poet at sharecom dot ca
and I can give you a longer or clearer explanation. You can also use it for other
inquiries. I'm easy.
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