This is getting to be a real conundrum, and I appreciate any suggestions:
When creating JPGs or GIFs for the internet, obviously my greatest concern is not how they'll look on my own monitor, but rather how they will look on thousands of other monitors. My question is what are the best general colour management settings for either CorelDraw or PhotoPaint when exporting to JPGs or GIFs -- without creating files of enormous proportions?
First off - set your working units to pixels so that you can scale your vectored image down to the correct size - in pixels - that you require. Also be cognizant of page size - set your page size to the pixel dimensions you require and then fit your artwork on the page so that nothing hangs beyond the boundary of your page.
When exporting make sure you export only the current page.
That should be a good starting point to get your file sizes down.
Use sRGB as your working colour space because that's what your browser - and everybody's browser for that matter - wants. Don't use AdobeRGB or ProPhoto or CMYK colour space. Be prepared for unpredictable results if you do.
Terremoto, I forgot to mention that I didn't know that about using sRGB, and I will do that immediately.
Gus, let me ask - which option are you using to export? Export, or export for web?
It almost sounds like you're using straight export.
I've tried both -- and others to boot. For example I have a 24-bit RGB item that's 10 by 460 pixels. If I export it under the web settings, the resulting JPG is a whopping 170kb. If I export it as a straight export, same result. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's gigantic for such a small file and can drastically add to web-page loading time.
I usually export my files through the Web Image Optimizer and try to get as much compression and smoothing as possible without overly distorting the image. But I don't understand why the files are sometimes small and sometimes enormous, notwithstanding that I'm perpetually playing with colour management and have never been consistent.
I just checked it, and yes, the internal colour profile is being embedded. The option, of course, is to "Always embed using ... " or "Do not embed ICC profiles". Which do you suggest I use?
Thanks!
Do not embedd.
The internet works on sRGB and does not require an embedded profile.
With that said, you must not use anything other than sRGB for your internet files.
The discussion of color management for the internet is complicated but the reality is that it is simple, sRGB works even with systems that handle color managed files and is a great deal smaller and therefore faster on the web.
Also with that said you have a reduced gamut with sRGB but the increased gamut has a price and that is file size and site load speeds.
Okay. I take it this means for all graphics and images headed to websites, I choose the setting "Do not embed ICC profiles"?
Or does it mean that I should choose the setting "Always embed using sRGB"?
Okay, well you gents have been very informative. I've now shut off all embedding and recreated the JPG file I alluded to above, not once but a dozen times. And I'm still producing a file that weighs a fat 170 KB.
Don't embed if your file is then to large you have an image that iscreated too large.
gus1 said:And I'm still producing a file that weighs a fat 170 KB.
upload a screen shot of your export settings