Technique Tues... {ahem} Monday!

Hello out there!  Yesterday concluded the Lollipop Blog Hop 2011 and the winners are expected to be announced sometime today. Yippee!

I am talking tech stuff today.  Don't worry it isn't too technical.  If you have saved any pictures or  layout at all then you know you have options on which kind of file you want to save as. For example, the most common file extension are .jpg .png .gif and I pronounce them like this "j"-peg, ping, and jif. For along time I never understood the difference and what flipppin difference does it make anyway!  So I will attempt to shed a little light on the subject.  

.gif files used to require a patent which was why usually only professionals used that type of file.  It was necessary to make a compressed image without losing too much quality.  The downfall aside from the patent is that it doesn't support as many colors.  

So sometime after that the .png file showed up.  It required no patent so you can image how happy people who were in web developement were.  Also the .png files are a better with depth of color. 

Which leaves us with the .jpeg format.  This is the preferred format for photos because it supports up to 16.7 million colors as opposed to the maximum 256 colors in a .gif file and up to 24 bit in color.  "24 bit in color"? What am I talking about? 

Color depth is sometimes called color resolution. The number of computer bits used for color graphics. Each of the three primary colors (Red-Green-Blue) is represented, and whether it is on or off. Higher quality color resolution requires more memory and larger file sizes. The "-bit" color reference is the number of bits in each pixel ("picture element"). - querycat

So I said all that to say this... Save all your digi layouts and pics in .jpg file format. BUT when you compress a .jpeg you will lose picture quality so be sure to save the original seperate if you need to compress and post a pic/layout on the interent.  What about email, you ask?  I am not an expert but I would say most email service providers will automatically compress the image for you when you attach a file .jpg or otherwise.

Hope that clears up any mysteries about what file extentions you should be using for your scrapbook pages. 

 I have included this link if you would like to read an article from someone much more qualified than I to explain in full.  http://articles.sitepoint.com/article/gif-jpg-png-whats-difference
 

Thanks for stopping by.
Over and Out!
Joanne