Two things will be talked about in this topic.
Quality and Size.
I guess most of you are used to .jpg files, yet their size and quality disappoint me.

One thing about .png, is that it's size is small.(I should know, my comics are made in this format)

Also, the quality, is very high. Same fact as above proves this.

Now, discuss.
Hopefully, if this is integrated into LFS, skinners might be happier.

I agree on the size, but i dont agree on the quality. Imo, jpg's offer great quality. If you dont believe me, have a look at the quality at some of the professional skinners skins (Teaz-R for example).

Yeah, but its just a suggestion. Don't forget that we download pixelated 512x512 versions of the skins. PNG owns JPG on that.(when indexed)

Quote from Dalek0220 :

Yeah, but its just a suggestion. Don't forget that we download pixelated 512x512 versions of the skins. PNG owns JPG on that.(when indexed)

Simple solution to this. Part with about £3 to download the hi-res versions.

Dammit. We all can't pay 3 pounds though. So, PNG is a solution.

Quote from Dalek0220 :

Dammit. We all can't pay 3 pounds though. So, PNG is a solution.

Come on mate, its £3! You can earn that with washing ONE car!

While we are at it, can the limit on texture/setup name length be removed or at least increased?

Tbh, as some people have said in the original thread about the paying for skins, we pay £24 for the dam game, I don't want, nor NEED to pay more for skins, If I like a skin alot I will personally ask the person who uses it to send me a Hi-Res for my Skins_x, or if its a good public skin, I'll do the same,

Time is Money.

Quote from Nathan_French_14 :

Simple solution to this. Part with about £3 to download the hi-res versions.

AFAIK it still doesn't get round the automatic compression by LFSW (and some of us don't want high res skins).

Quote from S14 DRIFT :

Time is Money.

So is bandwidth. Every time you download a skin in LFS you use some of the devs' bandwidth and when you multiply that by a few thousand users it begins to add up. I don't think it's unreasonable for the devs to try to earn back a bit of that money through the high-res skin service.

I like the idea of PNG skins though (lossless is always nice), but how the file size would react depends very much on the actual skin. Skins with lot of pixel level details (photos and gradients) would probably increase significantly in size. Only in images with large, single-color areas (like your comics) will PNG compression do you any good. It could work if it was accompanied with a max size when uploading I suppose.

Quote from Nathan_French_14 :

I agree on the size, but i dont agree on the quality.

Eh?!?!? Wrong way round mate. PNGs are lossless so, by definition, must always offer better quality than JPG. For photos and similar, PNG will offer larger filesizes. For screenshots of excell, graphs, and anything that isn't a photo, PNG will be smaller. For (most) skins I'd imagine JPG is the best choice.

I don't get lost quality when saving a JPG, unless I save it with paint...?

You always lose quality when saving in jpeg. It may be too little for you to notice when using the lower compression levels, but you definitely lose quality. Try opening and resaving the same jpeg a few times and have a look. I'll look horrible.

Quote from LFSn00b :

But i have to -1, besides we already are downloading, using .dds skins which are imho better than png and jpg.

No we're not. All skins downloaded from LFSWorld are in jpeg format and LFS then re-compresses them to a format native to the graphics card (DDS) to make loading them at run-time faster.

Well , if png owns jpg at size 512 , then they should be changed to png

see:
PNG VS JPG

Great idea! Compressed 512x512 skins are simply disgusting. I bet .png's would look way better

see:
JPG (212kb) vs PNG (1278kb)

http://www.google.com/search?q=1278/212

Just did a quick batch conversion of about 20 LFS skins. As expected the lossless PNG format is two to four times as big as the lossy JPG files. So it should be obvious why JPG is used for skin downloads. In fact JPG would have no reason to exist if there was a lossless format that was smaller, as claimed by the OP.

EDIT: just tried one of your comics Dalek. PNG really was smaller than JPG. So I understand your idea, but it doesn't seem to work for LFS skins.

Quote from imthebestracerthereis :

see:
PNG VS JPG

You had to be using the WORST compression setting to get a jpeg to look that bad, all I use is jpeg for my online images that I post on Deviantart, its very rare that they lose any noticable quality, some you can even still see the textures I used which are very small.

Quote from filur :

see:
JPG (212kb) vs PNG (1278kb)

http://www.google.com/search?q=1278/212

I just opened up both of those images and flicked between the two.

For me, the jpg looks a little darker, but the quality is the same.

Quote from Nathan_French_14 :

For me, the jpg looks a little darker, but the quality is the same.

The original source is most likely the JPEG, so that's not surprising as any encoding artefacts from the JPEG would be preserved in the PNG. The point is the size of the PNG compared to the JPEG.

Quote from J.B. :

So I understand your idea, but it doesn't seem to work for LFS skins.

PNG compression (and GIF actually) loves large areas of uniform color. Lineart and low detail vector graphics basically. These areas can easily be compressed down in size without losing information. (See the examples by imthebestracerthereis) Once you start introducing pixel level details though, the PNG compression stops working and you basically end up with a huge, uncompressed bitmap. (See the examples by filur) Think of PNG as a BMP wrapped in a zip file. Uniform, repeating patterns are compressed very well but everything else isn't as it can't actually lose information.

In LFS skins the PNG compression is usually foiled by the base skin people apply over the top to add shadows under wings and exhaust pipes. This introduces a lot of fine detail that can't be easily compressed, killing file size. Converting existing JPEG skins to PNG will probably make things even worse as artefacts from the JPEG compression adds even more fine detail to the image.

No point to use a PNG format anyways, Scawen decided to convert anything to DDS with its compression, so you really don't gain from having some other kind of format.... we'll always have crappy DDS from now on it seems (unfortuneately ).

Quote from wien :

No we're not. All skins downloaded from LFSWorld are in jpeg format and LFS then re-compresses them to a format native to the graphics card (DDS) to make loading them at run-time faster.

Only reason LFSW still accepts JPG is for ease of transfer and storage. Filesize can be much lower. LFSW wont magically upgrade to super high filesize skins guys :doh:... Victor has sad these things cost money...

Quote from J.B. :

Just did a quick batch conversion of about 20 LFS skins. As expected the lossless PNG format is two to four times as big as the lossy JPG files. So it should be obvious why JPG is used for skin downloads. In fact JPG would have no reason to exist if there was a lossless format that was smaller, as claimed by the OP.

EDIT: just tried one of your comics Dalek. PNG really was smaller than JPG. So I understand your idea, but it doesn't seem to work for LFS skins.

I understand that. Still, if you realize that most skins are at 2048x2048, and were saved as a .png, instead of .jpg, the size would be bigger. When saved at 512x512, .png's size will be smaller. Makes sense?

Tweak, seeing your post made me go:"Hmm, maybe the idea would be useless for now, maybe for S3?" Also, I do realize that S3 is a long, long, long way away.

Quote from Tweaker :

No point to use a PNG format anyways, Scawen decided to convert anything to DDS with its compression, so you really don't gain from having some other kind of format.... we'll always have crappy DDS from now on it seems (unfortuneately ).

Im sure the reason to move to DDS is because it can do other things for the future of LFS.