I am tired of people consistently uploading shoddy bmps to prove a point or share a skin or screenshot. The thing is the format is so big and furthermore it requires me to download the shoddy file and viewing it in the bloody ms picture viewer. Each time it does this and worse is you can't even see it's a bmp file from the attachment link.

So to save server space and help people move on from the freaking ice age remove this file extension completely!

+1

Else change maximum size to about 100kb or something...

Agreed, Bmp's are useless, Hope this post actully goes somewhere

+10000000.

I just cant believe that there are idiots there who stuill use this POS.

Eradicate 'em.

how about changing LFS screenshots to jepg or PNG?

PNG please, not that horrible horrible horrible format JPEG

Agreed, BMP are my initials and I'll be damned if they're plastered all over the forum. I demand privacy!

With LFS screenshots in BMP (is that true? I've never tried the feature myself, SoftTH already adds TIFF screenshot support from the Print Screen button) you can understand why it makes sense to keep it around a bit longer.

the whole point is so that we don't have to convert the files before uploading them.

+1

i think at the very least people should be able to open up the .bmp in MS paint and save it as a .jpg

last time I checked paint only saves in huge BMPs

nope, i just took this in paint

I see

Most definitely '+1' from me.
Bloody annoying when you click an attachment expecting a pic and have to save a .bmp.

Quote from Zachary Zoomy :

last time I checked paint only saves in huge BMPs

Quote from UncleBenny :

nope, i just took this in paint

Equally though I wish people wouldn't use paint because it automatically applies far too much compression to jpegs. There must be some free alternative that would do the job short of a full photo editing package?

I never realised LFS had a screenshot feature built in how do you use it?

Quote from Zachary Zoomy :

last time I checked paint only saves in huge BMPs

Paint in XP added JPG and stuff, I remember this from using 98, uploading an attachment somewhere, and someone going "RAWR! THIS IS A BMP!!! MOO USE JPG!"

Quote from ajp71 :

I never realised LFS had a screenshot feature built in how do you use it?

You press Ctrl+S.

+1 to the thread suggestion, btw.

Quote from ajp71 :

Equally though I wish people wouldn't use paint because it automatically applies far too much compression to jpegs. There must be some free alternative that would do the job short of a full photo editing package?

IrfanView is one. Gimp is another. A photo rather than graphics program I think, but Picaso (sp?) I've heard is another very good free one. I've never used Gimp or Picaso. But IrfanView is probably one of the most popular even including payware.

Quote :

I never realised LFS had a screenshot feature built in how do you use it?

I've never used it. I always forget about it and use my external FSScreen for shots. Unfortunately, it only saves bmp, but you get better results converting yourself with one of the example programs I listed than you normally do with screenshot generators that save in jpeg.

Quote from daloonie :

I am tired of people consistently uploading shoddy bmps to prove a point or share a skin or screenshot. The thing is the format is so big and furthermore it requires me to download the shoddy file and viewing it in the bloody ms picture viewer. Each time it does this and worse is you can't even see it's a bmp file from the attachment link.

So to save server space and help people move on from the freaking ice age remove this file extension completely!

+1
Remove it would make things easier.

You should be able to tell that it's a .bmp, because there's no preview image for it.

Remove BMP and in the meantime give out 2 week bans for uploading them. Job's a good 'un.

/me goes uploads loads of jpegs after hacking into harjuns account...

muhahaa :hide:

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

You should be able to tell that it's a .bmp, because there's no preview image for it.

Yes, but there are allways those people (whodon`tkknowsearchandsuch) who will miss it, and it`s a botter for us others. Simply just remove the feature and we all are happy.

Quote from Zachary Zoomy :

how about changing LFS screenshots to jepg or PNG?

Quote from duke_toaster :

PNG please, not that horrible horrible horrible format JPEG

PNG is not a very good choice for screenshots from LFS. JPEG is better suited for "analog" images like photos and screenshots from games, because the size will be a fraction of that of a PNG and there is no visible loss of quality. The size advantage outweighs the barely noticeable quality loss.

No, PNG is the only choice for LFS screenshots. The size advantage might not be that great, but defaulting to a lossy compression would make the screenshot feature useless for anyone who wants to make good looking shots.

Ideally Scawen would provide a user option to choose whether to use PNG or JPEG (with configurable quality). Though I can understand that BMP was simply the quickest way to implement saving of screenshots.

Scawen said that he chose BMP because it's the only format DX8.1 supports.
Save to PNG or JPG would probably need a third party library or heavy coding work. Anyway, neither of them is really a good option since PNGs would still need recompressing to make their size Internet compatible and JPGs wouldn't have perfect quality like you said. So yeah, BMP is not the perfect solution, but it's as close as we can get.

EDIT: I took a screenshot from LFS (1680x1050) and the size for the files are 5MB for BMP, 1,5MB for PNG and 0,2MB for JPG (quality 80, barely noticable difference). To download those files with a 1Mbps Internet connection it would take (in the same order): 50s, 15s and 2s.