Asking for suggestions/crit

[Eleven]

So I'm working on a new sig.. and not sure if I should just go into the "rate the sig" thread, but I want some crit on it .. cuz I'm stuck on how to make this better.

Here is the problem:
http://img5.ranchoweb.com/images/chiximi/tempclockeleven.png
I would want to use this image, since .png holds the colours of this piece really well. The problem is this is over the 100kb limit for image size.

http://img5.ranchoweb.com/images/chiximi/tempclockeleven.gif
This is a .gif copy.. loses resolution, loses smooth corners, more noise/graininess. But at least it is under 100kb

Bleah... suggestions on ways to better compress? Should I try .jpg, and run with white corners? try trimming down the image size to a more managable size? Suggestions on things to change/add are welcome and appreciated too (I've already changed the clock to read 11 instead of 12 :D, plus added the border/text/infinity symbol, plus some bevelling)

[Skizzem]

First of all, I'd like to say that your signature is so cool you have inspired me to redo mine. Secondly, I think you should resize it just a tad bit smaller (slightly bigger than your current sig) well enough so that it's 100 kB or less. I think changing PNG compressions will lose some of its quality, just like how the GIF version ended up as. But before doing anything, go "Save As For Web" your image and then on the far right menu tabs, choose PNG-24 and click on the arrow thing on the far right of that and choose "Optimize for File Size" and type in 99 kB so it fits within the 100 kB limit. See the result.

Edit: Sorry for the double posts.

[Hijiko]

Dang that looks pretty nice rite there >__<

I'd would say resize it (cutting 76kb =/), i mean ur current sig size look very nice.

[daeyna]

The biggest problem is that you made this out of some JPEG images, so there's pretty horrible artifacts all throughout the image which PNG has to labor very hard to exactly reproduce. I've run your PNG file through a couple contrast-enhancements to expose this; look at the white clock face on the right: the big blocky stuff isn't the problem, it's the tiny pixel noise all around the edges, and between the two outer black bands. And there's similar stuff in the face and hair. If you got rid of that and then ran the png through pngcrush or pngout, you'd probably be down to 120KB or lower.

http://daeyna.com/direct/temp/clock_bad.png

I notice that the blocks are exactly 8x8. That means that this image went through JPEG at exactly this size. So if your source images were at a different scale, you either resized them then saved them as jpgs again (bad!), or else you saved the whole signature out as a jpg before adding the PNG transparency (also bad!)--I don't actually know. (Or the clock face was at the right scale so you didn't rescale it.)

If you build your signature from clean source artwork (either not jpegs originally, or much higher-resolution jpegs, and blur them a bit before shrinking them) they shouldn't have this junk in them. Or you can try to go through by hand to clean them up, but it's a PITA. (This is exactly what "Smart Blur" ought to fix, but it totally doesn't work.)

I'd just save it as a jpeg with white corners, myself. Not all browsers do 8-bit alpha anyway.

[stukasa]

I used to have the exact same problem until Mai mentioned an image editor called Irfanview in a different thread (thanks, Mai! :p). One great thing about Irfanview is that it allows you to save a PNG image as a JPEG without a loss of picture quality.

Here's a link to the website:
http://www.irfanview.com/

When you have the image open, go to File > Save As.
If it isn't selected already, choose Save As JPG - JPEG File.
There should be a JPEG/GIF Save Options box on the screen. Make sure the following options are checked:
Disable color subsampling
Keep original EXIF data
Keep original IPTC data
Keep original JPG-comment

The following should NOT be checked:
Save as progressive JPG
Save as grayscale JPG

There should also be a quality bar that goes from 0 (worst) to 100 (best). Try saving it at 100% quality, but after you save check to see the size of the file. If it is over 100 KB, go back and try lowering the quality slightly, then save it again. Keep lowering it until it gets under 100 KB. Even at 90-95% quality, it should still look pretty good. Hope that helps.