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> Actually it is seldom necessary to have more than
> 16 colors for most TradeStation work.
> That is why I use SnagIt (http://www.techsmith.com/)
> to capture my screen. You can setup the output to
> automatically convert your screen to 16 color .gif
> files and seldom do such files exceed 30K.
FWIW, I just tried capturing a 730x617 chart with SnagIt. With the
default "Automatic (optimal color)" setting, the GIF file was 21375
bytes. Then I set it to 16-color, and the GIF file was 19897 bytes.
So SnagIt apparently does a pretty good job of optimizing colors in
simple images like charts -- forcing it to 16-color only saved 7%.
(Can't say for sure about Hypersnap or other tools.)
The GIF vs JPG choice is a much bigger issue. GIF is the perfect
file format for simple computer-generated images like charts. They
have few colors, and often the same color covers a large area, both
of which are ideal for GIF. GIF will produce an extremely small file
with excellent image quality. On the above example, the 21k GIF file
stored an average of ***21 pixels per byte*** !! That's 2.6 pixels,
in color, per **BIT** ! Not BAD.
JPG, on the other hand, is great for photographs but *lousy* for
charts. It doesn't handle sharp transitions (e.g. from a black chart
background to a green price bar) very well. It tends to produce
fuzzy images and MUCH larger file sizes. I captured the same 730x617
chart with SnagIt's default JPG settings, and the file was over 80kb
with worse image quality.
Whatever you do, NEVER NEVER NEVER post charts in BMP format. BMP is
extremely inefficient. The same image that took 21kb in GIF and 80kb
in JPG format took ***1321 kb*** in BMP!! That's more than SIXTY
TIMES as big as the GIF.
So use JPG to post pictures of your kids or your cat or whatever.
(But not to RT. :-) Use GIF to post charts.
Gary
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