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Comment by bullen | Hacker News Reader

I dither all my images on the front page: http://sprout.rupy.se

The platform is open-source: https://github.com/tinspin/sprout

Dithering doesn't compress very well, so JPEG can do far better quality for the same file size, e.g. https://i.imgur.com/FXQWF23.jpg instead of your http://sprout.rupy.se/file/3/0/0/annaleefisher-200.gif

BTW, your drag and drop triggers on right click, so weird things happen when using the right click menu.

Sure but then you need to pre-compress the file, using CPU to zip files on the fly like most servers do is bad.

I only add compression on a need basis manually. CPU is the most scarce resource.

You need CPU to dither and compress to GIF too, and for me with Imagemagick that takes three times as long as compressing the JPEG version.

Dithering is done once (not every request) so not a problem, I will add "once" gzip compression to images at some point but only when the load on my blog increases to the point of breaking bandwidth. I suspect CPU will falter first so no point worrying really!

I don't understand, so maybe we're talking past each other. JPEG compression is only done once as well.

Also, gzipping a GIF is actually likely to make it bigger!

Ok, I thought you meant HTTP compression, but yeah it makes it bigger! jpeg is not interesting to begin with because of artifacts. The dithering is a style, all-in-all my choice had very little to do with actual size savings... it's also simpler = can be displayed on monochrome displays, the code to make it and render it is simpler. etc. etc. Sure in pure bandwidth savings you'll win every day of the week, but in style? Life without art is meaningless for humans. Dithering is minimalism of expression!

Totally agree on size, but i quite prefer the dithered look over the highly visible jpg artifacts

The artifacts may be exaggerated there, as that image got JPEG compressed twice - once by me, and then Imgur did it again and made it smaller (edit: actually, can't see a difference). Here, I've uploaded it as a PNG, so I don't think Imgur messed with it https://i.imgur.com/uzlR3Fj.png

WEBP can do better (uploaded as PNG): https://i.imgur.com/w8XnHda.png

Wow that loads so fast. I should start doing that.

You really shouldn't. You can get smaller file sizes with better quality using better formats, e.g. JPEG. (See my sibling comment.)

Mmm gotcha, I'll have to run some tests. I've never considered using dithering before, but the minimalist asthetic looks kinda cool. But you're right that it wouldn't make much sense if JPG is better though..

234 requests 555.06 KB / 371.64 KB transferred Finish: 41.65 s DOMContentLoaded: 672 ms load: 1.45 s

Still going....

Are you avoiding Atkinson dithering?

I prefer Floyd–Steinberg, it's softer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dither

Open source?

Where's the license?

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