Here are some Web graphics tips and techniques that help Virginia website design to create images that look good and are as compact as they can be. The most common graphics mistake people make on the Web is to use the wrong graphics format for their images. But the choice is really quite simple. If your graphics have a lot of colors (such as a photo), choose JPG. If your graphics have few colors, choose GIF.

When saving your work as a GIF file, use optimized palettes that contain only the colors used they can cut file sizes in half. Newer graphics software gives you a preview before you save this allows you to experiment with the number of colors to choose the best compromise between qualities and file size.

Compression and quality will vary from image to image, so when saving your work as a JPG file, experiment with various levels of compression to choose the best compromise between qualities and file size. Raising the JPG compression from 80 to 30 cuts file size in half, yet the loss of quality is not too obvious. Different programs use different numbers for JPG compression, but generally, the higher the number, the higher the quality and the bigger the file size.

One of the biggest ironies in Web development is that most of us creating Web sites have better systems than our audience has. Some visitors to your Web site are using computers that can only display 8-bit color (256 colors). Others have newer systems that include 16-bit or 32-bit video cards, but they don't even know they can check or change their settings from 8-bit! This means they can't see every color in the spectrum like you can, and that's where the Web safe colors come into play.