[lug] Are xcf (gimp) files that much smaller than bmps?

[jjh-blug at vieorhythms.com]

>>>>> "Ed" == Ed Hill <ed at eh3.com> writes:

Ed> On Mon, 2003-03-31 at 10:57, Andrew Diederich wrote:
>> I was playing around with a 3mb bmp file, added a layer.  Since you
>> can't save layers in bmps, I guess, I used the gimp native format,
>> xcf.  The xcf file is 480kb, the bmp is 3070kb.
>> 
>> Are xcf files really that much better at compression than windows
>> bitmaps?

Ed> Hi Andrew,

Ed> Yes!  The "bmp" files have *no* compression.

I accidentally found out that Windows does support some form of bitmap
compression, and the Gimp will create them.  Take the bitmap, switch to
index mode (Ctrl-I) and create an index with a custom palette.  Then do
a Save-As and pick bmp.  Gimp will prompt you to do RLE (Run Length
Encoding) compression on the image.  

At the time I was working a truly horrendous wordpro doc with 100 or so
embedded bitmaps (screen shots).   Creating indexed, RLE bitmaps reduced
the size of the document by 90%.

I apologized in advance if this message gets posted twice.  My original
post was from the wrong address.

enjoy,

-jeremy


-- 
========================================================================
 Jeremy Hinegardner                              jeremy at hinegardner.org