Always use .png as i think it has the best result on an image but like Shelley_c said if it is an animation it has to be .gif or it wount be supported

Regards
Wengi

png-24 :)

well i'm with ya because JPG can degrade a very good picture :(

Unless it's animations, I see little need to use GIFs anymore. Unless it's a very high color count photo, don't use JPEG much now, either. PNG, though, I use almost daily -- especially for gradients (167byte smooth gradient backgrounds are sweet!).

For archiving photos I'd prefer using BMP, as it can be compressed better than JPEG on disk with an archiver (Stuffit is great for reducing already compressed JPEG images).

do you guys hack your boards to support transperancy in IE or just leave them hanging or not use the transprancy option?

i played w/ joomla a bit and it seems thats all they use. they dont even aknowledge .jpg or gif or even .psd. i bought a template and it did not work correcty in photoshop and required fireworks. the images in fireworks were leaps over photoshop and they said photoshop dont truly handle or support .png properly. is that just a joomla thing or is true across the web?

last question. sombody stated that .png is better quality than jpg. so i could even use .png in my gallery photographs uploads or is that going to far?

thanks for all the info. ive read a little on the net but most dont explain in everyday terms or how i can use this in vb correctly.

Phtoshop support for PNG could indeed be better.

@StuntFactoryX
You can get the same transparancy in PNG as you can with GIF:
Just use 8 bits color depth.

PNG compresses lossless, so yes - the quliaty is better then JPG.

@ChrisLM2001
What about TIF for archiving purposes?

I would personally use the matte option for .png and replacement variables for any images like smilies, post icons instead of hacking my forum to compensate for IE.

Just tested this again with a 3073KB BMP screenshot.

1. TIFF (Compressed) ----------- 1039KB
2. 7-Zip (Ultra settings) --------- 990KB
3. PNG (True Color) ------------ 978KB (I use the very good SmartSaverPro compressor)
4. Sitx (Max) ------------------- 924KB.
5. WinUHA (Max) --------------- 752KB (my favorite archiver for images).