The bigger the file the longer the load time and the greater your lag when you enter your zaby.

or File Size = Lag time

What the hell am I talking about you say? You want a murial on your wall and have painstakingly worked on all the details in your favorite graphics editor (PaintShop Pro, PhotoShop, Gimp, MS Paint???). So anyway you are happy with the way it looks and so what if it's 4000 pixels on the long side, it's got details.

Well an image that is say 4000 x 2000 is is 8,000KB or 8MB remember how it took you a long time to upload? Well it is going to take a long time to download too especially if you saved it at the largest possible setting (12 in Photoshop) This would be great if you were going to print the picture. but you aren't, in fact you are going to have it on your screen, that in most cases is less then 1500 pixels on the long side. and I seriously doubt that you will have a whole wall in your picture at one time, so let's just cut that size to oh say 1000 x 500 trust me you won't lose any quality that you can 'see' on your monitor. this also cuts your file size to a little more manageable 500KB or a load time that is roughly 16 times faster then the original size, IF you maintain a constant download speed. Which very few people do.

Still Saving it at a slightly reduced file size could help too,,, I created a quick image at 4000 x 2000 and saved it with no compression the resulting file size was 1,886.70KB, I saved it again with a setting of 8 and the resulting file was 390.56KB nearly an 80% reduction in file size and since it was an original image NO DECREASE in quality, I save it once more at a setting of 5 and the result was 213.13 KB (an additional savings of 45% or an 89% overall decrease in file size) and is attached here, so you can see just how huge an image it is.



So as you see Compression is your friend, but so is making the file smaller, here is the same file again, only this time I reduced the image from 4000 pixels on the long side to 1000. still a really big image, but watch what happens to the file size at a compression setting of 12 the file is now 171.09 KB at a setting of 8 it is 56.52 KB and at a setting of 5 that 1.8 MB original file size is now only 33.39KB and will download almost as fast as you can open it. that is roughly 2% of the original file size!

Here it is again at a setting of 5 and 1/4 the original size.



So remember, when it comes to your Zaby, file size and compression ARE your friends!

oh and if that didn't convince you here is the file one last time at 500 x 250 with a compression setting of 5 and a whopping 12.58KB file size, hell that will load fast on dial-up!



oh, and YES, if any of you are warped enough to want to use that image in your Zaby, you have my permission to DOWNLOAD it and post it to YOUR OWN Photobucket!