The Ultimate Balancing Act, Size vs Quality

[RWLongy4]

As all the artists i'm sure are well aware we have a 12kb limit to work with when creating our sigs. I do everything I can to preserve the integrity of the sig while still keeping it under 12kbs. Sometime this can be a tough task...

For this reason I thought I'd start a thread where artists can share their tricks for keeping high image quality while still keeping the sig size down.

Some simple (maybe obvious) things I do:

-Use slight blurring to disguise pixelation
-Try not to overload the sig with images
-Use the quality bar when saving as opposed to just the Low, Medium, High, Very High quality box
-Delete all unneeded layers (not sure if this helps just something I do)

Any further suggestions would be much appreciated.

[joelamosobadiah]

As all the artists i'm sure are well aware we have a 12kb limit to work with when creating our sigs. I do everything I can to preserve the integrity of the sig while still keeping it under 12kbs. Sometime this can be a tough task...

For this reason I thought I'd start a thread where artists can share their tricks for keeping high image quality while still keeping the sig size down.

Some simple (maybe obvious) things I do:

-Use slight blurring to disguise pixelation
-Try not to overload the sig with images
-Use the quality bar when saving as opposed to just the Low, Medium, High, Very High quality box
-Delete all unneeded layers (not sure if this helps just something I do)

Any further suggestions would be much appreciated.

Yeah, really in my experiences, there's not too much you can do. I mean, you have posted the more obvious things. If you REALLY want a nice looking cafe quality sig, try to use things without definite edges. Sometimes (if it is your style) you can use a lot of lighting effects in front of your renders and kind of cover some stuff up.

[Idahofan1]

ugh, the minimums...... Only thing i do, is if im using a stock photo, i delete what isnt going to be in the sig. Not sure if it helps, but it may.

Anyone know if flattening the layers will lower the quality?

[joelamosobadiah]

ugh, the minimums...... Only thing i do, is if im using a stock photo, i delete what isnt going to be in the sig. Not sure if it helps, but it may.

Anyone know if flattening the layers will lower the quality?

When you save an image as a .jpg file, it automatically flattens all of the layers AND deletes all parts of the image that aren't actually in the sig. So neither of those will lower the sig size.