Re: [Gimp-user] BMP Image

[Steve Kinney <admin pilobilus net>]

On 09/30/2016 06:22 PM, Steve Kinney wrote:
> Do control+e to open the Export menu, type in a file name ending in
> .bmp, and click the magic button...
>
> I was not aware that .bmp images can be indexed; the most common indexed
> format is .gif.  Depending on the number of colors in the .bmp image,
> .gif may give acceptable results and a much smaller file size on disc.
>
> The logical reason to convert a .bmp file to an indexed format would be
> to get a that smaller file size for the same size image - .bmp uses /no/
> compression to reduce file size, and the result is /big/ image files,
> while .gif uses an efficient file compression method (that's what
> indexing is, more or less).
>
> Check here for lots more details - also other pages in the same part of
> the website:
>
> https://docs.gimp.org/2.8/en/gimp-images-out.html
>
> :o)

Read the docs and you will soon know more than me:  For instance, I just
went poking around and found out that the GIF format uses LZW
compression.  Just converting to an indexed format would not compress an
image /nearly/ as much as doing that /then/ squashing it with LZW.

But not knowing that has not prevented me from using the format
successfully, in its proper place (animated dealie-bobs for websites,
ror instance), for a loooong time.  This stuff is actually simple, from
a practical end-user point of view.

;o)