chris lee

Join Date 12/2001

Optimization - Why do skin designers ignore it?

Is it just me or do many skin designers just not take into account of performance when designing skins?

I have two machines, a fast one and a slow Windows 2000 machine.

Some skins just don't run fast on the Windows 2000 machine, until I optimize them that is!

The simple process of reducing the number of colors on the bitmap images to 256 or 16 has a dramatic effect on how fast the machine will run. You can reduce transparency in a lot of images where the background can be part of the image.

99% of skins seem to have all 16 millon colour images, this is just crazy as the reduced color images look just as good as long as you use an optimization tool such as the one in Paintshop Pro.

Sure you could say get rid of the old machine, but I can still tell the speed difference even on the new machine.

So why have lower performance however fast your PC is when the results are just as good?

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They are all concerned with the visual appearence of the skin so they have no time to worry about the performance

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Really on todays machines the performance hit is highly unnoticable really.
Most people nowadays are running on avergae 512M RAM and even with the skin running, it leaves a lot of RAM left to spare.

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This machine is 512MB Ram and I can still notice the difference, its only slight I will admit but I always like to feel like I'm getting the best from my hardware!

Another reason to reduce color size is the distribution package will be smaller, but I suppose you'll tell me everyone has lightening fast connections so who cares right?

Themes are also going to have wider appeal because they will work on the older machines just as well as the new.

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paxx

Join Date 03/2001

I agree with you chris. A lot of people tend to forget that not everybody is a graphic designer with a super computer. A lot of us change our computer every two years, while the "the real world", it's more like 5 years.

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"Themes are also going to have wider appeal because they will work on the older machines just as well as the new"

That's where to confusion comes in.
People who download skins are under the impression that skin authors create them just for other people. While this is true for a large majority of folk, there are still some who don't suscribe to that whole 'ego skinning' thing.
Myself, as an example, I would never optimise my personal skins simply because I don't have an issue with their speed, plus my fast connection means uploading isn't an issue.
While there's still those 2 different approaches to skinning, the filesizes and perceived speed of the skins running will be up and down.

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There's no difference for me whether the skin is optimized or not - smooth as always..

(p.s. I have 384mbytes of ram

)

(p.p.s When the 16-million images are packed in a .wba, they're smaller than optimized ones)

(p.p.s Hi!

)

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P.S. nr.2

You can't compress .tga..

Shoot me if I'm wrong.

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paxx

Join Date 03/2001

On my previous computer (a celeron 366 with 128 Megs of RAM), that the only computer I used at home until last Christmas, it made a big difference weather skins were optimised or not. Some skins were smoothless, while some others totally paralysed my computer.

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DavidK

Join Date 03/2001

I've optimized some skins and not optimized others. I always assumed it was the amount of time it took to optimize the graphics that made people decide to not do it. I guess you could make a macro to process them as a batch but I wouldn't trust it to get all the pieces to look right. It took me hours to get all the pieces optimized for Alien Technology. Skins these days have so many files, post processing them all is very time consuming.

True, TGA's can't be 8-bit. Not true though that the BMP's compress further in the zip if they're 24-bit. Alien Tech lost 500kb total and over 300kb off the zip file size.

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I'm still working on my first WB for publication, but I've been tweaking other people's skins and making skins for my own use to learn the process for some time now. And to answer your question, the bottom line for me is it is just not worth the time and effort to optimize graphics for file size and performance speed.

The WB I'm working on now has 110 bitmaps and 39 targas for the main skin. If you counted the separate frames in the images for multiple states that number could be 3-5 times that. And those multiple frames do count, because with some of the gradient effects I've used to achieve a different look for the separate states, they will not all react well to using the same color reduction algorithm.

By the time I have everything optimized for appearance and functionality, there is no way I'm going to go back and spend hours and hours doing color conversions and then rechecking the skins in order for someone to save a couple hundred kilobytes of RAM or hard drive space. On top of all that, I'm trying to do skins for Sysmetrix, Rainlendar, WinAmp, and eventually a few other programs to match the WB. And each of those programs is getting more complex. Sure, Rainlendar is nothing to skin compared to a WB or media player skin, but it all adds up.

With the amount of RAM and standard hard drive sizes available today, and current download speeds being what they are, it's just not worth my time to do what you're asking. I'd rather spend that time improving and creating new graphics. If that means a few people won't download or use my skin because of the minimal extra RAM or HD space, so be it.

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The simple process of reducing the number of colors on the bitmap images to 256 or 16 has a dramatic effect on how fast the machine will run. You can reduce transparency in a lot of images where the background can be part of the image.99% of skins seem to have all 16 millon colour images, this is just crazy as the reduced color images look just as good as long as you use an optimization tool such as the one in Paintshop Pro.

I'm rather amazed really that noone else has taken issue with this statement. I will grant that a background graphic or even a simple taskbar, titlebar, or button will often look nearly as good in 4-bit as in 24-bit color, but anything that is using complex combinations of gradients, textures, transparency, highlights or shadows, saying that it is either a simple process or that the quality remains after conversion is simply not true.

If you have any doubts, talk to all the bootskin artists and fans who are chomping at the bit for even 8 bit color support.

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Most bitmap images in windowblind skins can be optimized with ZERO loss of quality. For example, this image has a TOTAL of 102 colors:

http://www.thirty3.com/images/ex1.bmp

Whats the point of saving it as a 32bit image when 8bit will give you the EXACT same result?

Here's the 8bit version:

http://www.thirty3.com/images/ex2.bmp

EXACTLY the same 102 colors as the 32bit version but only 1/4th the filesize, 60k vs. 15k.

Those of you with fast computers and connections dont care but I bet those of us with older hardware and/or dialup connections do. Also, I wonder how much bandwidth WC would save in a year if every WB skin was a couple hundred k smaller.

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heh get a better pc. I spent more $ on my first one than I did on my 3rd one!

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Typical.

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Oh, And.. Skinners usually make skins for themselves and share them.

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Interesting...

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Sooo who's falt is it?... The skinner with the "up to date power pc" that enjoys making skins And Shares Them
Or..
The win98/Me/2000 user?

If you can handle it, Great!..
If you can't, Make your OWN

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lmao

I'm just trying to be helpful. And yes, I do make my own skins thank you.

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Most bitmap images in windowblind skins can be optimized with ZERO loss of quality. For example, this image has a TOTAL of 102 colors:

If the number of unique colors in the graphic is less than 256, I agree that it's a simple process to convert to 8 bit. As I already conceded in my post, for many simple graphics it is not a problem to reduce the color depth. Look at the graphic you picked to prove your point... It's grayscale essentially except for one fully saturated color #FF00FF, the magic pink used for transparency purposes. Not exactly a challenge to convert. Furthermore, I was taking issue primarily with Chris Lee's assertion concerning 16 colors - that's 4-bit, not 8-bit

Take a look at some more colorful skins with complex textures, gradients, and shadows. My current WB is using my version of a brightly colored carbon-fiber look along with metallics and leather. I have in excess of 1600 unique colors in many of the images, and if you try to reduce the color depth, the carbon fiber effect is completely lost.

I can't speak for other artists obviously, but I design something for a certain look, feel and functionality that I want to achieve. The rest of the world be damned while I'm working on it... I want it to look as close to the image I have in my head as possible and still function on my computer. When I'm finished, I will spend some time going over it to eliminate any obvious errors or excess, and then I'll upload it for anyone else that wants to use it.

Once you download it, you can do whatever you want with it on your system. If you think it's bloated, change it yourself or unload it. Call it your price to pay for the skin I spend weeks of my life on and give to you for free.

[Message Edited]

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Oh man...That was so much better than what I said, Shameless Designs!

[Message Edited]

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The words might be a little prettier, but the "speaker" is a whoooooooooole lot uglier.

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Shameless Designs said:

By the time I have everything optimized for appearance and functionality, there is no way I'm going to go back and spend hours and hours doing color conversions and then rechecking the skins in order for someone to save a couple hundred kilobytes of RAM or hard drive space.

When talking about performance it is not about the small amount of disk space saved its all about rendering of the graphics on the screen.
When skinning with such as Windowblinds the borders of windows has to be rendered again and again for every single window displayed.
You don't have to spend hours optimizing every little graphic, targeting specific areas such as borders will do the trick. Reducing transparency in a few locations can work wonders.

I know people say 'get a better PC' nice for those of us lucky enough to afford it, but for millions a PC is a major investment.
I've yet to find a machine, no matter how powerful that does not benefit from skin optimisation especially when you've got the system fully loaded with most of the object desktop suite.

if you try to reduce the color depth, the carbon fiber effect is completely lost.

Ok so I don't want to get in the way of artistic flare, I don't expect you to reduce colors when the effect is a poor looking skin.
Not every skin is suitable for such optimization. If it's just too much hastle in the post process then ok don't do it, I know its free so as designers its your call.

If you want more people to enjoy your work then do a little tweaking in a few places.

Automatic optimization would be nice, but I don't think its a realistic prospect since skins are such a complex subject.

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OK, I'm getting real curious now...

When talking about performance it is not about the small amount of disk space saved its all about rendering of the graphics on the screen. When skinning with such as Windowblinds the borders of windows has to be rendered again and again for every single window displayed.You don't have to spend hours optimizing every little graphic, targeting specific areas such as borders will do the trick. Reducing transparency in a few locations can work wonders.

Hippy and I maintain that the performance gain will be marginal. You, Chris, along with paxx and Digital Fusion insist that it is significant. So give me an example with some numbers behind it. Apparently you have tested this theory, so let's have some details. Which WB did you use? What method did you use to reduce the color depth of the graphics? How did you benchmark the before and after performance? What are the results?

Give me some solid evidence, something we can verify ourselves. I'm not trying to be a smart alec here. I really am curious now. I want to check this out. In fact, I'll try to find a couple popular skins here that have fairly uncomplicated graphics and were saved in 24 bit color depth and in the next few days I'll convert and test them myself. But I really would like to hear the evidence you have already that led you to your current stand on this subject. Who knows? You might convince a few skinners to change their habits...

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I haven't noticed much performance slowness when making hi-res skins, but maybe the pocket pc is different in that respect.

chould change my title to "small screen skinner"

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I for one have noticed a difference between a uis2 without some optimization and a really optimized uis1. Many themes could be optimized without any hurt to the graphics by a simple option called tile. now if people think that it takes to much time to change the parts of a skin that were stretched and could be tiled to tiled I think they are wrong. I remember finding one skin a while ago that all I did was change strech to tile where applicable I could notice a large difference in speed. However many of the skinners already know this and since is isn't exactly difficult to employ it.

just my $.o5

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