Images
Sandvox can make extensive use of images throughout your site. You can use images within your site as:
File Formats
Sandvox can handle any image format that Quicktime supports. However, not all web browsers can handle such a broad range. So Sandvox ensures that all images in your site are of one of these three formats:
- JPEG
- JPEG images are compressed (to make viewing your site quicker) and are great for photographs, but can sometimes lose some detail. All web browsers fully support JPEG images. JPEGs do not support transparency.
- PNG
- PNG images are slightly compressed, but do not lose any quality. They fully support transparency, but Internet Explorer (versions before 7) may experience problems handling this.
- GIF
- Sandvox cannot create GIF images, but it can use existing ones. GIF images are compressed but can only handle a limited number of colors (making them unsuitable for photos). GIF images also allow for basic animation. (Be sure your animated GIF images are the appropriate size and will not be resized by Sandvox; they will not animate if they have been converted to a different format.)
Preferences
In the Sandvox Preferences (above), you can select your preferred format for any images that Sandvox creates. This applies only to images that you personally add to a site. It does not affect any of the images that make up the site's design. Sandvox provides a small test image but you can drag and drop any other image into the preview area to temporarily set a different test thumbnail.
The "sharpen after scaling" slider determines how much sharpening effect will be applied to photos after they are resized. You might be tempted to set this to "sharpest" but for most purposes a moderate sharpening effect is best.
You can select between JPEG and PNG. See above for information on the basic differences between the two formats. If you select JPEG, the quality (compression) of the resulting images can be set as well.
Note that this setting only affects any images that Sandvox needs to create from your originals. Read on for more information on how this process works.
Image Conversion and Scaling
As noted above, Sandvox supports many different image formats, but in order for your pictures to be suitable for the web, Sandvox must ensure that they are published in JPEG, PNG or GIF format.
Sandvox also has to consider the size of an image. There are maximum sizes for images in photo pages and pagelets as well as embedded images. If an image you choose exceeds these limits, Sandvox resizes and converts the image as appropriate.
When converting an image, Sandvox looks to see if it uses any transparency. If so, the image must be converted to the PNG format, regardless of your chosen Preferences, in order to preserve this information.
The following diagram illustrates the whole process of how Sandvox processes images for publishing:
Cat image courtesy of stock.xchng
