File types and saving scanned photos

I upgraded my memory to 128 MB but when I try to save a scanned photo I'm getting an error that I'm out of virtual memory or "scratched" memory. I have tried to save it on a diskett, but they aren't big enough. What is the difference between different file types? Is there a different way to save photos that won't take up so much memory? What type of CD burner is the best to buy to allow saving to CDs?

 

You can easily increase the amount of virtual memory on your PC. It is basically just hard drive space the system reserves to use as memory overflow and you can size it to suit yourself.

File types -

Jpeg ( .jpg) is good as it is small and everyone has some program to display these files. Downside is if you will want to edit the file later since .jpg is a lossy file format and will lose some detail forever each time the file is edited.

Tiff ( .tif) is larger than .jpg but is a lossless format so you can edit without losing detail. Easy enough to change it to a .jpg when you are finished to save space.

.gif is about the only choice if you are going to animate a file. Also good for saving simple pictures like black&white or 4 colors maximum - like cartoons.

The windows bitmap pictures ( .bmp ) are huge and there is no benefit whatever unless you are going to use one for wallpaper or something and then you might not have any choice.

Not good for serious editing but excellent for viewing pictures and for resizing them and for changing their format is a program called iView or Irfanview. Free and you can download it from Here.

 

THere are many many different file types for pictures, all with their own justified reasons for existence, as pretty well outlined above, my decision for picture types are of these categories...

BMP (bitmap) and TIF/TIFF are very detailed pictures. They take a lot of space so I would't use them for final sending. I like to keep my "originals" stored in these formats knowing that the quality is as good as ever.

For sending files, you want either .JPG or GIF which are very fast. However, they work very differently and you have to think each time which one is best - sometimes it will be GIF, other times it will be JPG..

GIF works by making a separate image map for each colour in a picture. Kind of like a stencil. This means that if your picture only has three colours (like a road sign) then GIF is going to be ideal. however, if you have lots of colours (or different shades) in your picture, all those layers (one for each colour)are going to add up to a lot of memory, so you'd be better off with JPG.

JPG more or less works by playing with the reolution rates in an image. It's possible, if you have a large area of your picture as one colour (like an area of blue sky) to have that area of the picture in very low resolution. The eye will not notice much difference from the original in high resolution.

Of those last two, your main task is in deciding which picture format to use. I recommend you try out the shareware Web-Graphics Optimiser. Get a demo version at http://www.webopt.com This program will even choose which format is the best for any picture. It's got a lot of other cool things, but you'll have to try it out to see.

P.S: Oh - another format I'm getting to like is *.PNG. It's kind of like a GIF in that it can have transparency (in other words, if you use the image in front of a multi coloured bnackground, your image will appear to float instead of havinga [non transparent] white square around it), except that with a PNG, it is possible to have different levels of transparency (0% - 100% transparent) for different parts of the image. This means that things like drop-shadow effects look realistic and don't suffer from "white edge" like they do with a GIF. PNG is slightly slower than GIF or JPG but is still fast enough to be used effectively as web graphics. It is supported by pretty well all web browsers.

 

"when I try to save a scanned photo I'm getting an error that I'm out of virtual memory or "scratched" memory. "

Can you give the exact error message you are receiving? Also make sure you have not set a maximum swapfile size or disabled virtual memory.

It might help if you right-click on My Computer, select Properties, go to the Performance tab and report what you see when you click the virtual memory button. For example, I have set a minimum swap file of 80mb with no maximum. This is what I see under Virtual Memory:
"Let Windows manage my virtual memory" is selected

The rest is greyed out, but still readable:
Hard Disk ... C:\2146MB free
Minimum......80
Maximum.....No Maximum