I ate the fortune cookie first, then read what nolot Florent wrote:
> Hi,
> i have a problem with the jpeg format. When i save an image in this
> format, after make a flatten image, the quality of the image is not the
> same that the original image, even i choose quality one. The color
> change.
>
> Have you a solution?
> Thanks
>
> Florent Nolot nolot_fl@...
> France

If your eyes are really good, you'll probably notice the difference no
matter what you do. In JPEG the math is more important than the bits.
So, some images really do look better and store smaller as GIFs - usually
because they either have a lot of mostly-same color patches, they see
enough optimization from left-to-right GIF compression (and maybe speed
from top-to-bottom loading and interlacing), or something is so subtle in
the image that you're better off losing colors than image details.

In a GIF you can customize the palette, or even force the palette to your
selection. (I assume the destination is web; if not, maybe you should try
other file formats too.)

I'm not sure of the source of your JPEG, and whether you have been mixing
parts from multiple images together, so this may not apply to you. But,
when working with layered content, I seem to see better results when I
"merge visible layers" instead of flatten. So, ever since my experience
with that, I don't use flatten.

(Well, I used it once to get a weird effect. But never mind that.)

When my destination is GIF or JPEG, I -always- save the XCF I got started
in. It contains a lot more information than either of these formats, and
if my client doesn't like the results, I can go back and modify the
offending layer(s) easily, index using another palette, try to get the
"same" effect using slightly different features, etc.

. | . Heather Stern | star@...
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