Reduction of File Sizes Before Afterburner
This week we'll take a little break from Director and address the #1 question that I've been asked of readers for the last four weeks: How do I get such small file sizes?Many of you have asked this in reference to some of the examples I've done where the combined files sizes are equal to 180k and the final Shockwave is only 21k.
There are several techniques that I use to achieve the reduction in file size prior to using the Afterburner Utility. In the future I'll share more of these techniques, but this week I address a suspicion that a few of you seem to have.
Yes I do use DeBabelizer.
This is the major graphic tool I use when creating any Shockwave. Since most of the mail I received from suspicious readers asked whether "I've seen (or use) a tool called DeBabelizer," I will detail for you how I use the simpler techniques of this application.
Reduction of File Sizes Using DeBabalizer
Step 1: After opening the image you wish to work with, choose Color Reduction & Remapping from the Palette menu as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1
Step 2: There are several settings you will be presented within the Color Reduction & Remapping window. Set the method to "DeBabalizer Best Quality" as shown in Figure 2 and then click the OK button.
Figure 2
Step 3: Now choose Reduce Colors from the Palette menu as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3
Step 4: This will again present you with a window with many options. I recommend changing the "Target Number of Colors" to 64 and then working your way down from there. How low should you go? Well, the effects of your work will be obvious. As with anything there comes a point of diminishing returns. For most of the graphics I use, it is very hard to use less than 32 colors unless the image is just black and white.
Step 5: Choose Remove Unused & Duplicates from the Palette menu as shown in Figure 5. This will take any duplicate colors out of the color palette. This step is not always necessary, but I use it before I save the file out of DeBabelizer.
Figure 5
Well, how much file size can just these steps save you? Figure 6 shows the file size of the graphic at the top of this week's column before it was run through the steps in today'stutorial. Figure 7 shows the file size after the image was processed using DeBabelizer.
Figure 6
Figure 7
As you can see from these figures, the reduction when using these steps is substantial. That concludes our lesson on file reduction using DeBabelizer. Next week we'll jump back into shocking some new files with some brand new Director tricks.
By the way, how do you like the difficulty level so far? Feel free to send me e-mail with your questions, comments, or suggestions.
