J. Grimbert <jgr### [at] atos-groupcom> wrote in message
news:386326C6.6A53A010@atos-group.com...
> I would say that you do not want to raytrace a picture and have the
> original result in JPG or GIF.
>
> Why ?
>
> GIF: limited to 256 colours, and some americans would have a legal problem
>   with a silly patent on compression.

Beyond simply silly.

> JPG: the compression algorithm is with loss. Moreover the compression need
> a spatial transformation of the picture, which imply you will only have
the
> file at the very end of the rendering (no Continue)

This is very good to post on a messageboard because of it's small size and
portability.  Virtually every graphical newsclient can use JPG without a
problem.

It's not good for the original, because as you said, it's lossy and you
can't interrupt an image and expect a result, sadly.

> If you want a modern image format, go for PNG (and its already in POV).
> It's lossless, 24 (or even 48 bits), can have alpha information like gif
> and has no legal issue!

However, it's not fully supported by everything (not by anything if you want
full, 100% support), it's quite a bit larger then JPG, from my experience,
but it is a very good format, and I'm hoping that it'll become the standard.

Also, I think a few games use PNG to store textures.

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