What is the fastest loading image, i know mostly make my images jpegs, but on my website on the cases section a few of the jegs load slow and seem to take forever, so what IS the fastest loading image type?

I think the fastest is GIF..

Thats what I use on my sites and they load fast

-James

The fastest loading image is the smallest (in filesize). The type of image has little to do with how fast it loads.

You have to use the right format for the right kind of image. For example, sites that use JPEG's for little smilie faces are going to load slower then a site with the same smilies in PNG or GIF

PNG is the fastest in 32-Bit format. It is also generally the best, as GIF only goes upto 8-Bit. PNG loads almost instantly on both of my machines (the slower one is still running on 6GB HD, 333Mhz pro)

Again, I agree with Chroder. The amount of time it takes for a browser to display an image when taken as a fraction of the time it takes to download the image (even over broadband) is simply insignificant. Further, trying to distinguish which file type displays faster than others is an exercise in irrelevant minutae. File size is the virtually sole relevant factor which determines load speed.

Further, even if it did matter, it would not be the same for all browsers as each browser (as we should all know by now) does everything differently than each other.

GIF generally have smallest file sizes, and are the fastest. They have the best compression, but some ugly results at times (not quite as ugly as bad jpeg compression, but pixelated for sure). I'd stick with your Jpeg files and just forget about Dial-up users. It will give them more incentive to finally empty out their bank accounts and make the jump to broadband, like normal people do.

I manage a website that has loads of pictures per page and am constantly making trade-offs to make the site work well on dial-up.

Thought you might be interested in a real life comparison I did this morning.

I have a picture that I need to post on the site - It is a photograph of a woman so requires good quality and should be displayed at 150 pixels wide on the page.

The original pix has a 300bpi resolution and its dimensions are 2236 x 2792 pixels. Size is 12.8 Mb.

If I save the pix as a jpg with quality = 80% and change the resolution to 72bpi the deminsions drop to 537 x 670 pixels and the size to 73 Kb. You could post the picture and size it in your editor to 150 pixels and it would load in 11 seconds.

However if you save the same pix as a jpg with quality = 80 %, resolution = 72bpi and width = 150 the size drops to 8.67 Kb and the pix will load in 1 second.

They all load about the same. It's just the filesize that's important really. Obviously a file that's going to be 1mb is going to load slower than something that's 10k

Agree with Chroder! Problem is in the filesize... The difference between the image types is in algorythms of compression, so the same image could have a different size because of type....