WebVise Totality

   This is about the easiest compression utility we've found. There are lots of them out there, but WebVise by Auto f/x has lots of options and some added features (like animation and watermarking) thrown in.
   One of the biggest hassles of doing web pages is making the graphics such that they don't take a lifetime to download to the person surfing to your page. While we're not showing you the actual graphic here, you can see from the WebVise control panel to the left that the JPG graphic we have is 689x425 pixels and is 858k in size.
   We use JPG a lot because you can take some of the sharpness out of the picture and still have a very viewable graphic. Here, by using a number of different compression factors, we reduce our 689x426 graphic to 28k. We could reduce it more just by adjusting size.
   Note all the sliders. By adjusting the tonal range and color press (fidelity), we achieve this massive compression (of course we are also setting a global factor as well).
   The shield color function bears some explaination. Because in high compression situations you can get ghosting and mottled colors, this allows you to select a color (or group of colors with the range slider) that you want left alone in the compression. This makes the colors

more "true" without having to sacrifice color compression on the whole graphic. A very nice feature.
   Of course, WebVise Totality gives you a preview of your graphic, so you can judge for yourself how much quality you want to sacrifice. You will be surprised how little you have to give up to get a major savings.
   Another module of WebVise Totality allows compression of GIF images. Most of the adjustments for size for this type of file are made with the number of colors, the size of the image and the dithering of the image. But that isn't all WebVise Totality does with GIF images.
   It also allows you to create image maps, to produce interlaced GIFs and, best of all, gives you up to nine transparency regions.
   The transparency options are wonderful, because every other mothod we have seen to make areas transparent involves changing colors in backgrounds, which can be a laborous process at best. In addition, WebVise Totality supports transparent data passed to it from graphic programs like PhotoShop!
   Finally, there is a "fringe" slider that solves the problem of transitional colors with antialiasing. You adjust the fringe and you eliminate the halo effect you sometimes find on images.
   WebVise Totality also includes an animator module which works as a PhotoShop plugin. Its a pretty neat application all in itself, producing animated GIF files. The advantage of these files, of course, is the user needs no plugins or the like to make them run. It isn't as fancy as Auto f/x's Universal Animator, but its rather cool and easy to use.
   Also included in this excellent package is a module to help you select what are called "web safe colors." There are only 216 colors recognized by both Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer. The safe color module allows dithering of colors so that only these 216 "safe" colors are used.
   Last but not least is a digital watermarking system, which lets you encode copyright and other information with images you create. If you've worked hard on creating a graphic, you should digitally watermark it. That way, if someone else trys to appropriate it from your site, you can prove it is yours.
   All in all, WebVise Totality is an outstanding package of plugins which solve a lot of problems and gives you better control of your graphics. Its cool and easy to use. You'll like it and use it all of the time.

Link to the Auto f/x web site