Dee's CD Q and A Column Updated 11 March 2004
Do you have a question? I'm here to help! Useful Links:

I'm frequently asked questions either in the USENET newsgroup, alt.fashion.crossdressing, or in the Transchat.sister.org Chat Room, The Pink Room, which deserve a more comprehensive answer than either of those venues permit.

I've created this set of pages to contain those questions, and their answers.

My Main Page:
Portraits of Dee

My Favorite Chat:
The Pink Room at transchat.sister.org

My favorite newsgroup:
alt.fashion.crossdressing at Google!

Please E-Mail me with your questions!
  1. You said, on your introduction pagePortraits of Dee that you experimented and chose to use significant JPEG compression for your pictures. Could you be more explicit and specific?

    Sue, a San Diego friend, sent me the following e-mail:


    Hello Dee -

    Just wanted to pass on trivia about images.

    Looked up your web page - I've seen it before but never connected the pics with the person - very nice web site, but who is the nice looking girl in all the pics???

    Noted on your front (web) page the GIF vs JPG image size.

    Apparently when editing, often images not using a proprietary image format use TIFF, as the image is virtually loss less when editing or resizing.

    The TIFF, when zipped, will compress noticeably, so when uncompressed, expands likewise noticeably.

    The GIF format is another which compresses / decompresses noticeably when zipped, and unfortunately, is best used with only two colors or less; exceeding that color count drastically increases GIF file size.

    To feel "good", take a GIF image with a high color count, zip it and compare file sizes - the compression level will seem impressive; the same is the case with TIFF files (TIF).

    Then to feel "bad", take a JPG image, zip it and notice the near or at zero compression factor. That is why I invariably use images in the JPG format.

    Sweet dreams

    Sue xxx


    My experience completely supports Sue's comments, and it is sometimes exasperating to watch a relatively small graphic take significant download time, and it can be a problem if your site ISP storage limits are restrictive.

    My digital camera takes 3MPixel photos, and in a JPEG format with the camera's own compression, these pictures take about 1Mbyte, on average. They tend to vary from 0.5Mbyte to 1.2 Mbyte, with pictures of clouds in the sky over a snowy field (not many details) taking less, and a closeup of the forest where you can see the trees and branches (more details) takes more.

    After you've loaded the pictures into your computer, experiment with the picture software that came with your camera or scanner -- you don't need to be an Adobe PhotoShop whiz kid for this.

    Things you can do with the pictures:

    As specific examples of this process, I took a single picture I was preparing, cropped it and otherwise adjusted it as I would prefer, and then saved it with four different JPEG compression levels, (Best, High, Medium, Low Quality) as provided by the my standard camera software.

    Here's the result:

    BraBest32.jpg -- 320x225 -- 55K

    BraHigh32.jpg -- 320x225 -- 17K

    Bra32.jpg -- 320x225 -- 13K

    BraLow32.jpg -- 320x225 -- 11K

    I cannot tell the difference on my display among these four pictures... Clearly there isn't much visible difference here, so why not use the picture with a lot less size. The "MEDIUM" version is the one I generally pick because it saves most of the space and bandwidth. Probably if I were a purist, I'd have chosen the "LOW" because it saves another 20%, more or less.

    I hope this helps inspire you to be sensitive about the size (in KB) of your pictures, as lots of us still don't have the ability to get broadband connections.

    If you have follow-up comments, questions or suggestions, use the e-mail link at the top of this page, please. 1