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I love the concept, but I'm extremely skeptical that the dithered PNG images are smaller than a (much nicer looking, but lossy) JPEG. It's fine if that's the ae

I love the concept, but I'm extremely skeptical that the dithered PNG images are smaller than a (much nicer looking, but lossy) JPEG. It's fine if that's the aesthetic they're going for, but it doesn't seem like it would reduce the server load... For the record, one of the 640x480 PNGs is 41 KB, and I just saved an elaborate, full-color (and higher resolution) JPEG at a smaller file size (quality was around 50, I think). The JPEG looks completely fine on my (normal DPI) screen. Edit: It does look like they scale up the PNGs (at least when I view their site), and lossless images definitely scale better. Maybe that was the motivation.

zackkatz 4y ago
The PNGs aren't optimized—I crunched them losslessly and saved 8%–10%.
jszymborski 4y ago
> much nicer looking, but lossy That's a matter of opinion :P I think the dithering in this case has been accepted as mostly aesthetics on these solar websites.
- nine_k 4y ago
  It's fun how futuristic (solar-powered, off-grid) sites pick up distinctly vintage æsthetics.
bullen 4y ago
Another year, another dithering argument: http://sprout.rupy.se http://sprout.rupy.se, still looking good in 2023! XD On a more serious note, the complexity of decompressing a jpg and rendering color is the main advantage of 1-bit dithering. That you can tell what the picture represents at all with only black and white dots is amazing.