FAQ - Creating "Skins"

Which is better? GIF or JPG?

Well it depends on the design of your skin. You want the file size of your skin to be as small as possible so your PULPchat loads quickly. Generally, a skin should be under 30k. If your skin has large areas of solid color, then saving your skin as a GIF will actually produce a smaller file and a better looking image. If you use photographic images or gradients in your skin, then you should save it as a JPG file.

To further optimize a JPG skin, you can try the following; Apply a Gaussian blur of 1 or 2 pixels to any layer that contains a photographic image. This will help other layers with your logo (and the PULPchat logo) stay sharp. Use a quality setting of 80 or better.

An example of when a GIF is better:


Close-ups of both formats:


GIF format

9k bytes
256 colors




JPG format

24k bytes
quality 90
no subsampling


After looking at these close-ups, its easy to see why the GIF version is a better choice. A simple design and a low number of colors is perfect for the GIF file format. Notice that the JPG file size is much larger and the image has unwanted "static" around the letters. JPG compression does not work well with areas of a solid color.


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