[akeck]

Are dithered images better for power consumption? I see them on a lot of solar-powered pages. I did some experiments in GIMP and couldn't make a dithered image much smaller than a heavily compressed grayscale that looked a lot better.

[lowercasename]

Not as far as I can tell! Absolutely ashamed to say I did it because it looked cool. I did manage to get the dithered GIF down to 7KB, but I think I could have done the same with a limited palette and no dithering.

[akeck]

They do have wonderful look. Reminds me of the mid 1990s web. Edit: Btw, I love solar-powered projects. Thanks so much for sharing!

[jIyajbe]

The webmaster at lowtechmagazine.com says: "...Compressed through this dithering plugin, images featured in the articles add much less load to the content: compared to the old website, the images are roughly ten times less resource-intensive..."

https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/09/how-to-build-a-low...

They go into more detail on their github page:

https://github.com/lowtechmag/solar/wiki/Solar-Web-Design

[ReactiveJelly]

> our goal was to not only compress images, but also to call to attention this act of compression

> we found that dithered images can be stretched beyond their actual image size to emphasize its distinct aesthetic, and that these artifacts of compression can become an integral part of the design.

Attention, aesthetic, design. At no point do they even claim dithered PNG / GIF is smaller than a good JPEG. If it was, they wouldn't need to justify it as aesthetic.

What gets my goat is the motte-and-bailey. On the front page for lay people, it's a power-saving environmentalist stance. When we techies press them on it, they admit it's a graphic design fad.