Do wallpapers have to be BMP?

You should not upload bitmaps (even though the form says so).
You should use jpg.  It's the standard (and smaller than a png).

Anyone ever think about changing the form?? Or am I the only person that has ever been confused by this?

No

Yes.  It's on "The List" (I think)No.  My first walls were bmps and I got a tonne of complaints because they were so big.  -sigh-

Hadnt ever really paid attention until reading this. But about 2/3 of the wallpapers Ive downloaded here are jpg and 1/3 bmp.

I always thought they had to be bmp for the better quality. Then again I didnt realize until recently that you could save them as png and then as .jpg and get a higher quality jpg.



Would make sense huh

If you save right out of photoshop, you don't need to do the png to jpg thing. Just save as jpg with a 12 quality. I use the png to jpg thing when taking screenshots because I've found most screenshots that go to jpg direct are crappy quality.

Personally I always use .bmps on my own desktop.
I absolutely hate the "shadowing" and blurring the inevitably occurs when you convert to .jpg. But I understand that .jpg is the preferred format because it take up less space.

Good advice!

:CONGRAT:

Since I'm totally new to Photoshop .... where do I find the quality settings generally?

When you go to save it as a jpg a popup box will appear with the quality settings

Question about saving a jpg in Photoshop to use as wallpaper. Any idea as to what the bitrate should be set as? I always choose the highest thinking it will be of better quality but I really have no idea. I can't imagine it matters if it's not part of a animation.

I uploaded one on my walls as a bmp. The loss of quality with jpg was to great  ;) 

For screen shots I press print scren button then open gimp or xnview and copy the image directly from the clipboard and save as Jpg on the highest setting. I never use MS paint to save as any thing but BMP (the loss is to great).

Walls always get saved as BMP then, changed to JPEG with Xnview, photoshop or gimp, ive really noticed no to little image degradation.

Without going to look, I believe the form says upload

Actually it says "* Bitmap File (.zip)", not BMP. A bitmap is ANY raster image.
JPG, PNG, BMP, TIFF, GIF, etc....... all are bitmap files. :CONGRAT:

Yeah but to us n00bs it's really confusing (yep...confused me too, not like THAT is difficult).  :LOL: 

OK .... I'm used to calling and thinking of Raster files as .... well, Raster files. And, while I'd call a BMP a Bitmap ... I'd probably call a JPG a "J-PEG" and not a Bitmap. But then, clearly I'm an ignoramous in this regard.

So the terms Bitmap and Raster are completely interchangeable?? Is there a term for Vector image that works the same way??

And, if any bitmap file may be uploaded, then why not make the form much (much) clearer and note that the site perfers JPG images?? I mostly work in PNG myself (and I don't call them Bitmaps ... sorry, I will never learn to do that), so depending on how much bandwidth is saved between a 12 level JPG and a PNG, I might just upload those.

So ... once again .... All Bitmaps are Rasters, and all Rasters are Bitmaps, and all BMPs are Bitmaps, but not all Bitmaps are BMPs.

Eeeeeeeeeek!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raster_graphics

I also call BMP, bitmap, and JPG, j-peg, but I don't call PNG, ping, I call it P-N-G........

There's no law against uploading graphics with a .bmp suffix [there...I overcame/side-stepped debate about rasters] as wallpapers.

The TWO most commonly uploaded are JPG and BMP, both of which are natively accepted by the Windows OS as wallpapers.

JPGs will be smaller than the same image in BMP format but, depending on the proggy and settings used 'can' have degradation through compression.

Life is 'easier' if multi-resolution uploads [in zip] are all jpegs.....just because the download file-size will be smaller/faster, nothing else....;)

Yup .... so do I.

Which is why I guess I was surprized when I realized that Tiggs' wallpaper was in PNG format. So, I guess it's ok if I just use that??

I put 3 BMPs in zip and use a jpg as screen shot..... I believe that if someone wanted to download one of my wallz they should get the highest quality as I see it. :HOT: 

I hate PNG, more often than not Windows won't apply it. I have to end up opening PS and saving it as jpg.

odd how that works aint it.

Same here...frustrating that some work and some dont'.