Minimise database size with images (XP)

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Has anyone any suggestions on how to minimise database size when you include graphics in reports
– I’ve been asked to put company logo, product logo and a couple of other images on the reports, and the mdb size is starting to shot up
I want to try and keep it to a minimum as a lot of our people have to download the files, when they are on the road in hotels using at best 56k modems, so adding on Mbytes is not going to make me popular

One thought I’d had was adding a sub-report for each logo to the main report, would that actually save space

Another thought , I wonder if this is why my checkin/out of Visual SourceSafe has been taking longer
– I suppose the images must be in there somewhere, presume in a “text” encoded format

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I was going to suggest making the images linked instead of embedded, but that won’t work if people have to download the database, unless you can install the image files in exactly the same location (path) on the laptops.

Putting the images in one or more subreports should help, since there will be only one copy of each image, instead of a separate copy in each report.

You might also look into optimizing the images – if you have a 800 x 600 pixel logo that is displayed as 80 x 60, the 800 x 600 image is stored in the database. You can use a graphics program (I use IrfanView, but there are others) to resize the image to the display size.

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Hans, thanks for the response
Nope, I can’t guarantee where they’ll put them on their laptops
It’s good to know that the one sub-report means only one copy. I’ll also check out what can be done with reducing the actual images

Another thought I’d had was on what format of image to include
– is say JPEG better than GIF or PNG
I’m assuming that Access “processes” the image in someway, so is one format better than another

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The problem with storing images in an Access database is that whatever the image format, Access also stores an uncompressed bitmap image (presumably to speed up displaying it). So you might as well use .bmp’s.
I did a small test – created a .bmp, size 33 KB, and converted it to a .png, size 3 KB.
Created an Access 97 database with one empty form. Size of database (after compacting) 66 KB.
Created an Access 97 database with one form with an image control on it, loaded the .bmp into the image control (embedded). Size of database (after compacting) 100 KB. Seems reasonable: 66 + 33 + a bit of overhead = 100.
Created another Access 97 database, also with one form with an image control, loaded the .png into the control (embedded). Size of database (after compacting) 130 KB.

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interesting
Thanks, that’s really interesting Hans, especially the more compact PNG creating a bigger MDB
– guess who got all his images in PNG format

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To help minimise download time show your users how to use programs such as winzip and have it as a zip file. That can often reduce an mdb to 20-30% of it’s unpacked size I find.

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Thanks for the suggestion, but the files are already zipped at max(slow) compression setting

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Does Zipping a file really decrease the download time? I always thought that modems copressed on the fly so that download times would be similar.

Peter

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You’re talking about two different kinds of compression, hardware (the modem) and software (winzip). Hardware compression is something that can be affected by all sorts of things. If you provide a compressed file in the first place, you eliminate some of the possible performance variations.

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Graphics do affect the checkout time in VSS. If you view the object in VSS, you’ll see a huge piece of the object is the text rendering of the graphics.

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Thanks Charlotte, just looked in my .scc folders and compared some of the ACR files, yeap with image about 600 Kb, without about 15 Kb.
I presume if I go along the route of using a single sub-report in each main report, it should help, as the main report will only have a sub-report control on it

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