Size Does Matter
September 6, 1999
Are SVG images really more compact than GIF, JPEG, and PNG?
We decided to test this by using several of the sample SVG
files that accompanied the
CSIRO SVG Viewer.
We used
Paint Shop Pro
to capture the SVG image displayed by the viewer
and convert it to GIF, JPEG, and PNG. File sizes below are
given in KB.
These results (admittedly with too few data points) indicate
that for some kinds of images (such as shapes.svg and
gradients.svg), the space savings is extremely significant --
the SVG files are 10 to 30 times smaller than their bitmapped
counterparts. However, for images like tiger.svg which
consists of over 700 text lines of path elements that define
complex patterns, the SVG file is nearly twice as large as the
GIF or JPEG counterparts. However, since SVG is a text format,
it compresses well; using ZIP, the SVG size of tiger.svg drops
to 32 KB, making it still better than the bitmapped versions.
For a related discussion, see
Minimizing SVG File Sizes in the spec.
IBM SVGView
Doing It With SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), Part 1
SVG Resources At a Glance
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