question about bitmap strips (subimages)

[hhannah]

I'm in the process of updating my themes and I was wondering if using subimages represent efficiency improvements in terms of loading time, memory handling or other aspects. For making new wps, the use of subimages clearly offers advantages for the wps files designing & writing.

[NicolasP]

Loading time is improved by the use of subimages. Memory usage remains the same though.

[hhannah]

That makes worth the change... Thanks! 8-)

Edit: New Derived Question:
A specific case sets a new question for me. In the sense discussed here, what would be better:

1. I got 12 images for displaying the volume dB (different sizes). Total KB for all the files = 18.1 KB
2. I can put them together into one image (same size for each subimage obviously), the total for that file would be = 30.5 KB

Thanks in advance to NicolasP, or whoever knows the answer 

More edit:... by the way, using subimages for updating the arboxWidgets theme, the total bmp's were reduced from 48... to 13 !!!

[NicolasP]

How come there's such a big size difference? Are your images rather big? In that case it might be worth keeping your images separate, but it's up to you.

[hhannah]

I thought the file sizes were rather "normal", for example, in a similar case, cabbie 2.0 for iPod video uses 23.9 KB in 10 images for the volume dB (each image 2.39 KB).

Maybe the use of "." instead of "," is causing a confusion?   Just in case, 23.9 KB = 23900 bytes

Anyway, in arboxWidgets what happens is that the original images for the volume display are in different sizes; using the common part of the image in the backdrop, makes the lower volume images smaller (18,1 KB for 12 images, individual sizes go from 354 bytes to 2.59 KB). In order to make all the images the same size for using subimages, the standard size becomes the top volume image, so the final image containing the 12 subimages is 30.5 dB.

The default theme Cabbie2 loads 82.6 KB in 33 "non backdrop" images; arboxWidgets loads 96.4 KB in 47 images, but after using subimages, it would load 103 KB in a total of 12 images. The size increase is caused by the volume images converting; it is just hard for me to tell if reducing the 12 volume images to 1 , but thus increasing the total size from 18.1 KB to 30.5 KB is a good deal. [sorry for the long reply]

[hhannah]

(for some reason I'm not able to modify my last post, I can't even see it while logged in, so I'll have to post again)

I attach two files to have a better idea of all this, comparing the cabbie2 and arboxWidgets cases. The examples include the initial, middle and final volume images. In the arboxWidgets image you'll identify the (originally) smaller images for lower volume cases, that were filled with "transparent" colour to fit the uniform size using subimages.