2bpp with lossless compression is an order of magnitude fatter than what DCT codecs like JPEG can achieve, if you’re okay with all your illustrations being kinda shite. Even just 16 colors with no dithering would probably compress better.
You’d have to take that up with them - they might be interested in alternatives that improve efficiency. I wonder if they like that it’s very visibly a deliberate choice to modify the images for size, or if they feel they’d be answering constant ‘why do your images look bad?’ questions with a reduced color pallet.
For anyone else who wants more info, I think these are cool discussions:
2bpp with lossless compression is an order of magnitude fatter than what DCT codecs like JPEG can achieve, if you’re okay with all your illustrations being kinda shite. Even just 16 colors with no dithering would probably compress better.
You’d have to take that up with them - they might be interested in alternatives that improve efficiency. I wonder if they like that it’s very visibly a deliberate choice to modify the images for size, or if they feel they’d be answering constant ‘why do your images look bad?’ questions with a reduced color pallet.
For anyone else who wants more info, I think these are cool discussions:
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about/the-solar-website/#why_website https://lobste.rs/s/9v0ioj/how_build_low_tech_website
It definitely conveys that it looks bad on purpose. There’s utility in that signalling.