Lesson 1
I also learned the hard way to save the original. I tried to recreate it and got to within 3 colors. :( Oh well, live and learn...
For these graphics, I used squares, circles, ellipses, lines, bezier lines, and a sunburst radial (changed the location of the center of the burst to show behind the space ship).
Size=15 kb, 235 colors, the original
This is the recreated original. When saved and reduced to 256 colors. Looking at the text - both lines are the same size using the Liquid Crystal font. The top text, however, is aliased while the bottom text is not. Aliasing causes the graphic to use more colors and makes for a clearer and more compact text, but adds to the size of the graphic.
Size=9 kb, reduced to 16 colors using median cut nearest color process
Although this makes a neat sun, the space ship and grass include black pixels along with the color and the robot' s chest controls are all one color.
Size=6 kb, reduced to 16 colors using octree, nearest color process
The sun is not as distinct as in the graphic above and the space ship has no black pixels, but the grass appears to have black pixels (they weren't showing in the PSP program). The robot's chest controls show varied colors.
Size=4 kb, reduced to 16 colors using median cut, error diffusion process
The sun is very distinct this time. The space ship is not outlined, and the grass is black. The robot's chest controls are one color. Both the robot and the space ship appear to have additional pixels of color along with the original color.
Size=6 kb reduced to 16 colors; using octree, error diffusion process
This one is my favorite as the colors seemed to stay consistent with the original, yet the size is still small.