JPEG/TIFF Image Size & Quality
The Minolta DiMAGE X provides a good range of image resolution (1600 x 1200, 1280 x 960, 640 x 480) in combination with three JPEG compression settings (Fine, Standard, Economy) and an uncompressed TIFF mode (Super-Fine). The X does not have a RAW mode (nor are its users likely to ever need one).
 Standard Test Scene |
To give an impression of what some of the combinations of image size and quality produce the table below is a cross reference of some of them:
- 1600 x 1200 Super-Fine
- 1600 x 1200 Fine
- 1600 x 1200 Standard
- 1280 x 960 Fine
- 640 x 480 Fine
Images below are cropped 240 x 100 area of the image magnified
200% (nearest neighbour).
| 1600 x 1200 | |
| Super-Fine |  5,635 KB TIFF - not available for download |
| Fine |  605 KB |
| Std. |  396 KB |
| 1280 x 960 | |
| Fine |  449 KB |
| 640 x 480 | |
| Fine |  137 KB |
As you can see there's very little visible difference between JPEG Fine and TIFF (Super-Fine), moving down to Standard we can start to see JPEG artifacts creeping in, I wouldn't recommend anyone use Economy (unless you are VERY low on storage space).
Colour space
Just like the DiMAGE 5, 7 and S304 the DiMAGE X is supplied with Minolta's Image Viewer application. I made a discovery in my DiMAGE 7 review that the camera was shooting in a custom wide gamut colour space and that images had to be run through the Image Viewer to covert colours into a standard colour space (such as sRGB). While DiMAGE X images can be run through the Image Viewer application there is no REQUIREMENT to do so as it appears the X shoots in the sRGB colour space natively. This is good news for a point-and-shoot camera.
