[MF3D.FORUM:503] stereo cards on the web

[Tom Deering <smile@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

>As the note at the beginning of the intro says, these on-line
>versions don't do the real thing justice.
>
>BTW, I would appreciate a few (off-line) notes about
>what kind of data transfer rates y'all get pulling down
>these images.  I've been noticing some slowness on the
>site from my own connection.

I have a couple of comments about web images.  First of all, the 
David's photos are *stunning*.  The cards are very neatly made, 
really a treasure to look at.

Howver, there are a couple of ways the clarity could be increased 
while minimizing the download time.  The JPEG artifacts are very 
heavy, almost ruining the image for stereo purposes, which is a 
shame.

First, the backs of the cards could be cropped so that the comments 
are preserved, while eliminating the repeating elements and borders. 
I would put the repeating stuff like the address in the text part of 
the web page.  I would also save the comments as a gif with a 4 color 
palette.  That would drop the file size from 32k to 4k, and would 
result in increased legibility.  That saves 28K.

By itself, saving 28K on the comments would allow the image file size 
to double with no increase in total download time.

On top of that, I would change everything to greyscale, no color. 
That alone will make the files smaller.  I would also crop off the 
non-photo parts of the image.  The cards are nicely constructed, but 
a sharper photo without artifacts would be preferable.  Both of these 
suggestions would make the original file smaller, even before 
compression.

Then, either I would save the images as much higher quality JPEGS, or 
I would save them as greyscale GIFS, maybe 64 or 128 color palette. 
Since these are greyscale images, the best method would be a 
judgement call.  Either method would increase the file size, but if 
the file size was smaller to begin with, the increase might be small.

In a brief test, using these ideas, I was able to increase the 
quality of the image to "maximum" jpeg without increasing total 
download time.

This is not meant as a criticism of the person who did all the 
scanning and web page work, which is a big job.  There are a lot of 
images there.  I'm just pointing out that another scheme might be 
better in the future.

And as I said, the images themselves are very nice.  Congratulations, David!

Tom
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tmd@xxxxxxxxxxx    http://www.deering.org