Improved image-shrinking technology claimed (Better than JPEG)

New Scientist ^ | 1/12/05 | Will Knight

[phoenix0468]

Wow, I going to start downloading more Brooke Shields images right away!!!!

[al baby]

Brooke Shields

Are those new designer Condoms?

[Prime Choice]

"Where are the test results published with standard benchmark images to let us see the improved compression?"

That was my first question as well.

Personally, I don't think this is much of a whoop. It would have been a big deal 15 years ago when storage was expensive...but nowadays you can buy gigabytes worth of storage that are just getting cheaper by the hour. That kind of removes any incentive to switch to another format.

[Valk Rider]

I'd like to try it out and see what it would do on my digital camera images I take when I'm touring on my bike.

Even using Paint Shop Pro to resize just over screen size and using an additional 5% compression rate, some pics with my 5MP Kodak still clock in at over 600 KB's each.

I'm willing to test it..FREE!! ;-)

Tom

[Cicero]

Stuffit has been associated with Apple, I believe. I had to put the darned program on my computer to unzip (or unstuff?) a photograph my sister-in-law sent me, and it gave me endless troubles. Supposedly there was a free version, but it wouldn't let me download it separately, and it kept bugging me with begging messages and splash screens until I got rid of it.

They'll have to do better than that if they want to move into the world of Windows users.

[phoenix0468]

You never watched "The Blue Lagoon" did you?

[al baby]

I dated Brooks Mom

[al baby]

Yes i have seen that movie

[phoenix0468]

You're kidding right?

[al baby]

no I have seen the movie

[Jorge]

I do a lot of photo editing and learned that saving in jpeg format did reduce the quality.

I now immediately convert my camera's photos to bitmap files even though many of my final photo versions end up being 30-40 MEGS. Storage space and CD's are cheap so it's worth it.

[phoenix0468]

No I mean the part about dating her mom.

[Prime Choice]

You're kidding right?

Of course al baby is kidding. Everybody knows al baby is Brooke's mom.

[lavrenti]

Why am I not surprised?

[Prime Choice]

saving in jpeg format did reduce the quality.

You betcha. JPEG is a lossy format. Whenever I need to store in a lossless format, I stick with either TIFF or PSD.

[JoJo Gunn]

tech ping

[Jorge]

Whenever I need to store in a lossless format, I stick with either TIFF or PSD.

TIFF files are MEGA HUGE. What makes them better than bitmap files?

[JoJo Gunn]

jorge, you can compress .bmp's with a zip program.

(I like .png's myself).

[Sarastro]

Most new digital cameras can save images in RAW format. That means zero compression, i.e., storing every bit that comes off the image sensors. If you have a 4MB camera, the RAW image is 4MB. Converting it to a 40MB TIFF file adds nothing to image quality. You can print the RAW file (with or without post-processing) or compress it for, say, e-mail or posting on the web, where there's no point in having more information than can be displayed on a computer monitor. Where you really need compression is on video files, which run about 10GB per hour, even with MPEG compression.