Photography, digital images, and video

Irfanview solves the file size nightmare

Apollo — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 01:47:35

Those of us dealing with large numbers of images stored on a network server (and not having the budget of organisations like Google etc) have to live with finite resources and can't store full size digital images as they are delivered from the camera. Apart from the cost, if you place a bunch of such images on a web page, even with broadband, the page loading time will grow to the point that will mean no-one will wait for them all to appear.

This means you have to re-size them. Changing the dimensions has always been easy, and you can set height and width in seconds.

The file size has however been a different story, and if you wanted to have a maximum file size for a picture of say, 100 kB, then you just had to try repeated compression levels until you got near to the desired value. Since the amount of compression needed varies with the image content, there's no rule like "Reduce a 4 MB pic by 55% to get about 100k" and the actual compression needed can range anywhere from 80% to 30% to achieve the same result.

Without any more ado, the faithful that have stuck with Irfanview to manipulate their image files, and supported the program now have a new toy in the most recent release, with the option to tell file saves what file size is wanted. So simple, yet so long in coming in a piece of free code.

Irfanview web site

You're looking for Version 4.20 or later, and you must download and install BOTH the program and the plug-ins, then go and have an extra tea or coffee from all the time saved

SD cards going cheap

Apollo — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 02:14:22

No, I'm not selling them, but Morrison's are.

Until March 30th, Morrsion's are selling 2 Gb SD cards for £7.50 each, and they can be had in standard size, or the mini version for use in things like mobile phones.

I only spotted the stand with the offer by accident, and when I took the security tab to the checkout, the operator had never seen one before. She asked if I was really wanting to buy a wee bit of card, and I had to tell her that it was just a token, and that she had to call a supervisor/assistant over, and that they would fetch the actual item from the security store for her, which could then be scanned.

Bummer is that although I was sure my camera had been given an upgrade to used cards over 1 Gb, it's refusing to accept the card!

I suspect the problem is nothing to do with the card, and the camera's firmware was reset during one of it's warranty trips back to Konica-Minolta, after which they promptly sold up and went away! Well, actually Sony took over their interests, so it will be interesting to see if I can track down any firmware upgrades or revision - I see lost days wandering the web coming soon

Free, unlimited online storage

Admin — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 23:26:52

I had to look twice at the email I got from one of my providers this evening.

Free and unlimited online storage, and available to anyone, not just customers.

http://drive.123-reg.co.uk/Pages/Home

I've had a play about with it, and it works fine, if a little bit "unfinished", by which I mean that there are, in my opinion, some features I think are missing, and expect will be added as the product matures. For example, this is the link it gives for an image:

(Looks like there is still a but of buginess, well, it is only a few hours old. Problem I see is that the image that should be visible below only appears to me when I am logged into the 123 account online. Rhat's despite the image being marked as visible and shared with the world. (whistle) Ah well, they'll fix it soon)

http://drive.123-reg.co.uk/F/3199255/EMBED

<<<---what it shows!!!

Knock the /EMBED off the end, and add .jpg (or .gif or whatever) and it works as normal. They have to fix this.

http://drive.123-reg.co.uk/F/3199255.jpg <<<--- does as expected, as shown below...

Not much point in me describing it, you upload stuff, it goes online (can be public or private), and you can then download it later.

It already has software and options built in to let you see photos, play videos, and music.

You can make pics visible to the world, or keep them to yourself, and it generates the link t pics or albums for you.

Again, worth noting that unlike ALL the other free, online storage services, there is no upper limit on size, files, bandwidth or whatever that kicks in and takes you from free to a paying service.

I don't need it, even my current free storage is still will within free limits, and I have a lot of stuff there already, but this looks like the next step.

Lost secrets

Apollo — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 23:54:23

Would be nice if there could be a big web site set up where people who found pics like these could post them for others to see, and maybe find long lost memories:

http://westfordcomp.com/updated/found.htm

I've got some some boxes with pics and negs that came from Glasgow's Stamford Street Studios and date from the war/post-war period. I'd say 99% of them are unidentifiable, and are not necessarily local, so could be from anywhere in Europe, as I'm sure some appear to be. There's also some military and tech stuff too.

Just think, almost all the folk that took them will be gone, so little chance of them ever being identified anyway.

Webcam

Admin — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 22:16:13

I don't know if you've come across it, but there is a webcam in Neilston that sees itself as the 'Most Boring Webcam...'

I've been playing about with one, and had it set up over the last week to get an idea how it worked with the various software options (motion detection is sneaky, and works well). As someone who's used both to wired and microwave linked security cameras, it feels a bit weird being able to wander up to any PC and get instant acces to my camera without any hassle, but it's really useful. It's also a downside, as it means you do also NEED a PC and internet connection to see your images.

Anyway, after using it for a week, I thought I'd install it here, and then (after looking at the pics) realised all I had to was upload one image, since there was so much happening in the target area

Imagine the most exciting things happening are the tree growing, and the butt end of the people carrier apperaing and disappearing every so often, and you'll have a good idea of what the live image would look like

Scanning problems

Captain Brittles — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 23:04:03

I'm having a problem getting decent scan results of photo copies from newspapers - admittedly the copies have been taken from the original 1940 paper. The copy is fine for the age of the paper but but the scan quality is rotten.
I've tried all the tricks I think of on the HP software but I still get a kind of wallpaper image with the real picture obscured behind it.

The photos are two particularly interesting ones of the Garrowhill ARP on parade in Dec. 1940 - a unit which was much larger than I'd have thought.

I suppose Jessops could enhance and make glossies out of them but that would cost money.

Any wizard ideas chaps ?

Yahoo

Daggy — Thu, 11 Aug 2005 21:11:41

Just added 'Beta' to my Yahoo e-mail boxes which makes uploading photos to e-mails a doddle. It's a free download from Yahoo themselves and I love it.

Photobucket

Apollo — Wed, 10 Aug 2005 16:30:30

While since I've used it, but when I went in to add the Inverallochy pics to Photobucket I found they had added a Windows Uploader to it, so you can now upload a batch of images to your account without having to log in, decide how many you are adding, and then go select them one at a time.

Now you can just fire up the Uploader, select the contents of a dirctory on your PC, the destination in your Photobucket account, and let the whole lot go at once.

And, it does work

The changing face of photography

Captain Brittles — Tue, 9 Aug 2005 22:02:31

Dixons are stop selling 35mm cameras. Any views on this, is it the start of all the multiples doing this ?

Old black & white photos.

Daggy — Sat, 6 Aug 2005 11:42:43

What is the best, most cost effective way to get small, very old black & white (Brownie camera shots) photographs super-sized to A4 and bigger without losing any picture quality. ?