With low bandwidth and severe network traffic, viewers click the STOP button or disable AutoLoad images when irritated by slow pages (avoiding your message). Moreover, animated GIFs on a Web page (e.g., banner) steal additional CPU cycles and interfere with page download.
Color created the fashion industry. GIF is limited to 256 colors and requires dithering to show more "colors" (which defeats compression). Advertisers limit banners to 10K or less; you can get more colors to fit requirements with JPEG banners. Since the most common video mode is 800x600/64,000 colors, most viewers will see the original image. This example has 14992 colors and uses 9942 bytes.
Optimal JPEG compression is the key to making text readable in a JPEG banner that is less than 10Kb in size. Other techniques, as displayed in example, include:
The same techniques apply to buttons; the example above has 2351 colors and uses 1947 bytes.
Cutting and pasting between applications in 16-bit (64000 color) video modes may lose color information if transfers are made via device-dependent bitmaps (DDBs) instead of device-independent bitmaps (DIBs).
ScanMaster images (and "wannabees") use a gamma-corrected display. Theoretically, what one sees on a gamma-corrected display will appear "exactly" on another gamma-corrected display. Inconsistency should be avoided. Some Light&Magic scans are gamma-corrected (e.g., with "light bulb" logo), while others are not; this confusion degrades the quality of the collection.
Images on thick, glossy paper (e.g., original photographs, calendars ...) yield the best results; they also have finer "dots". For maximum impact, use an image with good "depth of field" (i.e., photo with out-of-focus background); also, details such as "water spraying in the air", "subject's hair blowing in the wind", wicker, fish nets, gravel, and backgrounds with complimentary colors (e.g, blue-green shades vs. flesh tones) add a dramatic effect when image details are enhanced.
"Print through" is a scanning artifact which partially shows the reverse side of the source image, as "shadowy text" or "ghosting" (i.e., unexplained light or dark sections). Generally, it is what you would see if you held the source image against the light. If using a flatbed scanner, place a thick BLACK sheet of paper (e.g., illustration board) behind the image to avoid the effects of "print through".
Most image scanners have a descreening feature. If you scan from a magazine source, you will usually see a moire pattern without descreening. Moire patterns appear as a series of unsightly, repeating noise on the scanned image. If you don't have a descreening feature with your TWAIN driver, then:
A 200 dpi source will be descreened to 100 dpi (50%); a 225 dpi source will be descreened to 75 dpi (33%). Depending on accuracy of your scanner, scan between 199 and 201 dpi for 200 dpi descreening and compare results; conversely, scan between 224 and 226 dpi and compare the results for 225 dpi descreening. Ensure that image is perfectly aligned with top of your flatbed scanner. On a worst case, try VidFun's UnDither function to minimize moire patterns.
If you manually anti-alias images (post processing) with a paint program, avoid high contrast areas (e.g., eyelashes) to maintain sharpness.
For widest compatibility, assume a target audience with a 1024x768 display. An 8x11 page will results in 1064x1463 pixels. 133 dpi is a magic number for magazine scans since most descreening algorithms are based on that resolution. When you resize a 1064x1463 down by 50% you will get a 532x731 image. With VidFun's Bicubic interpolation (Enhanced resize) you can resample the image down to 558x768; the algorithm will average the values of neighboring pixels to capture detail that would have been thrown away by regular resampling/resizing.
Alternatively, you can simply scan at 75 dpi and acquire a 600x880 image which can be resampled without Bicubic Interpolation and minimal detail loss. If you used VidFun's descreen function (above); your image would be pre-reduced to 100 or 75 dpi, depending on option selected.
Resist the temptation to create extremely large images to outdo other "net scanners"; at a certain resolution, the "dots" of the source image will begin to appear and make the image grainy. For now, limit maximum image dimensions to 1152x864.
Before enhancing detail, ensure that all the colors are correct. If any adjustments to hue, saturation, gamma, contrast or brightness have to be done, you should do it before applying any image sharpening techniques.
Image|Unsharp mask|Average
Select Image|Border|Merge and a border of will be "overlayed" on the image; the borders will cover image details on the edges. If your image is smaller that target output (e.g., 532x731 on a 558x768 target), you can select Image|Border|Pad instead. For a transluscent text effect, which works well with JPG encoding:
Color temperature is another issue. Most monitors standardize at 7500 K. Sony, Nokia, NEC and other Japanese monitors have "warmer colors" and tend to "boost" red shades; images created on these systems appear "greenish" on other monitors. You must account for this discrepancy for the widest possible audience and adjust the "color temperature" of your monitor to approximate a "true" 7500 K setting, if possible.
Practically, what this means to you is ... what looks great on your monitor will appear unevenly too dark, too bright or "greenish" on another. There are two views as to what must be done. One school of thought is to assume a gamma-corrected display (ala, ScanMaster scans); the other, is to gamma-adjust the image so that it will appear decent on most computer displays (e.g., using a gamma factor of between 1.4 and 1.6). Since the trend set by the ScanMaster (and his followers) is to assume a gamma-corrected display:
This is your gamma-correction value. Generally, it should be the same for all your video/graphics modes, but you can repeat the exercise for other video modes. Since most video cards provide gamma-correction with their drivers, use the value derived above in your color adjustment menu (usually a tab option, if you right-click anywhere on your desktop background or wallpaper, in Win95, and select Properties).
If you can gamma-correct the red, green and blue planes individually with your display driver then:
If your device driver does not provide for specific gamma-values to be entered (e.g., via scroll bar), then:
Image|Combine colors from|RGB
Poor photorealism is also manifested as washed out "Shadows" and "Highlights"; in this case, stretching the contrast will improve image crispness:
Some scanners and digital cameras favor certain colors (e.g., red and/or green) thereby requiring white balancing ; as with video, different lighting conditions affect the overall color balance of the image. On a camcorder, you would point it to a "perfect" white wall as a reference and all colors would then be "balanced" against it.
After zooming in on an area of interest, the mouse cursor becomes a "crosshair" for color picking; click on a "pixel that should be perfect white" and experiment with percentage of color correction desired.
Last, but not the least:
After editing an unsaved image, it will have a caption starting with a "New" prefix (e.g., New-1 [100%]~1).
e.g., PatriciaF-Test.JPG [100%]~1
Your image will now have the name as its caption. In this long filename example, the tilde character (~) followed by a number indicates the child Window number. [100%] indicates your current zoom factor; it can also appear as [Fit] if you enabled "Fit to Window" viewing mode.
e.g., PatriciaF-Test.JPG [100%]~2
e.g., PatriciaF-Test.JPG [100%]~2
Finally, experiment with a Sample (YUV) setting of 4:2:2 and 4:1:1. To check on the file size, use the VidFun Explorer and right-click on the filename; select Info from the pop-up menu.
Note: Netscape 4.04 and MS Internet Explorer 4.0 already support PNG.
Choose from: Focus, Average, Median filters; the Average filter is what is used by most "high-end" image processing packages.
Gradually increase Pixel value (i.e.,neighborhood of pixels used) and preview the image; when desired contrast is achieved, gradually increase Smoothing value and preview the image until the desired balance of smooth tones and high contrast details is achieved.
The Focus filter does the same thing but in a more subtle and precise manner; use that method if you need to enhance details only slightly. The Median filter is slower but results in greater enhancement; use this filter if a lot of detail enhancement is desired.
Resist the temptation to "over sharpen" an image; many images are already "sharpened" on the source material and too much sharpening results in an unnatural appearance.
With severely degraded video tape use the UnInterlace filters to clean-up unaligned odd and even fields. This reduces vertical resolution somewhat, but improves overall definition.
Note: Diehard 'vidcap' enthusiasts can purchase a low-cost video enhancer (e.g., from RadioShack) that supports inverse color. You can painstakingly capture that special video frame in inverse color and average the negative with multiple samples of the normal frame. Why bother? By grabbing the inverse frame, the 4:1:1 or 4:2:2 YUV sample is reversed, resulting in a pseudo 2:4:4 or 1:4:4 sample with more "UV" color components; subsequent color stretching is required to match intensity levels. This difficult technique results in near-scan quality at 512x384 (or better) resolution.
Note: You can also experiment with HSV model (Hue-Saturation-Value) and enhance the Value plane.
Save image to *.PNG format for future use with VidFun
(e.g., slideshow or screen saver)
Activate Microsoft's Internet Explorer 3.x, then:
You can also select multiple files via Explorer (for File Manager) and drag & drop them into VidFun's main window.
Each script can accomodate up to 2000 slides (depending on source locations and features used); if your collection has grown to be unmanageable, organize your source files (see Using Thumbnails to organize your source files.)
To manually group duplicate thumbnails, use the Thumbnail scrollbar to scan (or click on desired thumbnail then click Thumbnail folder label to move it to the top-left position). If you see a duplicate thumbnail drag & drop it beside the other duplicate. If you have a lot of slides, dragging and dropping can become tedious. Right-click and select Move slide; move it to slide #1 so that you can review the source files beside each other.
From VidFun's main window, tile and magnify each image (200% or more); the original is usually "sharper" and has less artifacts (i.e., less noise); other clues include "fuzzy" text (i.e., image with "fuzzier" text has been modified and/or recompressed).
On a 1024x768 display, up to 70 thumbnails and filenames are displayed; you can repeat the process for additional thumbnail contact sheets. The image is saved to a BMP file which can be encoded to JPG format to save disk space.
In Win95, if you need to create a new folder (or folder within a folder), without leaving the Slideshow Editor, move the mouse to the Start button and activate Explorer (e.g. from Programs folder).
If you frequently download a lot of pictures, create a Downloads for review folder (directory); you can then create a script and thumbnails for that folder, delete duplicates on a first pass (see Using Thumbnails to delete duplicate Internet downloads) then subsequently move pictures to be kept to destination folders.
Serious Internet picture collectors create "topic" folders to spot duplicate or modified files immediately; it is also critical to prepare files for CD-R burning (e.g., file and directory limits). For example, within:
You can right-click, at any time, to abort the delay and manually advance to next slide; if you prematurely advance the slide, left-click to activate the floating slide controls to position slideshow to previous slide.
To add graphic text (comments) to a fax file for retransmission:
To add pictures to a fax file:
If pasting a 24-bit, True color image (e.g., JPG) on a B/W fax file, it will be reduced to B/W (using standard Windows routines) before pasting; for best results, convert the image prior to copying selection (e.g., Colors | Convert to BW | Best method ).
In addition, if you have a collection of old images that have poor or average image quality, you can reduce them to increase "sharpness" and combine them into a high-quality image montage so that your image collection will be consistent with the high-quality scans that now pervade the Internet.
Assuming you have grabbed and opened four 320x240 video frames.
Note: You can right-click with shift key pressed to pop-up the Mask menu and hasten editing.
You can fill the blank image will a textured background via Colors|Tile.
To add 3D bevels (that integrate smoothly with a textured background), do not adjust the selection mask after pasting; then select Edit|Bevel|Shadow (or Raised or Inset).
If you have poor or average-quality images, reduce them via Image|Resize|Enhanced to increase image quality (e.g., reduce a 640x480 image to 320x240); apply color correction methods (if required), as well as sharpening techniques.
Last but not the least, add 3D text and/or borders to the collage.