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Hi Guys.
I have inlays I want to show everyone, but I don't know of an easy way to get the files down to 75KB.
They are currently at 217! That's what happens when you shoot with an 8 MP digital camera I guess, even at it's relativelty lowest setting.

Any ideas/help?   
One is a really small 47 piece Celtic Cross, the other is a pair of clownfish in an anemone (169 pieces) that goes with the Moorish idols fretboard I showed you guys before.
It's different than anything you've seen before I promise!    
Thanks
Craig L

Hey what ever happened to the OLF guitar.. I was supposed to get that at some point..

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www.handcraftinlay.com

Here is the "Best" way to make them smaller in pixel and file size and still keep them looking good on the web.

When you resize the image only shrink it by half it's dimentional pixels at any one time. (for instance if it is 2000 x 1000, size it to 1000 x 500 on your first pass).

Once that is done, run an unsharp mask filter over it and set the parameters to:

Sharpen Amount 100
Pixel Radius .6
Threshold 0

Go back and cut the picture again by no more than half.

Run the unsharp mask.

Continue to do that until you get the height and width you desire.

Go back and do a .2 Gaussian blur

Save it out as (probably) a .jpg file and try the quality at 80% for the first pass. Depending on the complexity and size of the image you may need to noodle with the quality to get it to fit.

This will produce the cleanest images for the web.



It isn't as hard as it sounds. It takes about 1 minute to produce an image.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

Brock, what software? Lance shared a Windows Resizer with me you can download from www.microsoft.com

I also have Microsoft Picture it and it has it's own resizer. You can use a software like that to make 'em smaller. I used to use a program called Thumbs Plus! It's now in 30 day trial version, but you get to see what it can do, before you buy it.

I'd like a better software, myself. It should be reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallllllll lllllll simple, but it isn't.

Most of those resizing tools don't step the images down like this. In some programs you can set up a macro to do it, but that adds even more complexity.

I use fireworks. It is a pretty simple program ... I am by no means a "graphics guy". I have exposure to Photoshop as well, but that is a much more complex tool.

Long ago I used a product called LViewPro. I think it was free and it had virtually anything you would want in a basic graphics package.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

And my website for some reason won't let me FTP (my webmaster- not me) anything new to it. It's really frustrating. I check my stats, and it seems I'm getting over 70 visits a day to my site, and I can't keep it updated. I need an image re-sizer program, and a new server desperately.
For now I'm going to use the good old standy and hope he's into it   

Hey Lance!
Incoming!!!

(man do I owe you!)

Craig

_________________
www.handcraftinlay.com

Clavin,

While I use Photoshop CS, I won't suggest you invest the money. The really easy way to think about what you need to do is realize the the monitor's resolution is only 72 DPI. This means that a picture of say, 3" x 5" is only 216 pixels X 360 pixels (on the monitor), a rather small file. You may be using an editor that is currently configured for printer output (ie 300 dpi). The same 3" x 5" (according to the photo editor)would be 900 x 1500 pixels, a huge increase. You always want to consider the medium upon which it will be viewed. Almost any photo editor will allow for size changes. The masking etc can come later. Change the resolution and then change the desired size before coverting size. You should come up with a suitable picture real quick.

BTW, I just bought a Sony DSC-F828, what is yours, if I may ask. I'm having a ball with it!

Regards, Steve Brown

I also use MS Picture it. It can take your images and put them into a slide show with automatic, random animations (panning, zooming in and out, and I think fades) Put a sound track and you got a VERY cool gift for a special occasion (my parent's 50th) OR a VERY cool promotional tool.

Now back to resizing... I use Picture it, but it's memory hungry and a little quirky on my PC. So I did a search for "free image resizing" and downloaded the first one I saw. Not too impressive, but I didn't get it when I looked at it...

Brock sounds like he knows more than he gives himself credit for in graphics. I appreciate the input!

I'll try those ideas.
Craig

_________________
www.handcraftinlay.com

I use an open source photo package called The Gimp. Although the name sounds quirky, it is a powerful Photoshop alternative. It's available for Windows, Mac (OS X), and Linux (most distros). It is free as in free beer and free speech. the link is www.gimp.org. If there isn't a binary available for your platform (i.e., Solaris, Irix, etc) you can download the source code and compile it yourself. But (going out on a limb here), I'll say most everone can just get the Windows binary.

Good Luck.
Chip

Craig,
I use Paint Shop Pro 7, once you have the picture the size you want it to appear on screen - just adjust the pixel number until its right - in the File menu choose 'save as' and when the dialogue box appears give it a name and choose 'options' this will then open another box allowing you to adjust the compression until the size is the one you want, easiest when using the 'optimizer wizard'. It sounds more complex than it is but it's an absolute doddle.

Colin

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

Craig,
as far as a server/host goes I really like ValueWeb. I pay something like $19 a month and with over 500 pictures uploaded/on the site I havn't put a dent in my alotted space. They also let you use anything you like to write your site...they even give you software if you don't have any. I use Frontpage 2000 I have put pics on my site of all sizes and never had a problem uploading.

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Dave Bland

remember...

"If it doesn't play in tune...it's just pretty wood"

I have some reaearching to do. I did find a great software package that shrinks down a file based on the KB it is. You can literally choose the KB size and it edits the photo to be as original as possible, while deleting unneeded items. It costs $25.00 to download, so I haven't gone at it yet.
Thanks Dave for the server idea.
I have been using one of those $9.95 a month deals. I see why it's 9.95 a month now! They were good until something went wrong right?




CL

_________________
www.handcraftinlay.com

With my somewhat skeptical hat on... I will ask this:

If you find one of these tools I would be very interested in doing a side by side comparison of my (albeit longer, more complex) approach, and the mechanized "otimizer".

Send me an image to optimize and your target pixel and file size requirements and I will do it my way, and we can post the results for comparision.

If you have truly found a piece of software that will optimize images as good as doing it the "long way" that will save my web development company HUGE amounts of time.

We have done these comparisions in the past and it is usually no contest (for quality and file size), but admittedly it has been about 18 months since we have taken a hard look at any of these products.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

SFBrown, well, that is the first time I heard a monitor is only 72 DPI. So, there is no reason to publish any higher right? I've seen some big pics on the web, but the photo size wasn't bad at all.

Then, conversely, I've seen small pics which take forever to load and are huge in Kb size? So this is really important to master, especially when uploading and web displaying a photo.

Brock, I read your original instructions and was a bit overwhelmed. I know, it's a step by step process. Most of us need "simple". I guess that's why we have professionals do it when it really counts, eh?Dickey38443.4286921296

You have to dump the idea of "inches" and work in pixels. If you always do your sizing from that POV you will be much better off. That way DPI is not even an issue, but he is right... 72 is what a monitor is set for.

Bruce... my guess is what you are seeing when very small pictures are taking a long time to load is that the picture is actually much bigger than it appears on screen and that the page author is controlling the physical size with height / width parameter settings in the HTML. I see that all the time.

Brock Poling38443.4297453704

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

Brock a tutorial is in order here if you wanted to make one. Really would help us novices to get up to speed with pictures. Jigs and Techniques Section for sure.

Start with the software needed then pics along the way.... to the end. Of course, you'd have to do this in your spare time.

gone to the shop......

If you don't have any software, I'd reccomend the (Free) Irfanview. It's basically a viewer with some basic resizing/resampling controls. Open your image, use the 'resize/resample' function in the 'Image' menu. Using 'Resample' will probably give you much better trimmed-down results than a simple resize command in MS Paint, for example.

Bring it down to a reasonable number of pixels, then save as a JPG. The JPG save options will include a 'quality' slider. Experiment a little with where to put it, but somewhere around 50-70% should give you a good quality image. The exact quality will depend on the image: simpler images with fewer colours, less contrast will compress more easily than high-contrast, very complex multi-coloured images.

[QUOTE=Dickey] Brock a tutorial is in order here if you wanted to make one. Really would help us novices to get up to speed with pictures. Jigs and Techniques Section for sure.

Start with the software needed then pics along the way.... to the end. Of course, you'd have to do this in your spare time.

gone to the shop......[/QUOTE]

Yeah, sure. I can put something together. My company made a generic "cheat sheet" for doing this a while back (I will just need to find it).

I can then take a piece of software and add some specific screen shots etc.

I think that is a good idea.

I can even compare and contrast a few approaches to illustrate the difference in quality.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

Thanks Brock, I'm gonna go play with my software now that I know a little...

Brock,

I agree with you about the pixels but keep in mind that most people "think" in inches so it is easier to try to relate the two for people not used to the relationship within different formats.

Also, I would agree with the way you optimize your pics. The difference though is a matter of convenience. If I am doing something for a website, optimization is of benefit. If, on the other hand, I am doing something for a "quickie" posting, A simple resize is generally sufficient. I have done both. Personally, I now like to start with a RAW file and then "save as" in the appropriate size and format. I guess it's all a matter of personal taste. I'm going to France in a couple of months and I am thinking of taking all the pics in RAW but at 24 megs per pic, that's a lot of memory!

Regards,

Steve Brown



sfbrown38443.6974884259

Just little advice from an old print guy: Shoot your work at the
highest resolution your camera allows and save the raw file. When you
lower the resolution for web use, save it separately from the original.

For web use or a laptop slide show, you want 72 dpi. For offset printing,
you'll want at least 267 dpi. Once you throw away those pixels, they're
gone forever, so hang on to the high-resolution files. Even if you don't
expect to print a brochure or offer pictures to a magazine, you have the
option of cropping and enlarging a section of the photo without running
into quality problems.

I offered ASIA members the opportunity to have their pictures in the next
"guitarmaker" magazine if they sent good, high-resolution images. I've
received lots of lovely lo-res pictures that look good on the screen but
would print terribly, and I've had to decline using them. Pity ...

Rick is that offer still open?

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

Rick, I missed the offer, is it past the cutoff date? Thanks, Bruce

Yes, the offer is still open. See page 5 of issue #50 -- for at least the next
couple of issues, I'm running an "eye candy" section for ASIA members.
Follow the directions on the page and get yourself in print!

Rick

Thanks Rick -- well do

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Support the OLF! Bookmark our STEWMAC link Today!
Lance@LuthiersForum.com