Wednesday, December 8, 2004

Image Compression

Hi. I am back and this blog topic I’ve been working on for some time. You don’t know how many blog that I’ve come across with bad graphic compression. For one it’s none of my business what they do, but it is my business if I come to their site or not! See, if the compression is better – I might be happier with their site. Now, the easiest way too do this is Jasc’s professional suite off it’s trial page JASC, and try JPEG and PNG. I ruled out GIF because PNG is more compressed than GIF anyways. There is no reason too use GIF anymore. Screenshots can be tricky if it has few colors defiantly use PNG to compress them. If the graphic uses a lot of colors than I always use JPEG.



Done in Irfanview 3.95





PNG compressed in Irfanview (20K)





PNG compressed in Paint Shop Pro 9 giving example of it's JPEG dialog box (13K)





JPEG compressed in Irfanview (27K)





PNG compressed in Paint Shop Pro 9 giving example of it's PNG dialog box (13K)



1.) Keep the files at a low resolution. By low I mean nothing bigger than 600x600. I can not force you to go that small – but it’s considered too be web safe under that amount. For pictures I advise nobody to go above 400x600 or 600x400. There is really no need for it. My cousin David doesn’t understand the difference between GIF and JPEG and his graphics can get up between 800KB to 2 MB for a stupid graphic! So you see why it’s important to know a little bit about compression…..



2.) Find a program that lets you reduce the Lossyness (quality) of your graphic. This is needed. The program I use is Irfanview because it has a fair JPEG codec with it. It’s not bad, but it’s probably not the best ever made either. Anyways, that’s what I use, and I wish there were more people who use it like me but don’t for whatever reason.



3.) A compress all my JPEG graphics at 50% in Irfanview, (YCbCr 4x2 1x1 1x1 at 25% - 30%) with Paint Shop Pro 8.0 or 9.0. All my graphics are under 600x600!



4.) PNG compression is much trickier than JPEG because depending on the person – it’s whether you want a lot of color or only 10 – 60 colors. For desktop screenshots I do about 30 colors. This graphic I did with PSP 9.0. It can be smaller depending on the resolution and also the number of colors. For monochrome I always do 3 or 4 colors. Monochrome does not look good with only 2 colors used! I found that out. The text is not readable when the color is set too 2.



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Heated discussion on Gameboy Advance 2 (the head of the site thinks Nintendo will not release another Gameboy)

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Admin Here's been a lot of talk about whether the Nintendo DS is the true heir to the Game Boy Advance, or whether Nintendo might bring out a completely new Game Boy within the next couple of years.



What's your view? Let us know by voting and posting some reasons in this thread.



My personal position is that Nintendo would be crazy to release yet another handheld when they've only just launched the DS. It would be especially crazy as the DS has sold quite well and it would be silly to risk everything just because they wanted another console with the words "game boy" written on it.




RenegadeViking What's so crazy about it?



Just have a "Super Gameboy Advance" with two screens and make it 256-bit. Just because Dual Screen is called Dual Screen because it's two screens doesn't mean jack if the next Gameboy will have two screens or not. Maybe "Super Gameboy Advance will use Nintendo DS flash media and also have the Gameboy Advance slot like the DS for GBA games.



My point is maybe "Super Gameboy Advance" and DS Advance/ DS II are the exact same handheld.....



Admin how about we make jokes and call the Dual Screen "Gameboy DS" from now on. It'll make people a lot less confused.



Admin It'll confuse people! They'll think the DS is on the way out when it's only just been launched.



Renegade Viking Admin - aren't you are over reacting just a tad - Nintendo DS just came out 2 weeks ago here. I believe that Nintendo will support Nintendo DS for a good 4 years. That's 2004 - 2008. I bet you that the next handheld from Nintendo will play DS games. I don't think we need anything smaller than the DS flash media cartridges (they are easy enough to loose). If anything - Nintendo will probably release a successor to DS, not GBA. It's interesting that Nintendo will soon retire a popular brandname they've used since 1989. Who knows? Maybe we'll have a Gameboy Advance 2



I am pretty sure Nintendo's new handheld will skip 32 MB of video memory and go straight to 128 MB of video memory and 256 MB of EDRAM or maybe it'll have 128 MB of EDRAM and 64 MB (like Gamecube) of video memory just to reduce the price - this is a handheld, not a console. Either way - it's "over kill" for an handheld. So I suspect Nintendo is going to hook their Gameboy Advance 2 up to the TV and it'll look a lot like Gamecube games.



Admin“ Admin - aren't you are over reacting just a tad - Nintendo DS just came out 2 weeks ago here.”



Well, that was the reason why I thought it was crazy talk to suggest they're about to bring out another Game Boy Nothing serious...



“I believe that Nintendo will support Nintendo DS for a good 4 years. That's 2004 - 2008. I bet you that the next handheld from Nintendo will play DS games. I don't think we need anything smaller than the DS flash media cartridges (they are easy enough to loose). If anything - Nintendo will probably release a successor to DS, not GBA.”



That's what I think, and a new handheld in 4 years time is fine.



I actually doubt the Game Boy brand will ever surface as a mainstream product again because Game = childish and Boy = childish so Game Boy = very very childish, which is exactly the image Nintendo is fighting at the moment.



“It's interesting that Nintendo will soon retire a popular brandname they've used since 1989. Who knows? Maybe we'll have a Gameboy Advance 2”



If it does come back, and it is one of the most popular and famous brands ever in the games world, it might be in the form of a product aimed specifically at kids the way the original Game Boys were. That's 100% speculation by me though. It could also just be a DS in a "special Game Boy edition", like there was a GBA that was a "special NES / Famicom edition".



“Either way - it's "over kill" for an handheld.”



Now that they've gone 3D, I think there's going to be a lot of overdeveloped games with special effects you can barely appreciate on the portable format. Gameplay has to be more flexible on a portable because you sometimes only get short bursts of time to play it in.



“So I suspect Nintendo is going to hook their Gameboy Advance 2 up to the TV and it'll look a lot like Gamecube games.”



Sony makes TVs, what do you think the betting is that they'll do one that you can link PSPs to wirelessly?

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