Blueprint size and image formats

[Pete-MJL]

Hi all.

I hope You people don' t mind me sounding like a teacher or something, but I noticed that a lot of the blueprints on this wonderful site are not exactly optimized for use on the internet...
( Well, some of the images I posted may be too large too when I forgot to reduce them properly ... )

Many of us have an ADSL- modem or similar high speed connection, but there' s lots of people still on 56k modems ( maybe some unlucky ones have even slower modems )
I am pretty sure these people run into problems when opening a page that has several MB of pictures in it.

It does not have to be like that though. Even the biggest Blueprints can be reduced to a few 100 kb, when converted and saved properly, so I' ll try to explain how.
( I didn' t find another topic on this, so here it goes )

First thing to do of course, is scanning the image.
If You want an image of good quality, just scan it at 300ppi, so You can print it at the same size as the original.
When used on-screen, this image will be much larger, since Your screen will display at 72dpi
( forget about 96dpi )

Now when Your image is in grayscale, there' s no need to scan it in color, since that will only make it bigger than needed, so use grayscale. Don' t use Black and white ( 1 bit ) !
When scanned, save it as a high resolution format, so You can convert it later in Your image manipulation app. Best format is TIFF ( or tif )

When all images are scanned, open them one by one in Your image manip.app. like Photoshop, Paintshop Pro, Graphic Converter or whatever You use.

Fiddle a bit with the " LEVEL " settings to get rid of unwanted grays in the background and lower the amount of colors ( grays of course ) to 16 . Save Your image in the GIF format.

Saving as JPG will convert the image to millions of colors - what we don' t need - and also destroys a lot of information when compressing the file.
Lines will look blurred also, so GIF is the way to go.

As an example, I took an image that was posted by Swen Beuchert, who supplied us with a massive collection of great prints ( thanks again Swen ) that I downloaded and then noticed it was rather huge... about 1,4 MB...
Please note that I am not blaming Swen for this, ' cause it is easy to forget reducing files properly, certainly when You got as many as he has

So I opened this GIF-image and did what I mentioned before ( levels, amount of colors ) and saved it again as a GIF file.
The result can be seen in the images below. Look at the " file lenght "
The image on the gray background is the original, the white background is the new one.

The other image shows both files at 100%. No loss at all, except for file- size that is... now only 169,8 kb. Worth a try ?

Peter

[S.Beuchert]

Ooops, didn't recognize that it was so big.
Its easy to forget this if you have DSL :oops:

Had a try with the Lancia but I have a problem to get a small size,
I see you have a compression of 1:3 in your file.
I didn't find something like that in my prog. for a .gif
(Corel Photopaint 8.0) :? :?:
Any advice


Swen

[Eat_Some_LSD]

Meh, I would format my prints to be more efficient, but I'm usually in a rush so I just upload 'em...look at my Patent Office prints, I didn't even bother trimming 'em; they were so big I just zipped 'em up. *lol*

[Pete-MJL]

Hi Swen, the information about compression is added by the application used ( Graphic Converter - I always use that for quick editing like this - but, as far as I know it is Mac- only )

I do not know if this compression setting can be changed, sorry. Maybe it has to do with colors or something.
After conversion, the Lancia picture had only 15 colors left.
If You save at only 4 colors or b/w, You will lose a lot of detail. Not with 16... ( or 14,15,... whatever is left )

Yep, I know what You mean by forgetting about filesize when You have the wonders of ADSL...

Peter

[Pete-MJL]

Just to show.
Maybe You can transfer this to Your Lancia topic to replace the original one, Swen :wink:

Edited: I removed the pic. It is now where it belongs at http://smcars.nd4spdworld.com/forum/...pic.php?t=5915

[S.Beuchert]

Originally Posted by Pete-MJL

Just to show.
Maybe You can transfer this to Your Lancia topic to replace the original one, Swen :wink:

done

will play a little bit around with this print and try to learn how to reduce the size. I have bigger ones with lower file size.

:wink:
Swen

[Pete-MJL]

OK now. Here is what I think is what makes GIF- files shrink - even if they are big ( in scale ).

I fiddled a bit with some prints and noticed that it is mainly the amount of white that makes a file smaller, so I deleted some unneeded text on a blueprint and saved it again. This resulted in a loss of several kb !

As another example, I removed all gray fills in this BMW- print below by using the LEVELS- dialogue and converting it to 16 colors. That' s all I did...
The difference is enormous, isn' t it ? 292,8kb for the original and only 63,5 for the new one. Image quality loss is minimal.

[Le Bucheron]

thx a lot for sharinf this with us!

but there is one thing that i dont understand
you said: Fiddle a bit with the " LEVEL " settings ...

what is that?..

[Pete-MJL]

Hi Le Bucheron.

The LEVELS - dialogue in an image manipulation application lets You control the different brightness levels in an image. ( see attached image )
This way You can filter out the gray fills as I did in the BMW image for example.

Now if some of You don' t have a decent image man. app. and don' t want to spend lots of money, You can try to get the March issue of the excellent British Magazine Computer Arts.
On its cover disk is the magnificent full version of CANVAS 7.
This is an application that can do both VECTOR and BITMAP illustration ( think of Corel Draw, but - believe me - more powerful ), so it is ideal to create BLUEPRINTS in it too...

This is the application I have been using over the past 5 years to do all my vector- and bitmap illustration ( I am still on version 7 too, since it is very stable and so I didn' t upgrade it yet )

Have a look here for more info on the mag :http://www.computerarts.co.uk/magazi...bsectionid=770
Both Mac and Windows versions are included on the cover disk + thousands of high quality fonts by URW !
( the Mac version works in OS 8.5 up to 9.2.2 or in Classic, Windows version on 98, 2000 and xp )
More info about Canvas can be found here:http://www.deneba.com

The second image shows an illustration I made recently, using ONLY the vector drawing tools in Canvas.

So what are You guys waiting for ?

Peter

[Icekid84]

/me looks around... then says hes on 56k lol. But actually it doesnt bother me, I mean I have to endure it, and well I'm waaaaaaay to lazy to go through and make all our image that are not website friendly, friendly. Appreciate the information maybe if people know the stuff something can be done about future donations. But since donations are what keeps this place a refreshing place to be , that and WIP's I personally dont care how they upload the images just as long as people find what they need. again thanks for the lesson