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I realise that. My point was that their effort has only reduced the file size by 30% (if that). Creating a better algorithm might reduce it by 50% or 100% AND produce an image that looks better (less compressed) as is the case with the fractal image format I mentionned.

The FIF program I was using at the time came from here but it seems to be down at the moment...

MediaBin Project Manager

http://www.jobmanager.com/

Or even, Zenark 2: Digital Asset Management

The comapny was Iterated Systems. The technology is still being developed, and highly advanced - they even have a fractal moving image compressor that can, [according to a workmate who did a thesis on compression - take with a grain of salt if you like, because I can't back it up] fit eight minuted of better-than-VHS-quality film on a floppy disk. He saw it at a trade show, allegedy. But believe what you will.

The licensing fees for FIF and other iterated technologies are huge. And the weird thing is, if they were open source, Iterated would be in much better straights than they are now. We'd all be using infinitely zoomable, highly comrpessed images [both GIF, JPG, and PNG are web standards due to seeming freeness], and despiute the fact they'd loose the revenue, they'd be known as the number one player in town for fractal image creation tools. And people would but their software over the other utilities which use the same Open Source image format, because they had the fastest algorithms, extra features, or other competitive advantages.

Just a thought.

Not that a vector based format for photos would work, though. There are too many things that can not be accurately described by vectors, and even if they could be, the amount of data required to describe them would be enormous... exponentially more than a similarly detailed pixel format

Hasn't there been some work with fractal compression algorithms for photographic images? I seem to recall a few years ago a Windows demo of fractal image compression (I think it was Iterated Systems, but they don't seem to be doing it anymore) - you could zoom in, zoom out, and still get quite good quality as you zoomed in - less pixellation and artifacting.

Anyhow, on a vector-based system, a fractal-based system for traditional "bitmap" images would still be able to take advantage of the higher PPI, wouldn't it?

It's also occured to me that on a vector/fractal GUI, that the actual monitor/video card resolution will become less meaningful in terms of productivity, and will start to be more like dot-pitch - related only to the clarity of the screen. Layout, etc. for applications in this type of system could be strictly relative to either the window size or the screen size - instead of specifying a line from (5, 5) to (1004, 750) you would specify it as (0.5, 0.5) to (99.5, 99.5). The system would allow for arbitrary precision - instead of 0.5, you could specify 0.4977263881 if you felt that more accurately reflected what the co-ordinate should be.

My mind is racing with other ideas - thinking about how this could simplify web site design (no more worrying about what resolution people are running), how this could improve computing for visually impaired (but not legally blind) users, stuff like that... but I should really get back to work. *@#%$!! slashdot... :=]
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Anybody know anything interesting about FC? I remember once downloading a FC pic viewer and looking at a demo photo of a ski jumper in the air. What was really impressive was that I could keep zooming in until I could see the snot oozing out of his nostril! An interesting thing about FC is that it can GENERATE detail that isn't stored in the image file. However, there is no gaurentee that it will match the actual detail.

Fractal compression is very cool. It's sort of like a vector format, in a way...it has no inherent size. It can also achieve insane levels of compression. There was a small article on it several years ago in Scientific American, written (IIRC) by the inventor. The examples were very impressive.

Unfortunately, patents bite us on the butt once again. The format is patented by its creator, who runs an image software business (Iterated Systems). I'm not sure when or if the patent will revert to the public domain, either, since it's a British patent and I know nothing about how Britain handles IP law.

Lizardtech is another company doing similar research that is seems luratech is doing. My company has done some alpha/beta testing for lizardtech (we're in the graphic arts industry). The cool thing is that they have a web server application (interfaced in perl) that allows you to zoom in on images in a web site.

Another company that has done probably the most ground breaking work in wavelets is Iterated Systems who we also helped out in the past. They are not as adept at bringing tools to market but have done a lot of original research into wavelet compression.

Jason

Iterated Systems- http://www.iterated.com
Lizardtech- http://www.lizardtech.com

The cool thing about this isn't so much the compression of an image (visually lossless compression to 40:1 or better), but the scaling of an image. You can scan an image at optimum setting (maybe 8x10, 1200dpi, etc) and compress it. But the cool part is later on when you want a poster size of this image, or a web thumbnail, you can scale the image up or down with great clarity from a single source. Extremely cool in this industry.

Jason