PaintShop Pro is also inexpensive but isn't half bad as a PhotoShop clone. Best of all, it comes without a obnoxious non-standard "oooh, lets make it look like a MP3 player" skinned GUI (which looking at the Adobe's page, Elements seems to fall victim to).
Really to me nothing cripples an application worse than giving it some toy-like playskool interface. Yeah, it's great fun trying to figure out which useless widget to click and having half the screen area wasted so the GUI designer can show off his mad skillz with the Alien Effects bevel plugin!
Well, I don't think you can mix those metaphors - the 6000 or so odd years the ark story allows isn't enough time for evolution to do much. Really, you can't have your science and eat it to:-)
A smaller sensor does mean a smaller lens (everything else being equal).
Why would all else be equal? Ever notice those cheap toy 35mm cameras have a tiny lens, yet they focus to the same size of film? A home-made pinhole camera can expose a large negative while a huge telescope can focus down to a small spot. Even a plain old slide projector can project many different sizes with the same lenses. It's seems pretty silly to resize the lenses rather than just change the focus!
Also why would they just elect to keep the focus the same and only sample a smaller portion of the projected image? Surely it makes far more sense to just focus the image down to the size of the sensor you're working with. That's why I say it's not at all clear why less light would hit the sensor.
That makes more sense - I can see a smaller area increasing optical distortion, and I can see where perhaps the sensor's light sensitivity hasn't increased in step with the resolution. I'm not sure a smaller sensor necessarily means a smaller lens though.
The article with it's bucket analogy, made it sound like a smaller area means their would be less light hitting the sensor - I don't really see that as the case. Perhaps it more like a smaller sensor can't use the light as effectively.
Really, that's what I'm saying - the total amout of light is the same. If you looked at the smaller projected image side by side with the larger one, it appears brighter because the same amount of light is being focused into a smaller area!
The article seems to be saying a smaller sensor means the image as a whole gets *less* light, but I don't see why that's the case.
Sorry, I don't quite follow you. Yes, if the sensor has the same resolution then a larger format could capture more detail - same as if the size remains the same but the resolution of the sensor increases.
The newer cameras seem to be doing two things - first, increasing the CCD resolution, and second also decreasing the size. The film example doesn't work because the "resolution" of the film stays the same. That's more akin to focusing the image onto just a section of the CCD rather than using a smaller, higher rez CCD.
My question is, if (to use your term) the lens condenses light down to a smaller area, why would that area have less light than if it were spread out over a larger area?
For example, if a projector projects an image a few feet it will be smaller and brighter than if the projector projects it several yards further, but the total brightness is similar - just either more or less condensed.
I could understand if the argument was (as someone mentioned above) it would increase lens distortion, but that's not what the author claimed. It may be true that the smaller CCDs are less sensitive to light, but I'm not sure if just being smaller is enough of a reason - at least not in the terms the author described.
Finally, the buckets of water example, may or may not be relevant, but it's the author's not mine. My point was it's a flawed analogy.
The article seems to be making the argument that a smaller format sensor won't be as sensitive as a larger sensor, but I'm not sure I buy this.
The example he gives of buckets of water is flawed, since falling rain isn't *focused* like light is. Light entering a lens is just being focused on a smaller area. Sure the area is smaller, but it's also brighter.
A larger sensor just requires the projected image to be spread out further. Of course, maybe if you got too small, you'd run into the same limits optical microscopes do, but I don't know that it's near that point yet.
Maybe the author was thinking of regular film cameras where a larger format negative captures more detail? Still, this is because the level of detail film can capture would be about the same per sq inch (so larger format, more detail). What I'd really like to see are some actual tests, and not just some author's wild speculation.
PNG and TIFF are actually pretty similar in what they can do. Both are really just extensible container formats so can support various compression methods and both can handle true color non-lossy images about the same. The main benefit to TIFF is perhaps better support in photo editing software.
You're right about JPEG not being good for professional digital photography though. In the original source you want all the detail you can get - even if it's not visible. Photo manipulation (like increasing brightness) can make even slight JPEG artifacts suddenly very noticable. If used, lossy compression should really only happen at the final stage of the process.
That seems about right. Really, it depends on the picture. With many photos, you could lower the quality for a bit more compression and still have it look good enough. On the other hand, with something like a scan of line art, PNG may compress better than JPEG.
Yes, it's just a matter of selecting the right format for the job. With line art like comic scans, it's silly to use JPEG. Not only can PNG be smaller, but the quality will be much better.
Really, I have trouble understanding why so many people are still confused about lossy vs. lossless compression. It's not that difficult, and it's been well covered going all the way back to early web tutorials on GIF vs. JPEG. Pretty much the same guidelines still apply when choosing PNG.
The LZW patent has expired. In a way this may make it safer to use than some other algorithm not covered by patents. You never know when some company will claim their patent covers some common tech, but they can't claim that for something that's already been patented.
What quality levels are you using? What source material? The difference can be much larger than 3x.
Also it doesn't sound like you've ever hosting a semi-popular website. Look at how many sites get slashdotted to see why conserving bandwidth is VERY important. You really expect sites should just eat the cost of using even 3x their current bandwidth? If so, I'm sure you wouldn't mind paying them for the extra hosting costs - right?
Hell, if file size was irrelevant, everyone would be using wav files instead of MP3's or OGG and uncompressed video instead of MPEG. Saying PNG is as good as JPEG is like saying you don't need a hammer because you can pound a nail in with your wrench. Sure it may work in a half-assed way, but you'd have a hard time convincing a carpenter it's a valid replacement.
To all the other dittoheads saying "just use PNG", please learn something or two about the format before you push it.
Sure it's open source, and that's great, but it was never intended as JPEG replacement! JPEG is a lossy compression and can reduce the size of a photographic image much further than a lossless compression - that's why it was invented to begin with. PNG is intended as a GIF replacement for images like drawings and diagrams that have large areas of the exact same color.
You might as well say to use TIFF as use PNG - both will store high color images with perfect quality, but they'll be huge compared to JPEG. Bandwidth ain't free folks - having images ten times their previous size can sink a busy website. Now, finally some may say "but PNG supports lossy compression too" - yep, it's sure does - by using JPEG compression!
Actually, using the DMCA to suppress this kind of information might, in a round-about way, be a good thing. It would make for an idea court case to have the DMCA's constitutionality challenged.
Yeah, you probably have a ground loop causing interference. It can happen anytime you connect two devices where the grounding isn't 100% equal. The problem is some small current flows between them causing noise from the 50/60hz AC power cycle.
Solutions include making sure both devices are plugged into the same line, using a shorter cable to connect them, or if nothing else works, using a ground loop isolation transformer.
Well, "Seven Samuri" is pretty much the main example of a Japanese film inspiring a Western (and Kurosawa claimed he himself was inspired by earlier Westrens), and "The Magnificent Seven" wasn't even a Spaghetti Westren (unless Mexico has become part of Italy).
Seems like pretty flimsy evidence to support the assumption that "Spaghetti Westerns were all based on Japanese films".
Actually I think it would have real problems with BT since the files arrive in random pieces. It would have a hell of a time re-assembling enough to get a fingerprint during the transfer, and it would need to know the specific protocol pretty well.
I'd suspect this thing can only detect a file sent in one contiguous TCP/IP stream.
As I said, don't count on that lasting. People said the same thing about ISA slots.
Just because something's been a certain way for a long time, doesn't mean it will always be so. Serial ISA probably won't stay easily backwards compatible forever, and it's drawing users away from SCSI which already isn't as popular as it once was.
And in x years time when they find they can't hook that old IDE or SCSI HD up to anything what do they do? A major problem with most any digital format is they can become obsolete long before they become unreadable. Constant media migration isn't really a good answer either because as data collects, it becomes a more and more time consuming task.
Granted HD's have had a long run of backwards compatibility, but this is starting to change. Once the trend is established, we may see new interfaces every few years - if for no other reason, just because now that PC's aren't such a growth industry, planned obsolescence has become more attractive to manufacturers.
Yes, the truth is people seldom realize what will be one day be important to future generations. Data we now consider trivial and worthless may become the most valuable precisely because nobody thought it was worth the trouble to migrate at the time. Look at the collector's market for old toys and comics - many items considered disposable at the time are the rarest and treasured finds today.
Slashdot Mirror
PaintShop Pro is also inexpensive but isn't half bad as a PhotoShop clone. Best of all, it comes without a obnoxious non-standard "oooh, lets make it look like a MP3 player" skinned GUI (which looking at the Adobe's page, Elements seems to fall victim to).
Really to me nothing cripples an application worse than giving it some toy-like playskool interface. Yeah, it's great fun trying to figure out which useless widget to click and having half the screen area wasted so the GUI designer can show off his mad skillz with the Alien Effects bevel plugin!
Well, I don't think you can mix those metaphors - the 6000 or so odd years the ark story allows isn't enough time for evolution to do much. Really, you can't have your science and eat it to :-)
..and if an omnipotent God exists why would he bother when he could just remake them all anyway?
Why would all else be equal? Ever notice those cheap toy 35mm cameras have a tiny lens, yet they focus to the same size of film? A home-made pinhole camera can expose a large negative while a huge telescope can focus down to a small spot. Even a plain old slide projector can project many different sizes with the same lenses. It's seems pretty silly to resize the lenses rather than just change the focus!
Also why would they just elect to keep the focus the same and only sample a smaller portion of the projected image? Surely it makes far more sense to just focus the image down to the size of the sensor you're working with. That's why I say it's not at all clear why less light would hit the sensor.
That makes more sense - I can see a smaller area increasing optical distortion, and I can see where perhaps the sensor's light sensitivity hasn't increased in step with the resolution. I'm not sure a smaller sensor necessarily means a smaller lens though.
The article with it's bucket analogy, made it sound like a smaller area means their would be less light hitting the sensor - I don't really see that as the case. Perhaps it more like a smaller sensor can't use the light as effectively.
Really, that's what I'm saying - the total amout of light is the same. If you looked at the smaller projected image side by side with the larger one, it appears brighter because the same amount of light is being focused into a smaller area!
The article seems to be saying a smaller sensor means the image as a whole gets *less* light, but I don't see why that's the case.
Sorry, I don't quite follow you. Yes, if the sensor has the same resolution then a larger format could capture more detail - same as if the size remains the same but the resolution of the sensor increases.
The newer cameras seem to be doing two things - first, increasing the CCD resolution, and second also decreasing the size. The film example doesn't work because the "resolution" of the film stays the same. That's more akin to focusing the image onto just a section of the CCD rather than using a smaller, higher rez CCD.
My question is, if (to use your term) the lens condenses light down to a smaller area, why would that area have less light than if it were spread out over a larger area?
For example, if a projector projects an image a few feet it will be smaller and brighter than if the projector projects it several yards further, but the total brightness is similar - just either more or less condensed.
I could understand if the argument was (as someone mentioned above) it would increase lens distortion, but that's not what the author claimed. It may be true that the smaller CCDs are less sensitive to light, but I'm not sure if just being smaller is enough of a reason - at least not in the terms the author described.
Finally, the buckets of water example, may or may not be relevant, but it's the author's not mine. My point was it's a flawed analogy.
The article seems to be making the argument that a smaller format sensor won't be as sensitive as a larger sensor, but I'm not sure I buy this.
The example he gives of buckets of water is flawed, since falling rain isn't *focused* like light is. Light entering a lens is just being focused on a smaller area. Sure the area is smaller, but it's also brighter.
A larger sensor just requires the projected image to be spread out further. Of course, maybe if you got too small, you'd run into the same limits optical microscopes do, but I don't know that it's near that point yet.
Maybe the author was thinking of regular film cameras where a larger format negative captures more detail? Still, this is because the level of detail film can capture would be about the same per sq inch (so larger format, more detail). What I'd really like to see are some actual tests, and not just some author's wild speculation.
PNG and TIFF are actually pretty similar in what they can do. Both are really just extensible container formats so can support various compression methods and both can handle true color non-lossy images about the same. The main benefit to TIFF is perhaps better support in photo editing software.
You're right about JPEG not being good for professional digital photography though. In the original source you want all the detail you can get - even if it's not visible. Photo manipulation (like increasing brightness) can make even slight JPEG artifacts suddenly very noticable. If used, lossy compression should really only happen at the final stage of the process.
That seems about right. Really, it depends on the picture. With many photos, you could lower the quality for a bit more compression and still have it look good enough. On the other hand, with something like a scan of line art, PNG may compress better than JPEG.
According to Unisys, they'll all expire in 2004.
Yes, it's just a matter of selecting the right format for the job. With line art like comic scans, it's silly to use JPEG. Not only can PNG be smaller, but the quality will be much better.
Really, I have trouble understanding why so many people are still confused about lossy vs. lossless compression. It's not that difficult, and it's been well covered going all the way back to early web tutorials on GIF vs. JPEG. Pretty much the same guidelines still apply when choosing PNG.
The LZW patent has expired. In a way this may make it safer to use than some other algorithm not covered by patents. You never know when some company will claim their patent covers some common tech, but they can't claim that for something that's already been patented.
Yes, it's one of the more established extensions. It's covered on the PNG home page under MNG / JNG Technical Documentation.
What quality levels are you using? What source material? The difference can be much larger than 3x.
Also it doesn't sound like you've ever hosting a semi-popular website. Look at how many sites get slashdotted to see why conserving bandwidth is VERY important. You really expect sites should just eat the cost of using even 3x their current bandwidth? If so, I'm sure you wouldn't mind paying them for the extra hosting costs - right?
Hell, if file size was irrelevant, everyone would be using wav files instead of MP3's or OGG and uncompressed video instead of MPEG. Saying PNG is as good as JPEG is like saying you don't need a hammer because you can pound a nail in with your wrench. Sure it may work in a half-assed way, but you'd have a hard time convincing a carpenter it's a valid replacement.
Not only does it have it's own patent issues, but it also still uses some of same algorithms used by JPEG.
To all the other dittoheads saying "just use PNG", please learn something or two about the format before you push it.
Sure it's open source, and that's great, but it was never intended as JPEG replacement! JPEG is a lossy compression and can reduce the size of a photographic image much further than a lossless compression - that's why it was invented to begin with. PNG is intended as a GIF replacement for images like drawings and diagrams that have large areas of the exact same color.
You might as well say to use TIFF as use PNG - both will store high color images with perfect quality, but they'll be huge compared to JPEG. Bandwidth ain't free folks - having images ten times their previous size can sink a busy website. Now, finally some may say "but PNG supports lossy compression too" - yep, it's sure does - by using JPEG compression!
Actually, using the DMCA to suppress this kind of information might, in a round-about way, be a good thing. It would make for an idea court case to have the DMCA's constitutionality challenged.
Yeah, you probably have a ground loop causing interference. It can happen anytime you connect two devices where the grounding isn't 100% equal. The problem is some small current flows between them causing noise from the 50/60hz AC power cycle.
Solutions include making sure both devices are plugged into the same line, using a shorter cable to connect them, or if nothing else works, using a ground loop isolation transformer.
Well, "Seven Samuri" is pretty much the main example of a Japanese film inspiring a Western (and Kurosawa claimed he himself was inspired by earlier Westrens), and "The Magnificent Seven" wasn't even a Spaghetti Westren (unless Mexico has become part of Italy).
Seems like pretty flimsy evidence to support the assumption that "Spaghetti Westerns were all based on Japanese films".
Actually I think it would have real problems with BT since the files arrive in random pieces. It would have a hell of a time re-assembling enough to get a fingerprint during the transfer, and it would need to know the specific protocol pretty well.
I'd suspect this thing can only detect a file sent in one contiguous TCP/IP stream.
Slight correction, should read "Serial ATA probably won't stay easily backwards compatible"
As I said, don't count on that lasting. People said the same thing about ISA slots.
Just because something's been a certain way for a long time, doesn't mean it will always be so. Serial ISA probably won't stay easily backwards compatible forever, and it's drawing users away from SCSI which already isn't as popular as it once was.
And in x years time when they find they can't hook that old IDE or SCSI HD up to anything what do they do? A major problem with most any digital format is they can become obsolete long before they become unreadable. Constant media migration isn't really a good answer either because as data collects, it becomes a more and more time consuming task.
Granted HD's have had a long run of backwards compatibility, but this is starting to change. Once the trend is established, we may see new interfaces every few years - if for no other reason, just because now that PC's aren't such a growth industry, planned obsolescence has become more attractive to manufacturers.
Yes, the truth is people seldom realize what will be one day be important to future generations. Data we now consider trivial and worthless may become the most valuable precisely because nobody thought it was worth the trouble to migrate at the time. Look at the collector's market for old toys and comics - many items considered disposable at the time are the rarest and treasured finds today.