These life changing events began on the morning of 13th of November as the topic of compression was introduced to the group. Of course the talk was essential to our progression as Interactive Media Designers, or Graphic Artists, to be politically correct! Equally, when coupled with the input we’d been given on colour it was obvious we were building a strong 'technical amoury' to enable many future victories on the design battlefield. Yet, sadly, it was not this 'geek' driven vision which fuelled my moment of revelation. In fact it was the implications that compression and colour had in the context of my day to day life.
As we all know one of my, and many others, major downfalls is time management, or at least the lack of it. Every week is an on going battle to squeeze everything in. So I began thinking of this ‘time’ as a file or a number of files which all could be found in one ‘folder’, the ‘folder’ entitled; ‘Michelle’s life’. The folder, having been created in 1980, was getting pretty full and compression of the major files had been performed. The only problem being the wrong type had been applied, causing a lot of ‘Artifacts’ and in some cases loss of information and colour. The folders were as follows;
Rebecca.gif - In theory a loss-less compression, yet there is a significant reduction in colour range and vibrancy.
Work.jpg - No real noticeable differences to the human eye and overall quality still good yet information has been lost. Recent overly progressive compression is starting to cause defects.
HND.png - Is of a higher quality than ‘Rebecca.gif’ but is no comparison to Work.jpg where it shows noticeable anomalies.
So, to conclude, I feel firstly that some things simply shouldn’t be compressed. And if done continually there will be severe loss of quality until the file becomes obsolete, unable to compare to the original in any way. Secondly, you need to make sure you’re apply the correct compression format to files or qualitive comparisons will shock you and in some cases causes distress and discomfort. Lastly, never delete or save over the original files, that way there is always the chance to start over.
With this revelation now firmly embedded in my thinking I will endeavour to meet the following targets this week;
- Complete compression essay
- Amend TDR essay
- Amend Production Schedule
- Delivery Requirements
- Choose websites for competitive analysis
- Re-organise my original ‘Life’ files
5 comments:
Amazing comment as usual Michelle, you always seem to be able to touch on so many different subjects each week.
I can see that image compression would be something of a great use to you, being a photographer. Definitely try take this new information into account when uploading your photographs onto your website, or just generally storing them.
Another thing that may help you alot is the Image Manipulation we're coming onto soon, this is quite a useful tool for a photographer.
Keep enjoying the course Mishmish.
Thanks Andrew, the current topics are definately for me.
The image compression has made a lot of sense and is kind of the reverse of what I'm used to. In my previous course it was important to optimise the image, but to a specified file size corresponding to the print size. My images for my final show were over 40MB in order to print out A1!
I'm really looking forward to learning lots more in Photoshop too, I'm not too bad but its all been self taught. I'm sure there's so much more I could be doing.
Sounds like you're pretty hot on it so I expect some free tutorials!
Comment deadline.
Compression is a huge part of all of the interactive media industry, from the relatively simple GIFs and JPEGs of the web to the highly sophisticated and rather geekylicious DDS format of the games industry.
As a photographer you might find it a bit frustrating at times to compress images, as inevitably they can lose some of their sparkle when they get to a suitable file size for the web.
I find that pictures from an SLR need a lot lower percentage of compression to get them down to a suitable file size, but that the same time seem less prone to getting artefacts, probably due to the richness and vibrancy of the colours they can capture.
Compromise is the name of the game for the web – as frustrating it can be. The same can be said for time planning, and it is tough to stop ‘artefacts’ from effecting how you perform at college. You just have to keep on truckin’.
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