Optimizing The Free Image Optimizer

The Free Image Optimizer does a lovely job of resizing our scans.

I've found it does a lovelier job if you help it along.

Therefor, I reduce my scans by an integer factor.

I've found that resizing an 1086-pixel-wide image (for example) to a pixel width of 543 (1086/2) yields a markedly sharper image than, say, reducing that same image to a pixel width of 500 or 600.

The reason is simple enough: averaging two whole pixels into one whole pixel is gonna be noise-free when compared with averaging/interpolating 2.17 (1086/500) or 1.81 (1086/600) pixels into one.

In a recent Marker Monkey post, I reduced a pixel width of 5912 by a factor of 8, and got a nice(r) 739-pixel-wide image than I would have had if I selected a width of, say, 700 or 800.

The Free Image Optimizer is smart, but your results can be smarter ... if you keep your slide rule handy.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

I will have to try that. Thanks for the tip.

Slide rule?? I haven't used a slide rule for half a century.

Don

I keep my slide rule on my desk. Love the reaction when a young programmer asks "What the heck is that?"

My favorite moment in the official Apollo 13 documentary is when the voice-over says (something along the line of) "NASA scientists furiously re-computed (fuel, oxygen, trajectory, something)" and the video shows a guy, dressed in the requisite dark trousers & white shirt & tie, sitting in a swivel chair, one elbow on his desk, hunched over (and working) one of those over-sized engineer's slide rules ... or, you know, more or less, something like that.

My pushing-90-y/o cousin never misses an opportunity to pull-out his slide rule, and put it to use, even for currency conversions that he can do faster in his head.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Whenever, which is rarely now, I hear the word " slide rule " I think of the movie
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

See scene starting at 1:24:49

http://www.veoh.com/watch/v19483133d9a7jQka

picresize.com is also a handy option, with more features.