hi everybody.
is there a possibilty to have the output of a render as a jpg file? 
because in the message window of povray it says "LibJPEG 6b, Copyright 
1998 Thomas G. Lane"... i didn't find a commandline-switch or something 
to change the output to jpg, but if it's not possible, why mention the 
JPEG-llibrary?
an alternative would be a program i can use in a batchfile to convert 
files from bmp to jpg, if possible with low quality loss, like acdsee 
does. i need this because i want to make an animation with 1500 frames, 
but at 640x480 this would need 900kb per picture, resulting in almost 
1.5GB of files. this would not be a problem if i were rendering on my 
own pc, but i have to do it on another machine to which i have only slow 
access via wlan.
thanks for listening to me, and if this is the wrong newsgroup, please 
point me to the right one.
bye
	Marc

Post a reply to this message

On Wed, 18 Feb 2004 16:08:31 +0100, Marc Roth <mar### [at] rothconsultcom> wrote:
> hi everybody.
> is there a possibilty to have the output of a render as a jpg file? 
> because in the message window of povray it says "LibJPEG 6b, Copyright 
> 1998 Thomas G. Lane"... i didn't find a commandline-switch or something 
> to change the output to jpg, but if it's not possible, why mention the 
> JPEG-llibrary?

For reading?
http://www.google.com/search?q=site:www.povray.org+JPEG

> an alternative would be a program i can use in a batchfile to convert 
> files from bmp to jpg, if possible with low quality loss, like acdsee 
> does.

IrfanView ?

> i need this because i want to make an animation with 1500 frames, 
> but at 640x480 this would need 900kb per picture, resulting in almost 
> 1.5GB of files.

PNG format ?

> this would not be a problem if i were rendering on my 
> own pc, but i have to do it on another machine to which i have only slow 
> access via wlan.

SMPOV ?
http://www.it-berater.org/smpov.htm

ABX

Post a reply to this message

ABX wrote:

> On Wed, 18 Feb 2004 16:08:31 +0100, Marc Roth <mar### [at] rothconsultcom> wrote:
>>"LibJPEG 6b, Copyright 1998 Thomas G. Lane"
> 
> 
> For reading?
> http://www.google.com/search?q=site:www.povray.org+JPEG
you got a point there... :)

>>an alternative would be a program i can use in a batchfile to convert 
>>files from bmp to jpg, if possible with low quality loss, like acdsee 
>>does.
> 
> 
> IrfanView ?
i'll try this one

>>i need this because i want to make an animation with 1500 frames, 
>>but at 640x480 this would need 900kb per picture, resulting in almost 
>>1.5GB of files.
> 
> 
> PNG format ?
i'm not familiar with this format, i thought it was equally uncompressed

>>this would not be a problem if i were rendering on my 
>>own pc, but i have to do it on another machine to which i have only slow 
>>access via wlan.
i don't think that makes sense, as the connection is not only slow but 
also rather buggy, too many frames would get lost... ATM i'm simply 
copying the .pov file to the remote machine if i have to render 
something big, start up povray, wait, and when it finishes i take some 
hours to copy the resulting pictures to my pc

Post a reply to this message

"Darren" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message
news:40339bda$1@news.povray.org...
> Marc Roth wrote:
> > an alternative would be a program i can use in a batchfile to convert
> > files from bmp to jpg,
>
> I'm doing the same thing. I use NETPBM aka PBMPlus. A free set of tools
> for doing all kinds of image manipulation. Have POVRAY output PPM files
> (which is one of the NETPBM formats) and just use PPMTOJPEG to compress
> it. I believe it's available on sourceforge, runs fine on both Windows
> and Unix.
<snip />

I'll throw in my recommendation for netpbm as well. It's a little odd to
learn at first until it snaps in your head how they designed it, but it is
the ultimate conversion utility and it handles damn near every image format
you'll ever see -- and you can make uber MPEG-1 movies with it too. It's
like POV-Ray -- you /can/ find software with fancy interfaces, but you'll
never get the true feeling of power that netpbm will give you (arggh, arggh,
arggh, more power!)

Post a reply to this message

In article <403385d6$1@news.povray.org>,
 Marc Roth <mar### [at] rothconsultcom> wrote:

> > PNG format ?
> i'm not familiar with this format, i thought it was equally uncompressed

PNG uses lossless compression. The reduction in file size is less than 
with lossy formats like JPEG, but you get a perfect reproduction of the 
image. It makes a good replacement for GIF, having better compression, 
supporting 48 bit color, alpha channels, and file gamma values. It's 
also good for archiving images or other situations where you want to 
keep full quality.

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: <chr### [at] tagpovrayorg>
http://tag.povray.org/

Post a reply to this message

In article <403385d6$1@news.povray.org> , Marc Roth <mar### [at] rothconsultcom>
wrote:

>>>this would not be a problem if i were rendering on my
>>>own pc, but i have to do it on another machine to which i have only slow
>>>access via wlan.
> i don't think that makes sense, as the connection is not only slow but
> also rather buggy, too many frames would get lost...

A WLAN is reliable as any other network as far as deliverly of data is
concerned, it is just slow.  Nothing can get lost or be buggy just because
it is used over a WLAN.

    Thorsten


____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

Post a reply to this message

Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet> wrote:
> The reduction in file size is less than 
> with lossy formats like JPEG

  Are there any other lossy formats than JPEG? ;)

-- 
#macro M(A,N,D,L)plane{-z,-9pigment{mandel L*9translate N color_map{[0rgb x]
[1rgb 9]}scale<D,D*3D>*1e3}rotate y*A*8}#end M(-3<1.206434.28623>70,7)M(
-1<.7438.1795>1,20)M(1<.77595.13699>30,20)M(3<.75923.07145>80,99)// - Warp -

Post a reply to this message

>   Are there any other lossy formats than JPEG? ;)

I just invented one: All files compressed with my format are 0 bytes in
size, and when the image is read, its dimensions and colors are guessed.

I expect this to be in widespread use before long.

 - Slime
 [ http://www.slimeland.com/ ]

Post a reply to this message

Thorsten Froehlich wrote:

> A WLAN is reliable as any other network as far as deliverly of data is
> concerned, it is just slow.  Nothing can get lost or be buggy just because
> it is used over a WLAN.
> 
>     Thorsten
trust me, i have to use it every day... the problem is, that the walls 
in our house are to thick for it to work properly... i made a check via 
the ping utility over a week about 20% of the pings didn't arrive
but i do agree that it *should* be as reliable as any other network in a 
more common situation ;)
bye,
    Marc

Post a reply to this message

Dan P wrote:
<snip>

> It's
> like POV-Ray -- you /can/ find software with fancy interfaces, but you'll
> never get the true feeling of power that netpbm will give you (arggh, arggh,
> arggh, more power!)
> 
> 
sounds good, i'm gonna try it :)
bye,
    Marc

Post a reply to this message

In article <4033dd04$1@news.povray.org> , Marc Roth <mar### [at] rothconsultcom>
wrote:

> trust me, i have to use it every day... the problem is, that the walls
> in our house are to thick for it to work properly... i made a check via
> the ping utility over a week about 20% of the pings didn't arrive
> but i do agree that it *should* be as reliable as any other network in a
> more common situation ;)

A ping is not a reliable way to check network reliability.  Your problems
are more likely due to faulty or incompatible equipment with unreliable
drivers (especially many recent cheap WLAN cards tend to have this problem).
They do not create a WLAN at all.  Throwing away the noname cards and base
station and replacing them with brand name equipment will get rid of such
problems.  Really!

Some of those noname cards cannot keep a network up even if they sit next to
each other!  With brand name hardware it will work just fine and signals
pass at least through two 18 cm reinforced concrete floors and three 25 cm
brick walls (my home setup).  Or work 70 m away from your home.  At least
they did for me in the past four years.  And in many different locations and
setups it also works reliably.  You really need reliable hardware, that is
all ;-)

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

Post a reply to this message

In article <4033c8f1@news.povray.org>, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> 
wrote:

> Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet> wrote:
> > The reduction in file size is less than 
> > with lossy formats like JPEG
> 
>   Are there any other lossy formats than JPEG? ;)

MPEG?
Okay, there's no other lossy still image format in common use. Someone 
mentioned GIF...it isn't lossy, it's just really limited in the number 
of colors it can represent. I can't think of any other lossy formats, 
but I know they exist, so I didn't rule them out.

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: <chr### [at] tagpovrayorg>
http://tag.povray.org/

Post a reply to this message

Wasn't it Warp who wrote:
>  Are there any other lossy formats than JPEG? ;)

I believe it's possible to save images as single-frame lossy animations
in various formats, and there are fractal image compression algorithms
like FIF (Fractal Image File).

-- 
Mike Williams
Gentleman of Leisure

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> GIF?

  GIF is a lossless format.

  Granted, it only supports 256 colors, but that doesn't make it a lossy
image format. That makes it only an image format which supports 256 colors.
You can't control the quality of the "lossiness" because there isn't any.
Anything you store in the gif file can be retrieved exactly. Its color
limitation is not a method to pack the image smaller, it's just a limitation.

-- 
#macro N(D)#if(D>99)cylinder{M()#local D=div(D,104);M().5,2pigment{rgb M()}}
N(D)#end#end#macro M()<mod(D,13)-6mod(div(D,13)8)-3,10>#end blob{
N(11117333955)N(4254934330)N(3900569407)N(7382340)N(3358)N(970)}//  - Warp -

Post a reply to this message

Mike Williams <nos### [at] econymdemoncouk> wrote:
> I believe it's possible to save images as single-frame lossy animations
> in various formats

  It would be a keyframe, and AFAIK keyframes are basically a JPEG (more
or less) of the first original frame.

>, and there are fractal image compression algorithms
> like FIF (Fractal Image File).

  Agreed, but how many image viewers/manipulation programs have you seen
supporting that? ;)

-- 
#macro N(D)#if(D>99)cylinder{M()#local D=div(D,104);M().5,2pigment{rgb M()}}
N(D)#end#end#macro M()<mod(D,13)-6mod(div(D,13)8)-3,10>#end blob{
N(11117333955)N(4254934330)N(3900569407)N(7382340)N(3358)N(970)}//  - Warp -

Post a reply to this message

Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet> wrote:
> MPEG?

  If I'm not completely mistaken, an I frame of an mpeg file (which a
1-frame mpeg would be) is basically a jpeg (more or less).

> I can't think of any other lossy formats, 
> but I know they exist, so I didn't rule them out.

  JPEG2000 is the next version of JPEG (and certainly better), even though
I don't know if you can call it a "different format from JPEG"...

  Does anyone have any idea why JPEG2000 has not widespread even though
it's so much better than JPEG? I have always wondered this and found it
a big pitty.

-- 
plane{-x+y,-1pigment{bozo color_map{[0rgb x][1rgb x+y]}turbulence 1}}
sphere{0,2pigment{rgbt 1}interior{media{emission 1density{spherical
density_map{[0rgb 0][.5rgb<1,.5>][1rgb 1]}turbulence.9}}}scale
<1,1,3>hollow}text{ttf"timrom""Warp".1,0translate<-1,-.1,2>}//  - Warp -

Post a reply to this message

In article <40348604@news.povray.org> , Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg>  wrote:

>   JPEG2000 is the next version of JPEG (and certainly better), even though
> I don't know if you can call it a "different format from JPEG"...

It is really much different.  the formats only really have the name in
common.

>   Does anyone have any idea why JPEG2000 has not widespread even though
> it's so much better than JPEG? I have always wondered this and found it
> a big pitty.

The compression algorithm is far more complex.  And I am not even sure there
is a license free way to use it.  Either way, there is no good, portable
library to read/write it yet.  The IJG JPEG library is kind of a "standard"
for JPEG on the other hand.

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

Post a reply to this message

In article <40344a95$1@news.povray.org>, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> 
wrote:

> True, it depends on how many colors you're trying to represent. Given 
> this is a ray-tracing newsgroup and GIF only supports 256 colors, I 
> think it's safe to say it's lossy. ;-)

Not lossy, just very coarsely quantized. If you call that lossy, than 
every possible representation of the image is lossy. The term "lossy" 
refers to the compression algorithm used, and the method used by GIF 
lets you retrieve exactly the same values you put in: it's lossless.

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: <chr### [at] tagpovrayorg>
http://tag.povray.org/

Post a reply to this message

> > True, it depends on how many colors you're trying to represent. Given
> > this is a ray-tracing newsgroup and GIF only supports 256 colors, I
> > think it's safe to say it's lossy. ;-)
>
> Not lossy, just very coarsely quantized. If you call that lossy, than
> every possible representation of the image is lossy. The term "lossy"
> refers to the compression algorithm used, and the method used by GIF
> lets you retrieve exactly the same values you put in: it's lossless.

I think he was attempting to add some humor into his reply: since we're
dealing with POV-Ray and thus, mainly 16 to 32 bit images, 256 colors would
be a loss, and thus, GIF would be "lossy" for saving the output-images.

Technically, you're right, on a humoristic level, he's right. :-)

Regards,
Tim

-- 
"Tim Nikias v2.0"
Homepage: <http://www.nolights.de>
Email: tim.nikias (@) nolights.de

Post a reply to this message

Tim Nikias v2.0 <tim.nikias (@) nolights.de> wrote:
> I think he was attempting to add some humor into his reply: since we're
> dealing with POV-Ray and thus, mainly 16 to 32 bit images, 256 colors would
> be a loss, and thus, GIF would be "lossy" for saving the output-images.

  Then every existing image format is lossy because POV-Ray calculates
the color components as 32-bit floats. Converting them eg. to
8 bits-per-component or even 16 bits-per-component image (eg. PNG)
is lossy.

-- 
plane{-x+y,-1pigment{bozo color_map{[0rgb x][1rgb x+y]}turbulence 1}}
sphere{0,2pigment{rgbt 1}interior{media{emission 1density{spherical
density_map{[0rgb 0][.5rgb<1,.5>][1rgb 1]}turbulence.9}}}scale
<1,1,3>hollow}text{ttf"timrom""Warp".1,0translate<-1,-.1,2>}//  - Warp -

Post a reply to this message

In article <4034c5ff@news.povray.org> , Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg>  wrote:

>   Then every existing image format is lossy because POV-Ray calculates
> the color components as 32-bit floats. Converting them eg. to
> 8 bits-per-component or even 16 bits-per-component image (eg. PNG)
> is lossy.

I would not be surprised if floating-point colors were part of some TIFF
format specification ;-)

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Technically true, but since your eyes have a very difficult (if not 
> impossible) time distinguishing more than 8 bits of color, one could 
> argue differently too. :-)

  Actually for B/W images 8 bits can sometimes be too little, specially
when dealing with large areas of very slowly changing shades of gray.

-- 
#macro N(D)#if(D>99)cylinder{M()#local D=div(D,104);M().5,2pigment{rgb M()}}
N(D)#end#end#macro M()<mod(D,13)-6mod(div(D,13)8)-3,10>#end blob{
N(11117333955)N(4254934330)N(3900569407)N(7382340)N(3358)N(970)}//  - Warp -

Post a reply to this message

> > Technically true, but since your eyes have a very difficult (if not
> > impossible) time distinguishing more than 8 bits of color, one could
> > argue differently too. :-)
>
>   Actually for B/W images 8 bits can sometimes be too little, specially
> when dealing with large areas of very slowly changing shades of gray.

To add to that: I'm on 32bit for my Desktop, because I'm seeing bands of
colors when using only 16bit with my raytraced images (which is hence the
reason why I output to 24bit BMP most of the time). Since Windows offers me
only 16 or 32, I'm on 32.

Regards,
Tim

-- 
"Tim Nikias v2.0"
Homepage: <http://www.nolights.de>
Email: tim.nikias (@) nolights.de

Post a reply to this message

> To add to that: I'm on 32bit for my Desktop, because I'm seeing bands of
> colors when using only 16bit with my raytraced images (which is hence the
> reason why I output to 24bit BMP most of the time). Since Windows offers
me
> only 16 or 32, I'm on 32.

And eventhough you are using 32-bit mode, you see only 24-colors, unless you
have some specialiced video card. I also agree that 8-bits/channel is way
too little with color gradations. And for editing purposes 16-bit/channel is
sometimes mandatory. Sadly there are not many (consumer grade) video cards
showing 48-bit colors.

Severi

Post a reply to this message

On Wed, 18 Feb 2004 21:33:09 -0800, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom>
wrote:

>Christopher James Huff wrote:
>
>> it isn't lossy, it's just really limited in the number 
>> of colors it can represent. 
>
>True, it depends on how many colors you're trying to represent. Given 
>this is a ray-tracing newsgroup and GIF only supports 256 colors, I 
>think it's safe to say it's lossy. ;-)

It's close to black & white, isn't it?


-- 
Andreas

Post a reply to this message

In article <4035211f$1@news.povray.org>,
 "Tim Nikias v2.0" <tim.nikias (@) nolights.de> wrote:

> To add to that: I'm on 32bit for my Desktop, because I'm seeing bands of
> colors when using only 16bit with my raytraced images (which is hence the
> reason why I output to 24bit BMP most of the time). Since Windows offers me
> only 16 or 32, I'm on 32.

Why BMP? You should use PNG...aside from the compression, it stores the 
gamma value in the file, and lets you save images in 48 bit...16 bits 
per channel, or 65536 levels per channel instead of 256.

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: <chr### [at] tagpovrayorg>
http://tag.povray.org/

Post a reply to this message

In article <40352395$1@news.povray.org>,
 "Severi Salminen" <sev### [at] NOT_THISsibafi> wrote:

> And eventhough you are using 32-bit mode, you see only 24-colors, unless you
> have some specialiced video card.

"32 bit color" is just 24 bit color with an extra byte every 3 bytes. 
This keeps memory nicely aligned, but contributes nothing to the color 
precision. It's just a memory/speed tradeoff, though the fourth value is 
often used for things like alpha.


> I also agree that 8-bits/channel is way
> too little with color gradations. And for editing purposes 16-bit/channel is
> sometimes mandatory. Sadly there are not many (consumer grade) video cards
> showing 48-bit colors.

You don't necessarily need to view it to get a benefit from it.

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: <chr### [at] tagpovrayorg>
http://tag.povray.org/

Post a reply to this message

In article <4034dd69@news.povray.org>,
 "Thorsten Froehlich" <tho### [at] trfde> wrote:

> I would not be surprised if floating-point colors were part of some TIFF
> format specification ;-)

There is...96 bits per pixel. Not often used for this reason...a 
1600x1200 image would take 21MB. There are other formats that use about 
half as much. They do so with less precision, but 32 bits per component 
is overkill for most things.

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: <chr### [at] tagpovrayorg>
http://tag.povray.org/

Post a reply to this message

> Why BMP? You should use PNG...aside from the compression, it stores the
> gamma value in the file, and lets you save images in 48 bit...16 bits
> per channel, or 65536 levels per channel instead of 256.

Well, for one, I can use BMP directly as wallpaper on my Windows OS. I don't
need more than the 24bit it comes with, that's another. And, most of the
time, the image gets converted to JPG anyway, either for posting on these
very newsgroups that I've got open and running almost every hour my PC is
running, or for my website. Only seldomly do I need other formats, like for
a book publishing. And even then, 24bit was sufficient so far.

So, though your points are valid and true, I'm too lazy. :-)

But I've never really understood that gamma issue with PNGs... How exactly
does it work, and how is it supposed to work? I've heard that it stores the
gamma value it has been made with, and a viewing app would adjust the gamma
to compensate for different screens, but does it really work?

-- 
"Tim Nikias v2.0"
Homepage: <http://www.nolights.de>
Email: tim.nikias (@) nolights.de

Post a reply to this message

Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
> 
>>  Then every existing image format is lossy because POV-Ray calculates
>>the color components as 32-bit floats. Converting them eg. to
>>8 bits-per-component or even 16 bits-per-component image (eg. PNG)
>>is lossy.
> 
> I would not be surprised if floating-point colors were part of some TIFF
> format specification ;-)
> 
     Or maybe FITS standard for astronomical pictures ?

Post a reply to this message

Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet> wrote:
> They do so with less precision, but 32 bits per component 
> is overkill for most things.

  Not if you want to perform post-processing of POV-Ray images... :)

  (And btw, wouldn't them be useful for HDRI images?)

-- 
#macro N(D)#if(D>99)cylinder{M()#local D=div(D,104);M().5,2pigment{rgb M()}}
N(D)#end#end#macro M()<mod(D,13)-6mod(div(D,13)8)-3,10>#end blob{
N(11117333955)N(4254934330)N(3900569407)N(7382340)N(3358)N(970)}//  - Warp -

Post a reply to this message

Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
> A ping is not a reliable way to check network reliability. 
that may be true, but the network can't be stable if even a ping can't 
get through for a lot of the time...

> Some of those noname cards cannot keep a network up even if they sit next to
> each other!  With brand name hardware it will work just fine and signals
> pass at least through two 18 cm reinforced concrete floors and three 25 cm
> brick walls (my home setup).  Or work 70 m away from your home.  At least
> they did for me in the past four years.  And in many different locations and
> setups it also works reliably.  You really need reliable hardware, that is
> all ;-)
i think d-link isn't such a noname brand ;) and there shouldn't be any 
incompatibilities between products of one brand which were designed to 
be used together, as the whole wlan-network is based on d-link hardware.
the only thing i can think of as a roblem, except for the walls would be 
  the OS used on the server machine. currently i'm using win2k pro sp4, 
but it may be too hard for windoze to handle 3 network interfaces at the 
same time (1 wlan, 1 lan, 1 internet) i really would like to use linux 
for server purposes, but i'm not familiar enough with it to ensure 100% 
uptime, and as my father uses the server for his company, this is not 
acceptable :( (he has no problems BTW with the network, as he is 
connected via lan...)

bye,
     Marc

---------------------------------
and god said: let there be a light_source { location SUN look_at EARTH, 
rgb SUNLIGHT }

Post a reply to this message

In article <4035ebdb@news.povray.org>, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> 
wrote:

> Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet> wrote:
> > They do so with less precision, but 32 bits per component 
> > is overkill for most things.
> 
>   Not if you want to perform post-processing of POV-Ray images... :)
> 
>   (And btw, wouldn't them be useful for HDRI images?)

Depends...most processing is unlikely to benefit much from the greater 
precision, and it uses more memory. ILM uses a half-precision 16 bit 
format...a sign bit, a 5-bit exponent, and 10 bit mantissa.

Hmm...there's nothing stopping you from putting those half-precision 
float values in a 48-bit PNG image, though they won't display properly 
in any PNG reader. FNG? Even has a nice pronunciation: FaNG

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: <chr### [at] tagpovrayorg>
http://tag.povray.org/

Post a reply to this message

In article <40355f97$1@news.povray.org>,
 "Tim Nikias v2.0" <tim.nikias (@) nolights.de> wrote:

> Well, for one, I can use BMP directly as wallpaper on my Windows OS.

And as I recall, Windows only accepts BMP files for this, right? 
Stupid...Mac OS allows anything QuickTime can open: JPEG, PNG, GIF, 
TIFF, etc.


> I don't
> need more than the 24bit it comes with, that's another. And, most of the
> time, the image gets converted to JPG anyway, either for posting on these
> very newsgroups that I've got open and running almost every hour my PC is
> running, or for my website. Only seldomly do I need other formats, like for
> a book publishing. And even then, 24bit was sufficient so far.

But the smaller file size isn't a benefit?


> But I've never really understood that gamma issue with PNGs... How exactly
> does it work, and how is it supposed to work? I've heard that it stores the
> gamma value it has been made with, and a viewing app would adjust the gamma
> to compensate for different screens, but does it really work?

That's what it does, and it does work...if the software displaying the 
PNG handles the gamma value. I don't know how common that is...

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: <chr### [at] tagpovrayorg>
http://tag.povray.org/

Post a reply to this message

> And as I recall, Windows only accepts BMP files for this, right?
> Stupid...Mac OS allows anything QuickTime can open: JPEG, PNG, GIF,
> TIFF, etc.


Windows XP supports BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG and DIB (?) for background images.

 - Slime
 [ http://www.slimeland.com/ ]

Post a reply to this message

In article <40362ee6$1@news.povray.org> , Marc Roth <mar### [at] rothconsultcom>
wrote:

> i think d-link isn't such a noname brand ;)

Indeed, they should work.  Of course, you are out of luck if somebody else
nearby is using noname hardware...

> currently i'm using win2k pro sp4

If you get a chance, try XP.  It might work better as it came out after
WLANs were popular, rather than before.

Alternatively, I would strongly recommend use a real WLAN router.  Those
routers (for around US$ 100 you get really good and feature-rich ones these
days) usually have a few ethernet connectors, a WLAN interface and an
ethernet interface for the external network connection (i.e. a DSL or cable
modem, some even include a modem or ISDN interface or at least a serial
port).  And these routers can be configured via a web browser from the
inside of the network easily.

Even more important, you can hide the Windows system behind a firewall and
only expose selected ports (i.e. if you run a web server on the Windows
system you would only expose port 80).  Especially a Windows box connected
directly to the internet is a problem these days with all the viruses
floating around.  Even more so if you also store important or private data
on the Windows system!

As far as using Linux is concerned, a server exposed to the internet indeed
requires a good understanding of Linux to really configure right.  So a
router is probably the better choice.  And a router also does not go offline
if the Windows system crashes.

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

Post a reply to this message

> No. You just have to turn on "active desktop", after which Windows will
> accept as background anything IE can display, including web pages
> dynamically refreshed.

But who would want to use Windows IE for wallpaper reasons with all the
security leaks..? That aside, Active Desktop threw up on me several times.
So I just use BMP.

-- 
"Tim Nikias v2.0"
Homepage: <http://www.nolights.de>
Email: tim.nikias (@) nolights.de

Post a reply to this message

> Windows XP supports BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG and DIB (?) for background images.

Windows 2000 is running here. Don't like XP. Mainly because the newer the
Windows version, the higher the hardware it requires to run as smoothly as
the predecessor running the same apps...

-- 
"Tim Nikias v2.0"
Homepage: <http://www.nolights.de>
Email: tim.nikias (@) nolights.de

Post a reply to this message

> And as I recall, Windows only accepts BMP files for this, right?
> Stupid...Mac OS allows anything QuickTime can open: JPEG, PNG, GIF,
> TIFF, etc.

Yup. I know, it sucks. Linux accepts all kinds of images as well, which is
kinda fun, especially with neato effects. :-) But most of my software
requires Windows, and I'm not yet that much into Linux as if I could switch.

> But the smaller file size isn't a benefit?

It would be, if it'd be needed. I've got several GBs to spare, so rendering
at BMP isn't a threat. Additionally, I do almost no post-processing on my
images, so I can just keep the source-code. Most of my images render in
under a few hours, so that's sufficient. Those that don't... Well, just a
little more patience required. That aside, I regularly update my hardware,
so after a year or so, images render even faster than initially. In a sense,
I don't have to keep as many images as I do, and for lazy reasons I keep
them in BMP to use them as wallpapers.

There are good arguments to use a different format, I don't deny that. It's
just much easier this way in my current PC situation. Why go through the
hassle of converting images everytime I want a new wallpaper? It's that
simple. :-)

That all aside: is the PNG compression Povray uses the optimum? I've found
that I could use Paint Shop Pro to convert the images to even smaller PNG
images and didn't notice any loss. Maybe I should experiment again and see
why PSP was able to reduce the size, but perhaps there's an issue with
output from POV-Ray to disk that can't be overcome that easily? I've got no
clue how the PNG-specs are, so maybe POV could save space if it would save
the PNG once it knows how the image looks like, but this isn't done for
buffering reasons etc. Just curious.

> That's what it does, and it does work...if the software displaying the
> PNG handles the gamma value. I don't know how common that is...

Me neither, that why I was asking. I wouldn't notice any difference on my
own PC of course, and the PC's I normally have access to are much like my
own (Screenwise), so I wasn't able to check on that yet, and also wasn't
required to work around such an issue. But we all know of the "too dark"
comments on binaries.images... I rarely do dark images, so I've had that
problem only once or twice here.

Regards,
Tim

-- 
"Tim Nikias v2.0"
Homepage: <http://www.nolights.de>
Email: tim.nikias (@) nolights.de

Post a reply to this message

Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
> If you get a chance, try XP.  It might work better as it came out after
> WLANs were popular, rather than before.
might be a good idea but as the server is used for my fathers company it 
should only use legally obtained software and buying a new OS is for my 
father, as his part of the networks works quite well, not an option...

> Alternatively, I would strongly recommend use a real WLAN router.  Those
> routers (for around US$ 100 you get really good and feature-rich ones these
> days) usually have a few ethernet connectors, a WLAN interface and an
> ethernet interface for the external network connection (i.e. a DSL or cable
> modem, some even include a modem or ISDN interface or at least a serial
> port).  And these routers can be configured via a web browser from the
> inside of the network easily.
see above :(

> Even more important, you can hide the Windows system behind a firewall and
> only expose selected ports (i.e. if you run a web server on the Windows
> system you would only expose port 80).  Especially a Windows box connected
> directly to the internet is a problem these days with all the viruses
> floating around.  Even more so if you also store important or private data
> on the Windows system!
about viruses there should be no problem, the server has a norton 
antivirus & firewall with uptodate virusdefinitions and only ports that 
are neccessary are opened.

> And a router also does not go offline
> if the Windows system crashes.
i know that windows is supposed to be crashing rather frequent but our 
server usually keeps running over some months before a reboot is needed, 
maybe by some new security update or something like this... and this 
means maximum 3min downtime, which is acceptable IMO

bye,
	Marc

---------------------------------
and god said: let there be a light_source { location SUN look_at EARTH, 
rgb SUNLIGHT }

Post a reply to this message

"Tim Nikias v2.0" <tim.nikias (@) nolights.de> wrote in
news:40367da0@news.povray.org: 

>> And as I recall, Windows only accepts BMP files for this, right?
>> Stupid...Mac OS allows anything QuickTime can open: JPEG, PNG, GIF,
>> TIFF, etc.
> 
> Yup. I know, it sucks. Linux accepts all kinds of images as well,
> which is kinda fun, especially with neato effects. :-) But most of my
> software requires Windows, and I'm not yet that much into Linux as if
> I could switch. 
> 
>> But the smaller file size isn't a benefit?
> 
> It would be, if it'd be needed. I've got several GBs to spare, so
> rendering at BMP isn't a threat. Additionally, I do almost no
> post-processing on my images, so I can just keep the source-code. Most
> of my images render in under a few hours, so that's sufficient. Those
> that don't... Well, just a little more patience required. That aside,
> I regularly update my hardware, so after a year or so, images render
> even faster than initially. In a sense, I don't have to keep as many
> images as I do, and for lazy reasons I keep them in BMP to use them as
> wallpapers. 
> 
> There are good arguments to use a different format, I don't deny that.
> It's just much easier this way in my current PC situation. Why go
> through the hassle of converting images everytime I want a new
> wallpaper? It's that simple. :-)
> 
> That all aside: is the PNG compression Povray uses the optimum? I've
> found that I could use Paint Shop Pro to convert the images to even
> smaller PNG images and didn't notice any loss. Maybe I should
> experiment again and see why PSP was able to reduce the size, but
> perhaps there's an issue with output from POV-Ray to disk that can't
> be overcome that easily? 
> 

IIRC, POV does line by line compression, and PSP compresses all lines at 
once.  


-- 
Tom
_________________________________
The Internet Movie Project
http://www.imp.org/

Post a reply to this message

Thorsten Froehlich nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2004-02-19 06:43:
> In article <40348604@news.povray.org> , Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg>  wrote:
> 
> 
>>  JPEG2000 is the next version of JPEG (and certainly better), even though
>>I don't know if you can call it a "different format from JPEG"...
> 
> 
> It is really much different.  the formats only really have the name in
> common.
> 
> 
>>  Does anyone have any idea why JPEG2000 has not widespread even though
>>it's so much better than JPEG? I have always wondered this and found it
>>a big pitty.
> 
> 
> The compression algorithm is far more complex.  And I am not even sure there
> is a license free way to use it.  Either way, there is no good, portable
> library to read/write it yet.  The IJG JPEG library is kind of a "standard"
> for JPEG on the other hand.
> 
>     Thorsten
> 
> ____________________________________________________
> Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
> e-mail: tho### [at] trfde
> 
> Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org
Looking back at old posts.
With the free jpeg2000 you can save only small images (640*480 or less). For anything
larger, you 
need to pay a licencing fee.

Alain

Post a reply to this message

In article <41e87f8a$1@news.povray.org>,
 Alain <ele### [at] netscapenet> wrote:

> With the free jpeg2000 you can save only small images (640*480 or less). For 
> anything larger, you need to pay a licencing fee.

Yuck. Is this for commercial software only, or for all software?

Well, I think all the important LZW patents have expired now, so aside 
from PNG there's LZW compressed TIFF, which got slightly better 
compression than PNG on most of the images I tested, and is quite a bit 
more flexible.

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: <chr### [at] tagpovrayorg>
http://tag.povray.org/

Post a reply to this message

Christopher James Huff nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2005-01-16 21:39:
> In article <41e87f8a$1@news.povray.org>,
>  Alain <ele### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
> 
> 
>>With the free jpeg2000 you can save only small images (640*480 or less). For 
>>anything larger, you need to pay a licencing fee.
> 
> 
> Yuck. Is this for commercial software only, or for all software?
> 
For all of them! Pay or freeware. And the licence is prety expencive.

Alain

Post a reply to this message

Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet> wrote:
> Well, I think all the important LZW patents have expired now, so aside 
> from PNG there's LZW compressed TIFF, which got slightly better 
> compression than PNG on most of the images I tested, and is quite a bit 
> more flexible.

  There's no one single way of making lzw encoding (even though the result
is decodable with any regular lzw decoder). Some programs do a better job
than another. You should definitely not trust some random image editor to
give you the best possible png compression ratio because they usually don't.
  Run the png through pngcrush and advpng and then compare it to the tiff.

-- 
plane{-x+y,-1pigment{bozo color_map{[0rgb x][1rgb x+y]}turbulence 1}}
sphere{0,2pigment{rgbt 1}interior{media{emission 1density{spherical
density_map{[0rgb 0][.5rgb<1,.5>][1rgb 1]}turbulence.9}}}scale
<1,1,3>hollow}text{ttf"timrom""Warp".1,0translate<-1,-.1,2>}//  - Warp -

Post a reply to this message

In article <41eb998e$1@news.povray.org> , Alain <ele### [at] netscapenet>
wrote:

> Christopher James Huff nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2005-01-16 21:39:
>> In article <41e87f8a$1@news.povray.org>,
>>  Alain <ele### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>With the free jpeg2000 you can save only small images (640*480 or less). For
>>>anything larger, you need to pay a licencing fee.
>>
>>
>> Yuck. Is this for commercial software only, or for all software?
>>
> For all of them! Pay or freeware. And the licence is prety expencive.

I don't know where you got this information, but it is incorrect:
<http://www.jpeg.org/faq.phtml?action=show_answer&question_id=q3f042a68b1081
>

Baseline JPEG 2000 is free just like baseline JPEG is free.

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

Post a reply to this message

In article <41ebabb6@news.povray.org>, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> 
wrote:

>   There's no one single way of making lzw encoding (even though the result
> is decodable with any regular lzw decoder). Some programs do a better job
> than another. You should definitely not trust some random image editor to
> give you the best possible png compression ratio because they usually don't.

PNG is not LZW, it's the older LZ77 compression, which was unencumbered 
by patents when it was chosen. I was comparing LZ77 PNGs with LZW TIFFs. 
The TIFFs came out consistently smaller...not much, but not by an 
insignificant amount either.


>   Run the png through pngcrush and advpng and then compare it to the tiff.

I did use pngcrush, but not advpng. The PNG images were compressed about 
as well as is possible, the TIFF images were unoptimized.

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: <chr### [at] tagpovrayorg>
http://tag.povray.org/

Post a reply to this message

Thorsten Froehlich nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2005-01-17 08:08:
> In article <41eb998e$1@news.povray.org> , Alain <ele### [at] netscapenet>
> wrote:
> 
> 
>>Christopher James Huff nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2005-01-16 21:39:
>>
>>>In article <41e87f8a$1@news.povray.org>,
>>> Alain <ele### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>With the free jpeg2000 you can save only small images (640*480 or less). For
>>>>anything larger, you need to pay a licencing fee.
>>>
>>>
>>>Yuck. Is this for commercial software only, or for all software?
>>>
>>
>>For all of them! Pay or freeware. And the licence is prety expencive.
> 
> 
> I don't know where you got this information, but it is incorrect:
> <http://www.jpeg.org/faq.phtml?action=show_answer&question_id=q3f042a68b1081
> 
> 
> Baseline JPEG 2000 is free just like baseline JPEG is free.
> 
>     Thorsten
> 
> ____________________________________________________
> Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
> e-mail: tho### [at] trfde
> 
> Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org
At least this one is asking a fee, whitch cam be steep:
http://www.luratech.com/shop/index.jsp?categoryKey=27&OnlineShopId=798491105998585283
Up to US$8400

Alain

Post a reply to this message

In article <41ec3601$1@news.povray.org> , Alain <ele### [at] netscapenet>
wrote:

> At least this one is asking a fee, whitch cam be steep:
>
http://www.luratech.com/shop/index.jsp?categoryKey=27&OnlineShopId=798491105
998585283
>
> Up to US$8400

It is not a *license* for JPEG 2000 they are selling.  All they are selling
is their library to read/write JPEG 2000 files.  That is something entirely
different.

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

Post a reply to this message