Squash-a-Thon - The Results are IN!

or, How to Make a JPEG Much, Much Smaller

[mivox]

I'll be posting all the links and results for the JPEG Squash-a-Thon this afternoon on my luch break... A wide variety of sizes and techniques, including one command line compression program! A graphics program without a graphic interface? Who'd-a-thunk it?

Keep your eyes peeled.... :)

[mivox]

Argh.. my internet connection has gone loopy! I'm firing off all my SOS messages now, since I don't know if I'll still have a connection in 30 seconds.

The contest results will have to wait until everything stabilizes, or until I get home (if my home connection is any better).

If anyone sees a news story in the meantime about Alaska falling off the face of the earth, you'll all know what happened to me! ;)

[mivox]

Without further ado... as long as my internet connection lasts... Here they are... The long awaited, much toiled-and-tinkered-over, multitudinous, splendiferous...

[big]Amazing WebmasterWorld JPEG Squash-a-Thon Results![/big]

4eyes [mivox.com]
7264 bytes
Pegasus JPG Wizard.
Selected areas to compress lower/higher. (i.e. you select the areas that 'matter' and the detail is preserved better in these areas. I individually selected all the crabby, lobstery bits and then used the 'faders' to get a mix that 'worked for me'.)
comments: Tricky trying to decide which mix to go for - went for smaller rather than better quality. This is the first time I used this software - never had a good enough reason to 'learn' the features before. Gonna use it all the time now!

DaveN [mivox.com]
10,082 bytes
Fireworks
selective mapping
comments: If i had time I would have really used a selective map by colour, but I just didn't have time

evinrude [mivox.com]
18,885 bytes
Photoshop 6
reduce to 72p/inch, save for web Quality-38%, Progressive.
comments: Tried another, where I saved it as a GIF with a reduced colorset first, then went the JPG route, and it wound up being larger.

gethan [mivox.com]
20,863 bytes
ImageMagick
"convert -geometry 288x288 -quality 72 -contrast WebmasterWorld-orig.tif WebmasterWorld-entry.jpg"
comments: Yep, an open source command line utility :) Part of the ImageMagick collection on Unix (Linux) - by John Cristy and E. I. du Pont de Nemours.
Justification: I can automate it for images uploaded to my sites - plus I'm a geek ;)
I added the contrast so that the details of the ridges on the Crabs back could be seen, and the ice really sharpened up. I would go for this on a web page rather than keeping it as faithful as possible. I wanted the image to be no more than 20K, (6secs on a 28.8 kbps modem - figuring that 6 secs for the images 2 secs for the html and connection - 8 secs is my target for pages.)

Jill [mivox.com]
38,463 bytes
Photoshop 6
I reduced the file to 72dpi, it remains at a 4x4 physical print size.
I used the sharpen filter to enhance the edges.
I saved it for the web as a high quality jpeg, blurred it a little to reduce the file size and so that it would print out clearer.
comments: I did a test print it looks good to me.

mattlamb [mivox.com]
15,896 bytes
Photoshop
blured blue channel
sharpen in lab
saved as jpg

oilman [mivox.com]
14,910 bytes
Ulead PhotoImpact
resize to 288X288 - 4"x4"
Ulead SmartSaver
ran it down to 40% quality.
comments: short and sweet

pageoneresults [mivox.com]
14,954 bytes
Fireworks
Settings: jpg smaller file
Quality: 60
Smoothing: 0 (wanted to keep crisp edges)
comments: Fireworks has been my graphics editor of choice for the web. I still feel it offers the best compression options out of all the other programs including Photoshop. I could have squashed it more by decreasing the quality setting below 60 but there was too much pixel displacement for me. I prefer a nice crisp image as close as possible to the original without too much loss.

SmallTime [mivox.com]
9,745 bytes
Photoshop
converted to png
Fireworks4
exported it with about 45 quality and a little smoothing.
comments: I played with it while viewing at 200% - a little sharper at about 11k, but still looked ok, for delivery, I thought, a little smaller.

tedster [mivox.com]
10,001 bytes
Photoshop 6 / ImageReady
a. Select all the ice, except for sharp edges / desaturate / Gaussian blur [0.6]
b. Deselect / L*a*b color space / GB on a and b channels [3.2]
c. SaveForWeb [13%] progressive
comments: Selected blurring is a way to manually weight the jpg compression. In this case it outperforms Photoshop's weighting algorithm.

volatilegx [mivox.com]
9,389 bytes
XaraX
1) In Options, change page unites to inches
2) Import squash.tif
3) resize to 4 inches
4) brought up export to JPEG interface
5) change to 72ppi
comments: XaraX has a cool interface for exporting JPEGs. You have 2 previews side by side so you can get a good comparison of different compression ratios. I chose a ratio that compressed to 9k and still looked reasonably good.

[Liane]

Are we supposed to vote for the winner? I have chosen 4 that I selected for clarity and acceptable download time. I could narrow it down more if anyone else is going to take part?

That's a great photo mivox! Good choice.

[mivox]

Hmm... hadn' t thought of that.

Tell you what. Anyone who wants to vote can send me their choices for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place in StickyMail.

If we get enough votes by next Tuesday (Nov. 13th), and the top 3 entries got more than 2 votes each, I'll post the results of the voting.