Mike Knudsen wrote:
In article , - - ex - -
writes:


Next I took it down from 8-bit/256 colors to 4-bit/16 colors. As
mentioned before, thats a no brainer for a black and white image. That
reduces the file size even further. Then just for looks I changed some
of the 'almost' white or 'almost' black pixels to true black and white
leaving the greys in the middle of the range.


If you had taken it all the way to 2 colors (B & W) the GIF compression would
really have been something.

I tried. It started looking crappier rather than better. Thats why I
went after the 16 grey colors one at a time. Couldn't pull it off.

-BM

In article , - - ex - -
writes:

I tried. It started looking crappier rather than better. Thats why I
went after the 16 grey colors one at a time. Couldn't pull it off.

True, that usually happens to a scanned B&W document. If you reduce it to 2
colors, the lines and letters break up around the edges. Using 16 shades of
gray permits "aliasing" to fill in the breaks so the eye sees it as smooth.

You were right to stop at 16. I just wanted to point out that the typewritten
sheet in the home page really is already 2 colors (B&W), having been expertly
scanned and worked over by someone. Likewise the large schamtic for the TX.
Both these should make good 2-color GIF.

Er, I'm not really certain aobut the opening sheet -- but I did save and check
out the TX schematic, so know it's 2 color already, and compresses almost 10:1
under GIF.
--Mike K.

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