Picture Compacting & Resize Facility

[Sir Richard]

Hi PA Team,

PowerArchiver is leading the market in my eye’s where the compression and Management of archived Files come into Question.. However, One addition I would like to see would be the ability to Compress / Reduce Picture formats such as Jpeg, bmp, Tiff etc..

I personally know the owner and co-owner of a reasonably sized company and my involvement towards them is to advise and implement software and support usually in the UK. However, in China where their main office is based they email out large 10mb + Jpeg’s for proofing every day and constantly experiences issues where customer’s around the world don’t have enough bandwidth to download them. They then have to post out CD’s or Host the files with a significant cost and delay to them and their clients.

A majority of time the pictures host a solid white background this makes the Product stand out by reflecting light but when taking at High Resolution using a 12.1 Megapixel camera this whitespace makes up 94% of the image size..

When using image compression software such as Balesio’s Free FileMinimizer it reduces a file up to 92% and at least 32%. I alone was able to convert a 3megabyte file to 222kb with no noticeable loss is quality.

Now what I know of this method is that it simply analyzes the construction of Pixels then merges them as one where they don’t dramatically change.

With regards to Balesio’s product and other free or expensive applications they don’t host the Hugh volume of features PowerArchiver does!

I think personally this is certainly a missing gap in PA’s arsenal and I would certainly push them to purchase and roll out PowerArchiver.

Please Please consider this!!

[TBGBe]

Be careful, utilities like FileMinimiser don't actually do compression.. They work by modifying and introducing a loss of information.

I agree that this *may* be acceptable (and useful) in many situations, but it is still a data loss which would be unacceptable in other situations.

"Try replacin al duble an silent leters in tex with singl leters. The buk wuld stil be redable ..."

Archiving utilities/formats (such as used by PA) mostly work on loss-less compression.

Some formats like JPG are already compressed (part of the format) and compression works for only a small gain (loss-less).

Note: especially with bmp files you should see a significant reduction when compressing (loss-less).

[Sir Richard]

Hi Terry, I can fully understand that in certain circumstances where the highest possible quality is required something like this would not be advisable. However, for a company that just wants to throw across a quick sample 1st time round then this would be ideal! secondly, one of the main things i liked about file minimizer was that you could use a slider before compact to say the percent of loss you wanted. Ie None - Keep best quality so it would send as is or Medium to High.

Another neat future that I have seen before now, is active Picture viewer that displays the image after its compact before saving / sending it thus the user can go back and make adjustments.

Yes, its not going to suite everyone but it would for a majority of people sending emails of family & friends or internal collegues where the Highest of quality isnt at that time nessasary.

PowerArchiver could even package it as a Plugin or extension to the Proffesional version.

All I am saying is its something that would be used, and would go down very well into PowerArchiver's domain. just like FTP or Burner, it wont suite everyone but it is there if they need it! and it could just push a user or company to sway towards PA and not a highly expensive brand that doesnt offer half of the features.

[TBGBe]

Yes, as I said there are times when that is useful.
However, bear in mind that PA is primarily a Backup utility and for that purpose only lossless is expected.

Not saying that better graphic compression would be a bad idea - only that maybe for the amount of size reduction you are stating, a "lossy" application such as FileMinimizer ( which I also have ) would be more appropriate.

[Sir Richard]

I can see why some like yourself would say PowerArchiver is a backup utility but I personally wouldnt restrict it to just that. Just because one zip's an item doesnt mean they are backing it up it could mean they want to compress to send to someone.

And that is my exact point about compacting pictures, everyone takes them and everyone has from time to time struggled to send over an email because the image is to big, Ziping doesnt work because it isnt designed to handle pictures.

So the next best thing would be this discsussed feature.

And like you and I know, fileminimizer is good but when you want to email an image compacted you have to manually go through the process. It doesnt have a outlook plugin that would detect and compress on demand.

[spwolf]

there is possibility of compressing pictures up to 30% extra, in lossless... this is what we would be looking at... since we are lossless application, we will never work on lossy reduction (it doesnt make sense for backup purposes, there are other apps that do it like image viewers, etc).

but creating new format is not fast or simple task

[Sir Richard]

Originally Posted by spwolf

there is possibility of compressing pictures up to 30% extra, in lossless... this is what we would be looking at...

That's exactly what I wanted to hear! and it would be a welcomed addition to PowerArchiver!

I understand that Introducing something new to any application is never an easy task, esspecially when you want to keep it at the same level of quality as every other tool currently supported.

However, as stated it makes perfect sense to include this ability due to the nature of this fantastic application.

[Brian Gregory]

I totally disagree with the OP's original suggestion. Lossy compression should be in a separate program. If you're dealing with JPG files you should have a phioto editor which will surely include the ability to re-save a JPG at different levels of quality and different resolutions etc.

[TBGBe]

Well as spwolf has proposed loss-less improvement this is now a win-win

[Sir Richard]

Originally Posted by Brian Gregory

I totally disagree with the OP's original suggestion. Lossy compression should be in a separate program. If you're dealing with JPG files you should have a phioto editor which will surely include the ability to re-save a JPG at different levels of quality and different resolutions etc.

1st thing Brian is I appologies for rewriting your post, i clicked edit and not quote then saved after not realizing!! so my highest appologies! will throw a thanks point just for that error!

In regards to your 1st line, Some user's dont have time to edit the image or scale it down manually, they just want to right click and send to location.
Scaling down, editing etc etc is something that could be done at later date when the user has time.

I understand what you are saying, but when you are dealing with a company that deals with hundreds of proof read images every day to go into ever single photo take then edit to make smaller and save then email then to find its still to big etc is to long a step.

My suggestion is that of a simple 1-2-3 process that would save resource and time.

[Brian Gregory]

Originally Posted by Sir Richard

In regards to your 1st line, Some user's dont have time to edit the image or scale it down manually, they just want to right click and send to location.
Scaling down, editing etc etc is something that could be done at later date when the user has time.

I understand what you are saying, but when you are dealing with a company that deals with hundreds of proof read images every day to go into ever single photo take then edit to make smaller and save then email then to find its still to big etc is to long a step.

My suggestion is that of a simple 1-2-3 process that would save resource and time.

I don't see that it would be particularly simple to use as part of PowerArchiver. You wouldn't always want your JPGs quality reduced when zipping, you'd have to stop and think about the situation, whether you needed full quality or not.

Personally I can't see any reason to want the file smaller unless one was sending a lot of them in which case the batch process operation in my image editing software would do it nicely.

[Sir Richard]

Originally Posted by Brian Gregory

I don't see that it would be particularly simple to use as part of PowerArchiver. You wouldn't always want your JPGs quality reduced when zipping, you'd have to stop and think about the situation, whether you needed full quality or not.

Personally I can't see any reason to want the file smaller unless one was sending a lot of them in which case the batch process operation in my image editing software would do it nicely.

Hi Brian, I can understand what you are saying. But you are stating points that I have already explained.

As per your comment regards to a user not always wanting the image to be reduced when ziping, I did state in my prior message this would be optional via the zipping process.

And if they are wanting to send the one picture without compacting it then they wouldnt need to zip it anyway.

The point is that "If" a User wishes to compact or resize a picture they have the option todo so and select the level of compacting before ziping.

There are applications already out there that do this by introducing this feature into PowerArchiver it would be a significant step forward and would help keep up with the competition.

Winzip and Stuffit already offer Picture compact & Resizing options .. PowerArchiver currently does not.

Hmmm.....

[Brian Gregory]

Originally Posted by Sir Richard

Hi Brian, I can understand what you are saying. But you are stating points that I have already explained.

As per your comment regards to a user not always wanting the image to be reduced when ziping, I did state in my prior message this would be optional via the zipping process.

And if they are wanting to send the one picture without compacting it then they wouldnt need to zip it anyway.

The point is that "If" a User wishes to compact or resize a picture they have the option todo so and select the level of compacting before ziping.

There are applications already out there that do this by introducing this feature into PowerArchiver it would be a significant step forward and would help keep up with the competition.

Winzip and Stuffit already offer Picture compact & Resizing options .. PowerArchiver currently does not.

Hmmm.....

That's resizing, which is already only a right click away on my PC anyway and I didn't think that's what we were talking about.

I would often ZIP anything I email even if it doesn't make it any smaller just to have the advantage of a CRC check assuring it gets there without corruption.

[Sir Richard]

Sorry Brian, I am talking about the general introduction to picture compacting and resizing into PowerArhiver. Something that isnt currently available and is in other competitor vendors.

* Have updated Thread Name to be more clear.