Well, congratulations on your new computer! The family is still talking about the party—lots of good music, food and company. To commemorate the occasion, several of the guests took (lots of) photographs, some with film cameras, some with digital ones.

The event was so exciting, stories of it have spread to family and friends. In particular, they’ve heard about the pictures, and they want copies. A quick check with local photo development services indicates that making print copies for everyone would cost a bundle. But, you’ve got that new computer, and most all of the folks wanting copies also have a computer or access to one. So, you decide to have the photographers provide you with (a copy of or a download of) their pictures, and you will scan them (or upload them) onto a free Web site where your family and pals can look at them. They can then make copies however they want. You save yourself and close kin a small fortune and make a lot of folks happy. However, you have a bit of a challenge: the pictures could take a lot of space, and you only have fifty megabytes on the free Web site; further, the pictures can’t be too big, or they will take too long to download, frustrating your family and friends—and you know they’ll express that frustration to you!

• A report, in a Word document, describing how you reached the decision on what format to use for storing your pictures. Include why you chose the compression factor(s), imagine size(s), number of colors you did—and any other relevant information. Also include your download calculations (see below) and, either directly or via reference, any sources you relied upon in coming to your conclusions.

First, review your lecture notes and the readings in the text on this topic (especially the first section of Chapter 8).

We’ve made available a few pictures of various sorts (color, black and white, large, small, intricate, simple) with which you can experiment; copy them to your computer:

CityView.jpg
Dragon.jpg
Lance.gif
LastPicture.tif
Parrots.jpg
Pheasant.jpg
Saturn.jpg
WinterScene.tif

The pictures are stored in three common formats, JPEG, GIF, and TIFF. JPEG and GIF pictures are readable by most all picture viewing software; JPEG and GIF files are readable by most Web browsers but, to read TIFF files, browsers often have to be specifically configfured to call a ’helper application“. Keep this in mind: if you expect your relations to look at pictures through a Web browser, TIFF is probably not a good choice. However, if they can dowload the pictures and view them on their PC (and pretty much every PC these days comes with picture viewing software) then TIFF is still a viable alternative.

• Using Office’s Picture Manager (provided in lab) or similar tool, read in each picture, and experiment with saving it in JPEG, GIF and TIFF . Experiment, too, with the various options for picture editing, especially cropping the picture, wich removes portions of it, and compressing the picture, which will typically reduce its size, but also its resolution. Be sure to do this experimenting with a method; don’t just take a random, trial-and-error approach.

To access pictures with Picture Manager, open Picture Manager (go to the All Programs menu, then the Microsoft Office submenu, then the Microsoft Office Tools submenu; you will find it there.) The File Types dialog box may immediately appear; if not, open it by choosing File Types... from the Tools menu. Make sure JPEG, GIF and TIFF (at least) are checked; this will ensure that Picture Manager will be able to open the pictures we’ve provded. Click on OK.

Then, under the File menu, choose Locate Pictures...; and have it search the C: drive; this may take a few minutes to finish. A menu on the left side of the screen will show all the folders that have pictures. Click on the one in which you put the pictures you copies from the Web; a thumbnail (small version) of the picture will appear. To use a picture, double-click on its thumnail.

To save the picture in different formats, use the Export...command under the File menu. (The experted picture, by default, will be put into the same folder the original is in.) You will find the crop and compress features (and a few others) under the Picture menu and in the Export window on the right of the screen.

When you are done with current picture, click on Thumbnails under View to see thumbnail pictures again. Thumbnails for pictures you have exported to that folder should appear along with the thumbnails for your original pictures.

You can see a picture&146;s type, dimensions and file size by placing the mouse pointer over its thumbnail&151;a handy way to get results important for your report!

• Compare each picture’s, clarity, resolution, colors, and the storage space it takes, using the various formats and options; also consider the effect of cropping and compression. Remember you have fifty megabytes and lots of pictures.

• Consider download times; the bigger the picture (in terms of its file size), the longer it will take to download; the more compressed it is, the longer it can take to appear on the user’s screen. For each picture, either calculate or directly time how long the picture would take to fully appear on the screen; consider 56K modem, cable or DSL modem and “UCI speed”. (The latter is how long it takes the picture to appear in full on a Windows machine in our lab). Note that timings will be approximate and can be affected by the amount of local and Internet traffic.

Perhaps the best way to summarize timing information is in a spreadsheet, with a sheet for each picture. Each row is a variant of the picture, as came about through your experiments above; there would be three columns, one for each type of Internet hookup. (You can include this set of tables, or a summary of them, in your report; if you include just the summary, attach the table as an appendix.) Given this information, think about the best way to store the pictures.

• Consider the personalities of your family and friends. What works best for one user’s temperament does not necessarily work well for another’s! You’ll have to meet these perhaps very diverse interests as best as you can. You will probably not please everyone with your choices; try to displease the fewest!

• Make a decision about which format and option set is the best to use for each picture (it may be the same for all pictures; it may not). Think, too about how many pictures you can store, given your choices, and whether they allow for enough pictures to please those who wanted to see them.

• Finally, write your report. Don&146;t forget to include a descripton of your experiments, your findings (includig your calculations), your conclusions and references to your sources.

For potential additional credit, you can

• Include more pictures in your experiments (especially large ones and those that are different in use of line, color, etc. than the ones provided here). Include other formats in your analysis and write-up; use other tools to experiment with the best way to store the pictures.

• You can put to practice what you learned in this lab. Take some of your own pictures (or others’, but only with their permission) and scan them (or download or copy them) into a computer. Post them, using what you’ve learned, onto a Web site and make them “shareable” so others, including your TA, can look at them via the Web.

Include in your report a brief description of why you chose the format, compression factors, etc. that you did, and where we can find the posted pictures.

• In addition to investigating the best way to store the pictures directly on the Web—what you did above—investigate storing the pictures on your site in a compressed archive (such as ZIP or Stuffit file). Your folks would then have to download the compressed file to their computers and decompress it before they could look at them. Address the question: Are the space and download-time savings (if any) worth the extra hassle to look at the pictures? In your report, discuss whether the above method or this newer one is preferable. Again, don’t forget to include your analyses.

• In addition to looking at how to provide these pictures via the Web, compare and contrast that approach with providing your relatives a set of CD, DVD or memory sticks with the pictures stored on them. How does cost, ease of use, and work needed on your end compare to the Web-based approach? Which of these would you recommend?

• Imagine a friend at your party made a movie of it using a digital movie camera. The camera has a cable to connect it to a desktop computer so one can download the movie onto the computer. Assume the movie is in MPEG format. We’ve provided a movie for you to play with—it’s an animation of a supernova explosion courtesy of NASA.You can use your own movie, if you prefer.)

Compare and contrast storing the movie as is, in Quicktime or AVI, and, if you like, other formats (such as newer MPEG standards). Choose the one you think best to fit the context posed by this assignment. Include a description of your investigations, and your conclusions, in your report.

• Conduct an analysis just like the one(s) you did above, but for sound files. (Perhaps some of the relations want to hear more of that great music they heard at the party.)