#ignore the compressed jpeg

[cicadaofthelake]

average elpowell listening activities

[ashyslashyy]

hi

[sonic-adventure-3]

progress for today! mainly tedious invisible/subtle shit. i segmented her arms and legs in preparation for posing, studied the textures on a few sonic models (sonic r tails, gamecube sa2 shadow, heroes rouge), created a texture separately and shifted the palette a bit, applied said texture (sooooo shittily. ignore the fucking jpeg compression transferring files from my ipad to my phone to my laptop sucks ass and i fucked up okay. also i still dont get uvs or textures despite the studying), and modelled new wheels.

im not totally set on this yet but for now i've changed her skates into real normal skates with an almost sensical rail attachment system akin to like joycons or something. im super conflicted abt this cause on the one hand i think it's cooler and suits her better all around, but it breaks my immersion so bad to imagine her traversing super varied terrain in these, and why the fuck am i making her design MORE complicated im so screwed. on the other hand the nonsense sphere wheels were getting to me so bad i couldnt stand them any more, extreme gear is so fucking hard to designnnn i couldnt understand it at all, and the floaty sci fi shit of ex gear also clashed with her 1920s paperboy/aviator shtick, but the all-terrain-ness and speed and pre-established-ness or of ex gear is soooo alluring. idk man idk

to do next: unfuck textures (again. differently this time), make ribbon (im thinking just a transparent texture is the way to go this time, i tried modelling it a couple times today but it's just way too small), make hand poses (rock, paper, scissors, gun), pose.

i think we're closer to the finish line than the start now..........

[enarei]

STOP USING RAR

rigorous discussion about comic book file formats ensuing on the manga piracy subreddit last night. I've taken the side that CBR is flawed and the only reason people continue to use it is because they're unfamiliar with the spec. there isn't a lot to know about this subject because there's very little public facing information surrounding the creation of these file formats, which originated with a program called CDisplay (that is now dead, sort of, which is a shame for how influential it has been), but at the same time, the practical information that we have available from using them is very straightforward: CBZ, CBR, CB7 and so on are different file extensions for zip, RAR, or 7z archives respectively. that's essentially it. the extension does a lot to obfuscate to most people that the "obscure" manga format they downloaded from some shady pirate website, is literally just a folder of images that has been compressed, and it's trivial to rename the file and inflate it to see its contents individually (there's a neverending stream of stupid questions relating to this).

imo this variety of options does more harm than good, because you see, the pages, the images (jpeg, gif, png, though some readers also support webp), are already as compressed as they can be, so the efficiency of the program used to create the archive does not matter – if you've ever tried to zip a folder made up only of videos or images and saw that the file size barely shrinked, if at all, that's because ironically, these file formats are already pretty damn efficiently compressed. often the compression step of the archival process is completely disabled because it only slows the time it takes to open the finished archive.

so as a format intended for media distribution, specially often bootleg, user contributed distribution on the web, you'd think CBZ should be the ubiquitous standard, as zip, regardless of its compression efficiency compared to newer algorithms, remains the standard compression utility, it's installed on literally every machine that can display images, including ones with more restrictive software limitations.

but for some reason some fucks keep sharing archives made with 7zip and WinRAR!!!! which is like. idk. it's like purposefully sharing someone's music in much more convoluted notation from what everyone else uses when there's no practical benefit to do so, and continuing doing it after someone has asked you not to and told you that is not standard. it's proprietary software that is not even useful for what people typically use it for (distributing already compressed media online!), cuz you don't get any benefit from it, it just limits the type of devices and number of hoops you have to jump through to open it. it's one of those salient points about how even mild tech illiteracy and ignorance about pernicious licensing in popular freeware software can have meaningful repercussions to media preservation. Windows users not knowing know they don't need to install an external utility to compress files has popularized CBRs to the point I've had to argue with people that wrongly assume they're the standard used in digital comics publishing.

[preponderance-of-parallelograms]

I'm pretty suspicious of this.

First, while it pretty clearly looks designed to have each color band be the same size, there are multiple locations (for example, around #4 from the left) that are the width of two color bands, but have the exact same pixel color (hex code #ca70f6 in this case).

This also speaks to my second point, other technical issues. The image is a JPEG, which uses lossy compression guessing at what humans will be able to see. You wouldn't want to do a hearing fidelity test over a phone line, for example. In addition, I see the post is from 2015, and monitors have changed since then, so the number thresholds wouldn't necessarily hold.

Third, moving into the claims involved, 25% sounds way too high to me. At that level, even accounting for things like "It only presents in people with two X chromosomes and they are more likely to be ignored by doctors," it shouldn't be at all difficult to pin down, while the research I've seen all demonstrates minimal effects, suggesting either a small percentage of the population or it doesn't really impact vision to a serious degree. This 2019 paper says that the genes might be fairly common, but still had a lot of difficulty measuring an effect (https://vision.psychol.cam.ac.uk/jdmollon/papers/JordanMollon2019Tetrachromacy.pdf) For a less scientific case, consider the XKCD color survey in 2010. One finding was that self-identified men and women did not have a statistically significant difference in differentiating colors. If you believe this post, then there should have been an easily-measurable effect from the tetrachromatic population (https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/).

Fourth, on the topic of sources, the source here appears to be a LinkedIn article, which is a bad sign to start with. The paper it cites is from 2001, which is strange next to the language about this being "recent", and also makes it odd that further studies like the one I posted have had such difficulty measuring an effect.

Finally, as a fifth, anecdotal point, I easily saw 37 colors, and according to one of those data-selling DNA companies, I have XY chromosomes as I would expect. That doesn't fit with any of the studies which are pretty confident that the mutation is only possible for people with only X chromosomes.

I'm sorry to be down on this. It's a fun idea, but I'm not buying it.

25% of the people have a 4th cone and see colors as they are

Given the sudden interest for the color of dresses and vision, here some of the fascinating findings we did recently.

The color nuances we see depend on the number and distribution of cones (=color receptors) in our eye. You can check this rainbow: how many color nuances do you count?

You see less than 20 color nuances: you are a dichromats, like dogs, which means you have 2 types of cones only. You are likely to wear black, beige, and blue. 25% of the population is dichromat.

You see between 20 and 32 color nuances: you are a trichromat, you have 3 types of cones (in the purple/blue, green and red area). You enjoy different colors as you can appreciate them. 50% of the population is trichromat.

You see between 33 and 39 colors: you are a tetrachromat, like bees, and have 4 types of cones (in the purple/blue, green, red plus yellow area). You are irritated by yellow, so this color will be nowhere to be found in your wardrobe. 25% of the population is tetrachromat.

You see more than 39 color nuances: come on, you are making up things! there are only 39 different colors in the test and probably only 35 are properly translated by your computer screen anyway :)

It is highly probable that people who have an additional 4th cone do not get tricked by blue/black or white/gold dresses, no matter the background light ;)

(x)

[happilyseveregladiator]

Les erreurs à éviter lors de la conception graphique d'une carte de visite numérique

Introduction

La conception graphique d'une carte de visite numérique est un élément crucial pour toute entreprise ou professionnel qui souhaite se démarquer dans le monde numérique. Une carte de visite créer carte nfc numérique bien conçue peut attirer l'attention des clients potentiels, transmettre une image professionnelle et aider à renforcer la marque. Cependant, carte de visite sans contact il est important de connaître les erreurs courantes à éviter lors de la création d'une carte de visite numérique afin d'obtenir les meilleurs résultats possibles.

Dans cet article, nous explorerons les erreurs fréquentes commises lors de la conception graphique d'une carte de visite numérique et nous vous fournirons des conseils pratiques pour les éviter. Que vous soyez un designer graphique professionnel ou une personne qui souhaite créer sa propre carte de visite numérique, ces conseils vous seront utiles pour créer une carte attrayante et efficace.

Les erreurs à éviter lors de la conception graphique d'une carte de visite numérique 1. Ignorer l'importance du design minimaliste

Une erreur courante lors de la conception d'une carte de visite numérique est de surcharger le design avec trop d'éléments visuels. Il est essentiel d'adopter une approche minimaliste en choisissant des couleurs simples, des polices lisibles et en limitant le nombre d'informations affichées. Un design épuré permettra aux destinataires de la carte de visite numérique de se concentrer sur les informations clés et facilitera la lecture.

2. Utiliser des images non optimisées

L'utilisation d'images non optimisées peut ralentir le chargement de la carte de visite numérique et rendre l'expérience utilisateur frustrante. Veillez à compresser les images pour réduire leur taille sans compromettre leur qualité. Il est également préférable d'utiliser des images au format JPEG ou PNG, qui offrent une bonne qualité tout en étant optimisées pour le web.

3. Ne pas utiliser un design responsive

Avec l'utilisation croissante des smartphones et des tablettes, il est essentiel que votre carte de visite numérique soit compatible avec tous les appareils. Assurez-vous d'utiliser un design responsive qui s'adapte automatiquement à différentes tailles d'écran. Cela garantira une expérience utilisateur optimale, quel que soit l'appareil utilisé pour consulter la carte de visite numérique.

4. Oublier d'inclure les informations de contact essentielles

L'objectif principal d'une carte de visite numérique est de fournir aux destinataires vos informations de contact. Il est donc essentiel de ne pas oublier d'inclure ces informations clés telles que votre nom, votre adresse e-mail, votre numéro de téléphone et éventuellement votre site web. Assurez-vous que ces informations sont clairement visibles et faciles à trouver sur la carte de visite numérique.

5. Utiliser des polices illisibles

Une autre erreur courante est d'utiliser des polices complexes ou illisibles sur une carte de visite numérique. Optez plutôt pour des polices simples, lisibles et adaptées à la taille de l'écran sur lequel la carte sera consultée. Évitez également d'utiliser trop de polices différentes, car cela peut rendre le design confus et peu professionnel.

6. Ne pas tenir compte de l'accessibilité

L'accessibilité est un aspect important de la conception graphique d'une carte de visite numérique. Assurez-vous que les couleurs utilisées ont suffisamment

[codearoma-technologies]

5 Common Web Development Mistakes to Avoid

Introduction:

In today’s digital era, a well-designed website is crucial for any business or company. It’s your online storefront, your online presence, and sometimes, your first impression. But with so much to consider during website development, even seasoned professionals can fall into common traps. This blog post will explore five common web development mistakes and guide you on how to avoid them, ensuring your website delivers an optimal user experience.

5 Common Web Development Mistakes:

1.  Ignoring Responsive Design:

How individuals connect to the internet has undergone a significant transformation. In 2022, more than 58% of worldwide website traffic was attributed to mobile devices. If your website isn’t responsive, meaning it doesn’t adapt its layout to different screen sizes, you’re losing a large chunk of your potential audience. If Users on smartphones and tablets are met with clunky interfaces, unreadable text, and frustrating navigation, it will lead them to bounce off your site quickly.

Solution: Choose responsive design techniques from the get-go. Implement CSS media queries to adapt layouts, fonts, and images according to screen size. Use frameworks such as Bootstrap or Foundation to simplify this procedure.

2.  Lack of Hierarchy:

A website without a clear hierarchy is like a cluttered room; it’s overwhelming and difficult to navigate. Information should be presented to guide users towards the most important content. This means using headings, subheadings, bullet points, and white space to create a visual hierarchy that directs the user’s eye and helps them understand the importance of different elements.

Solution: Plan your website’s information architecture carefully. Group related content together, utilize clear and concise headings and leverage white space to create visual separation.

3.  Unclear Navigation:

Imagine entering a store where you need help finding the exit or the products you’re looking for. A perplexing navigation system can deter website visitors. Aim for a straightforward, intuitive navigation menu that enables users to locate desired information swiftly and effortlessly.

Solution: Limit the number of navigation options to the most essential ones. Employ clear and concise labels for every menu item. Ensure consistency in placement and design across all pages.

4.  Using Unoptimized Images:

Images are powerful tools for enhancing your website’s visual appeal and storytelling. Nevertheless, oversized and unoptimized images can considerably hinder your website’s loading speed. This not only frustrates users but also hurts your search engine ranking.

Solution: Compress images before uploading them to your website. There are many free online tools and plugins available to help you achieve this. Consider using alternative image formats like JPEG or WebP, which offer better compression without sacrificing quality.

5.  Ignoring Browser Compatibility:

While most users stick to a few popular browsers, it’s important to ensure your website functions properly across different browsers and devices. Inconsistencies in layout, functionality, or styling can lead to a negative user experience and lost conversions.

Solution: Test your website thoroughly on a variety of browsers and devices during development. Utilise browser developer tools to pinpoint and resolve any compatibility issues. Consider using cross-browser testing services to streamline this process.

Conclusion:

By avoiding these common mistakes, you can create a website that is visually appealing, user-friendly, and effective in achieving your goals. Remember, a well-developed website is an investment that pays off in the long run, attracting visitors, converting leads, and enhancing your online brand reputation.

CodeAroma Technologies is the best web development company in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Contact us for the best web development services in Ahmedabad.

[blogsection]

Creating a Mobile-Friendly Multi-Level Marketing Website on WordPress

The Importance of Mobile-Friendliness

In today’s digital world, having a mobile-friendly website is no longer optional; it’s essential, especially for multi-level marketing (MLM) businesses. With more people using smartphones and tablets to browse the internet, your MLM website must offer a seamless experience on all devices. A mobile-friendly site improves user experience, increases engagement, and boosts conversion rates.

This article will guide you through creating a mobile-friendly MLM website on WordPress, ensuring that your visitors enjoy a smooth and accessible browsing experience, whether they’re at home or on the go.

Why Mobile-Friendliness Matters for MLM Websites

Mobile-friendliness is crucial for MLM businesses for several reasons:

Increasing Mobile Users: Statistics show that over 50% of global web traffic comes from mobile devices. Ignoring this trend can result in missed opportunities.

Better User Experience: A mobile-friendly site provides a better browsing experience, leading to higher engagement and lower bounce rates.

Improved SEO Rankings: Google prioritizes mobile-friendly websites in its search results. A mobile-optimized site can improve your search engine rankings, making it easier for potential distributors and customers to find you.

Step 1: Choose a Responsive WordPress Theme

The first step to creating a mobile-friendly MLM website is selecting a responsive WordPress theme. A responsive theme automatically adjusts its layout and design based on the screen size of the device being used.

Recommended Responsive Themes:

Astra: Lightweight and highly customizable, Astra is ideal for MLM sites. It works well with popular page builders and offers several pre-built templates.

OceanWP: This theme is known for its flexibility and responsiveness, making it suitable for any type of MLM website.

Divi: With its drag-and-drop builder, Divi allows you to create stunning layouts that look great on both desktop and mobile devices.

Tip: When selecting a theme, ensure it includes mobile-specific features like mobile menus and touch-friendly buttons.

Step 2: Optimize Your Content for Mobile

Creating mobile-friendly content is just as important as the design of your site. Here are some best practices for optimizing your content for multi level marketing website wordpress.

Best Practices for Mobile Content:

Keep Text Short and Concise: Use short paragraphs and bullet points to make your content easily scannable.

Use Clear Headings: Utilize headings and subheadings to break up text and help users navigate your content easily.

Incorporate Visuals: Use images, infographics, and videos to convey information more effectively. Ensure that visuals are optimized for fast loading on mobile devices.

Call-to-Action (CTA) Buttons: Make your CTAs large enough to be easily clickable on mobile screens. Use contrasting colors to make them stand out.

Step 3: Enable Mobile-Friendly Navigation

Mobile users require intuitive navigation to find information quickly. Implementing mobile-friendly navigation ensures that visitors can easily access the pages they need.

Tips for Mobile Navigation:

Use a Hamburger Menu: A hamburger menu collapses your navigation into a single icon, saving screen space while still providing access to important links.

Limit Menu Items: Keep your menu items concise and prioritize the most important pages, such as your “Join Now” or “Products” page.

Include a Search Bar: Adding a search bar allows users to quickly find specific information, enhancing their experience on your site.

Step 4: Optimize Images and Media

Large images and media files can slow down your website, especially on mobile devices. Optimizing these elements ensures faster loading times and a better user experience.

Image Optimization Tips:

Use Appropriate File Formats: Use JPEG for photos and PNG for graphics with transparency. Consider using WebP for better compression without sacrificing quality.

Compress Images: Use plugins like Smush or Imagify to automatically compress and optimize images for faster loading times.

Responsive Images: Implement responsive image techniques (like the srcset attribute) to serve different sizes of images based on the user’s device.

Step 5: Test Your Website’s Mobile-Friendliness

Once you’ve made your website mobile-friendly, it’s essential to test its performance across various devices. Use online tools to assess how well your site functions on mobile.

Tools for Testing Mobile Friendliness:

Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test: This tool analyzes your website and provides suggestions for improving mobile usability.

GTmetrix: GTmetrix tests your site’s speed and performance on mobile devices, giving you insights into areas that need improvement.

BrowserStack: This platform allows you to test your website on real devices, ensuring that it looks and functions as intended.

Step 6: Monitor Performance and Make Adjustments

After launching your mobile-friendly website, it’s crucial to monitor its performance regularly. Gather user feedback and make adjustments as needed to improve the mobile experience.|

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to Monitor:

Bounce Rate: A high bounce rate may indicate that users are not finding what they need. Analyze your content and navigation to address any issues.

Session Duration: Track how long users stay on your site. Longer session durations suggest that visitors find your content engaging.

Conversion Rates: Monitor how many visitors are taking action, such as signing up or purchasing products. Low conversion rates may signal the need for better CTAs or clearer messaging.

Conclusion: Embrace Mobile for MLM Success

Creating a mobile-friendly multi level marketing website wordpress is essential for reaching and engaging today’s audience. By selecting a responsive theme, optimizing content, and ensuring intuitive navigation, you can provide a seamless experience for users on any device.

FAQs

1. What is a responsive WordPress theme? A responsive WordPress theme automatically adjusts its layout and design based on the screen size of the device, ensuring an optimal viewing experience on both mobile and desktop.

2. How do I test my website for mobile-friendliness? You can use tools like Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test or GTmetrix to assess your site’s performance on mobile devices and receive suggestions for improvement.

3. Why is mobile optimization important for my MLM business? Mobile optimization is crucial for improving user experience, boosting engagement, and enhancing search engine rankings, ultimately leading to higher conversion rates.

[scribe-awoken]

what's even more wild is that there was another file format, JPEG XL, which could've actually become the one-image-format-to-rule-them-all. Some of the improvements over the existing JPEG format include lossless compression mode with smaller filesizes than normal lossy JPEGs, animation, transparency, HDR and multithreaded decoding, while also being fully backwards-compatible (i.e. they'd be rendered as normal JPEG files in software that didn't have compatibility with the new features).

So many big players in the tech industry were on board. Facebook, Intel, Adobe, Nvidia and Shopify were all working on implementing support for it into their products and services. KDE, the open source community behind Krita, Kdenlive, and the plasma desktop environment for Linux (the same one SteamOS uses in desktop mode) already had their implementation ready to go and integrated into their software. Media companies like The Guardian were also pushing for its inclusion in Chromium. There was pretty much universal support for the format across the board...

Except Google, who dropped what little experimental support for the format was in Chromium, and straight-up ignored all feedback from those other organizations asking them to make it a permanent feature rather than dropping support entirely. And it's pretty much entirely because it was in competition with webp (the manager at Google behind the decision was one of the co-authors of the webp format) and AVIF (which Google is pushing as their preferred successor to webp).

The wildest part is that even other engineers at Google were like "this is a bad idea. why are you doing this?" in the bug report discussion regarding this!

me when i meet the person who created webp files

[hawkping]

Common Mistakes to Avoid in Image Optimization

Online Image optimizer is a crucial step in enhancing website performance and user experience. When done right, it can significantly improve page load times and overall site speed. However, many website owners make common mistakes that can hinder their efforts. In this article, we'll discuss these mistakes and how to avoid them.

Ignoring Image Size: Large images can significantly slow down your website's load time, especially on mobile devices with slower internet connections. To avoid this mistake, always resize your images to the dimensions needed for your website. You can use tools like Adobe Photoshop or online tools like PicResize to easily resize your images.

Not Using Compression: Compression reduces the file size of an image without significantly affecting its quality. Failure to compress images can lead to longer load times and higher bandwidth usage. Tools like TinyPNG and JPEGmini can help you compress your images effectively.

Using the Wrong File Format: Choosing the right file format is crucial for image optimization. JPEG is ideal for photographs, as it offers a good balance between image quality and file size. PNG is better suited for graphics and logos, as it supports transparency and higher image quality.

Neglecting Alt Text: Alt text is important for SEO and accessibility. It describes the contents of an image to search engines and visually impaired users who use screen readers. Always include descriptive alt text that accurately describes the image.

Overlooking Image Titles and Descriptions: Image titles and descriptions are important for SEO. Use descriptive titles and relevant keywords in your image filenames and descriptions to improve your website's search engine rankings.

Using Too Many Images: While images are important for engaging users, using too many can overwhelm your website and slow down its load time. Be selective about the images you use and optimize them properly.

Not Leveraging Lazy Loading: Lazy loading is a technique that defers the loading of non-essential resources, such as images, until they are needed. Implementing lazy loading can significantly improve your website's load time and user experience.

Ignoring Image Sitemaps: Image sitemaps help search engines discover images on your website. Ignoring image sitemaps can result in your images not being indexed properly, leading to lower visibility in search engine results. Always include image sitemaps in your website's XML sitemap to ensure that your images are properly indexed.

In conclusion, online image optimizer plays a crucial role in enhancing website performance. By avoiding common mistakes such as ignoring image size, not using compression, and neglecting alt text, you can ensure that your images contribute positively to your website's user experience and SEO. Remember to always optimize your images for size, format, alt text, and SEO best practices to improve your website's overall performance.

HawkPing tools and services can help you optimize your images effectively, ensuring that they enhance your website's performance and user experience.

[saul-goodboy]

made uhhhhh pro-palestinian jet because he's the colors of the palestinian flag. ignore the compression i accidentally saved it as a jpeg

[reneaudessine]

Reading Response #1

In Defense of the Poor Image```

The reading followed a list of points to create a new perspective to the reader on the "poor image". Despite how ironically condeluded the reading was, the author was able to show a six different reasons we should look at the low quality picture with appreciation. The main points were to recognize an image past the point of only capitalist utility and to see how significance can be brought through process and intention. A picture is not just what you see, but it can also be what you don't see, and to ignore that is to erase a whole world of exploration in photography.

What I found most interesting in the reading was the connection of image quality in art to capitalism. I think this made me reconsider how different art forms are considered in value and why. Even more it made me wonder if our judements of value are just and if any judgement of a piece's value could be just. I do wish to explore this connection further as I find it my due diligence as an anticapitalist artist myself. I think exploration of this topic could lead to some really interesting commentary art as a satire on how art is typically capitalized.

I found the paradox of the poor image and its relationship to capatilism to be specifically allusive. The author describes it as a tension between rejecting the practice and being intrinsically driven by it, but his description on how the image does so is too pixelated in concepts for me to see the picture.

Thomas Ruff, jpeg rl104, 2007.

Chris Marker’s virtual home on Second Life, May 29, 2009.

I find the contrast between these two images above, both considered a "poor image", to be quite interesting. To me the first picture, by Thomas Ruff, is what I find to be the standard imagination of a "poor image". The one following however, by Chris Marker, is more so simply abtracted and blocky to me. The rendering of the island and clouds are perhaps rudimentary compared to modern technology, but I would not refer to it as a "poor image" necessarily. What is interesting in comparing these two images is that the scope of what a "poor image" is according to the author is expanded from the standard definition of just pixelation and grain alone.

Time and Motion

Here the focus was on how time and motion can be communicated across media, regardless of if time and motion areaspects of the media. Futhermore it discusses how even in condusive medias to the subject time and motion can be distorted for specific points and messages. I found this second concept most clear in the examples of video, like the timelapse film Fashionably Late for the Relationship by Lian Sufuentes. In the film people pass around Sufuentes as after images due to the time lapse as she appears to move normal as she slowed her movement down in real time. This creates a dicotomy of time which appears both fast and slow. I found this contrast to be very intriguiging and something only a time centered piece could achieve.

From the reading I learned that the ephemeral nature of time and nature is something that can be very valuable in communicating messages. It is also something I find 2D art can easily forget until they have to comminicate time, however from the reading I learned that is a waste. Leaving how time or motion would be perceived as an afterthough would be like leaving proportions or color theory behind, mayb intentionally it could be additive, but mostly it will leave the piece flat and amateur.

I would certianly be interested in learning more about using time lapses, more specifically how to plan with them. How slow does one have to move to appear normal? How can you calculate how the video will be compressed? And for the inverse, how do these questions apply to slowing a video?

[bythepowerofscience]

An idea: compressing images and videos a bit that haven't been seen in years. Not in terms of jpeg compression, I mean literally compressing the files in an archive and extracting them at request-time. It taking a little bit longer to retrieve is worth the reduced file size for files that aren't being accessed often.

Actually you probably do this already, so ignore me if that's the case.

The major costs of Tumblr are just storage and access CPM, right? Would optimizing the way posts are stored and compressing the data more efficiently significantly cut costs?

no... i believe the biggest cost of tumblr are the (extremely small number of) people working on it. maybe after that is bandwidth and then storage and then compute power? it's been a little while since i've looked at that breakdown though, so i could have that mixed up.

regardless, yeah, yet another reason we invested a lot of time in the Neue Post Format was to save on storage costs and compute costs -- it's cheaper to compress, store, serialize, and deserialize, than our old post format.

but the thing that really takes up the most space are images and videos anyway, that's probably like 95% of our storage. at one point we had the biggest Amazon S3 storage bucket in the world (i don't know if that's still true).

[decamarks]

hi jojo, i wanted to ask how you corrupt/datamosh art to get genuine glitches … i think the way computers rip apart jpegs or pngs is both beautiful and gives an interesting look into how they process information. seeing something you carefully constructed by hand be reduced to seemingly arbitrary fragments of data is humbling. i didnt even know this was a thing you could do til i saw you do it (i forget when, i think it was with one of your rainer paintings?)

HI OLIVER!! thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to talk about databending because it's something i adore unabashedly. it's an amazing technique to use whenever you wanna make some Crazy Stuff. i personally use audacity to databend—this is a pretty common method, but i'm gonna make a mini-tutorial about it anyway because it's FUN, and because the process is actually really simple!

Here's the image I'll be imploding for this demonstration. I chose it because it was like the first file in my pictures folder, and because it's a good image.

STEP 1. Prepare your image! It has to be an uncompressed image format such as .bmp or .tif, because compressed image formats (such as .png or jpg) are generally too volatile to work with due to the nature of their data. I opened this image in Paint, saved it as a 24-bit Bitmap, and named it FREAK.bmp, because that's what it is.

STEP 2. In Audacity, go to File > Import > Raw Data. Open the image you prepared, and use these settings to import it:

You'll get this image as raw audio data, which I recommend you do NOT play. It will be very loud and abrasive, so probably keep your volume down in case you accidentally play it.

STEP 3. Start messing with the audio! You can use basically anything in Audacity's effects menu for good results, though I tend to favor Bass and Treble, Echo, Invert, dblue Crusher, and dblue Glitch. You can also copy and paste portions of the audio data in different places, and even import other audio to play alongside the data.

Try not to edit the very beginning or very end of the audio, as this might end up corrupting the image header, and it won't be readable as an image anymore. Don't shy too far from them, though; if you avoid them too much, the top and bottom areas of the image will remain unchanged. The positioning of the audio data is surprisingly straightforward, so with enough practice, you can approximate what portion you'll be editing with relative ease.

This is definitely the longest part of the process, since it can take a lot of trial and error for good results. At the start, I recommend doing little portions at a time to get a sense of what exactly your edits are affecting. Try a lot of different things, and remember that Audacity lets you undo things easily and infinitely!

STEP 4. Once your audio is sufficiently screwed, go to File > Export > Export Audio. Use these settings to export it:

Make sure to replace .raw with .bmp, or whatever image format you used.

STEP 5. Enjoy your image! Here's what I ended up with.

For the record, I messed with the audio a LOT here. You can get much more subtle—or much more severe results—depending on how much or how little you alter, or how you alter it. Here's another databent picture, which I made by putting a 3 second clip of "Kiss Me Thru the Phone" over the image data.

It's so interesting seeing a song be reduced to something so arbitrary in an image format. It's equally interesting seeing something as arbitrary as audio waveforms becoming a semi-coherent image, ignoring the Soulja Boy-induced scar in the center. It always makes you wonder how it works. If you sang at just the right pitch, could it became a photo of a sunset? What if it became a portrait of someone you've never seen before, or someone that doesn't exist at all? That's obviously impossible, but there's this strange sense of wonder about it anyway. It still seems plausible, because the data that constitutes an image is generated in such a way that there exist infinite, arbitrary combinations—combinations which might just be coherent to us, if a billion different binary stars align.

The way this data is stored isn't arbitrary at all though, even if it looks that way to us. Audacity's audio waveforms are only one way to visualize this raw data. Here's FREAK.bmp, but visualized via plaintext rather than audio data.

Computers just seem so magical sometimes. The raw data is incomprehensible to our eyes, but they can read it for us and transmit exactly what they see. As long as you keep the proper headers in place, it'll still read this data as a picture, as perceivable pixels, no matter how nonsensical it otherwise looks to a human.

It's interesting to think about databending in terms of glitches. The results are often very similar to glitches that might organically manifest, but the process is entirely intentional. It usually takes some effort and intent to get a "good" result from databending, but glitches and corruption are entirely void of human intent. They just happen, arbitrarily, for any number of reasons.

If something's just a little out of place, you might get a huge, jarring stripe slashed across the image's center—or you might break the image entirely, if it's out of place a little too far to the left. You'd never be able to tell the difference yourself, but a computer certainly can. But to a computer...

... these images might as well be identical.

[kerasines]

GIF Tutorial for Beginners

People keep asking me to teach them how to make gifs and I end up writing them long confusing messages, so I figured maybe it’s time to just write up an actual clean tutorial instead! This is supposed to be for total beginners! (Or people who want to switch to a new process that I’ve curated and streamlined over 8 years of making gifs.) I’ll try to keep this as barebones as possible, and won’t include all the advanced stuff I usually add. I hope it’s easy enough to follow, and I’ll include some links at the end for more stuff. I really do think it’s better to make a few simple gifs before doing more complicated stuff though, just to get used to it!

There will be three sections in this tutorial: #1 Basics - How to make a gif in PS at all #2 Sharpen - How to use sharpen/denoise filters in an easy way #3 Colouring - Just a few very basic adjustment layers

What you need:

A video (most common formats should work, although .mkv doesn’t always)

Photoshop (I use PS CC 2018 - this one because I'm morally opposed to Adobe’s subscription model - but versions aren’t super different from each other)

In the end, you should hopefully be able to make something like this:

This is gonna be so long. Sorry. You can make a gif with just part #1! The rest is just to make it look better.

#1 Basics

If any of the tools/functions aren’t where they should be for you, your best bet is googling it, you might need to change something in your preferences!

Make sure to save your PS file... often. PS has a tendency to crash, especially on laptops.

First, you need to get the video file. I recommend a shorter video, a few minutes long, if it’s longer you might want to cut it into shorter parts beforehand. This is just because PS’s video import tool sucks.

I chose the Butter MV, specifically Jungkook’s body roll at 1:24 because that’s what I want to look at for the duration of this tutorial. No further questions, thanks.

1. Open PS, go to File > Import > Video Frames to Layers

2. In the little pop-up, choose the part of the video that you want to gif. This will import every frame of the video into PS as a layer, so it has to be a relatively short part, or it’ll take ages (and gifs can’t be that big anyway). Now you can also see why it’s almost impossible to select the correct part if the video is too long.

The little controls at the bottom are for trimming, the one in the middle just for the preview. Make sure “Make Frame Animation” is selected! Then click OK.

3. Now you have your layers, and you have a frame animation! On the right are your layers, that’s where we’ll apply the colouring etc. later on. On the bottom, that’s your timeline or frame animation - that’s what the gif will be in the end! So if you delete frames, the layers will still be there, but they won’t show up in the gif. If you click on a frame, you can see the little eye checkmark on the layer that’s currently visible.

4. The timeline controls at the bottom that are relevant right now: set to “forever” so the gif will loop, you can play the animation with the play button, and you can delete the selected frame(s). The number on each frame is the speed of the gif, depending on the video I usually set it to 0.05 or 0.06 (photoshop lies to you when you play the animation, the only way to test this is to open the finished gif, preferably on tumblr or wherever you want to upload it).

5. As you can see, the animation starts a bit before the actual part that I want, so go ahead and delete all the frames in the animation that you don’t want! You can delete the corresponding layers too if you want, to make the PS file smaller, but it has no influence on the gif. (Hold Shift to select multiple frames as usual)

6. Next, we’re gonna crop the gif however we want! You can do this with the crop tool in the left sidebar, but with gifs like this where there’s a lot of moving parts, I sometimes just use the selection tool in the left sidebar, like so:

When you click on different frames, the selection stays, and you can check to make sure Jungkook doesn’t suddenly go out of frame if you crop it like that!

At this point, make sure the selection/crop isn’t smaller than you want the gif to be! For tumblr, what matters is the width (in pixels) of gifs. In the end, the width dimensions on tumblr should be 540px (1 gif per row), 268px (2 gifs per row), or 177/178px (3 gifs per row). Anything else will lead to very shitty resizing!

For this gif I’m going full sized, meaning 540px wide, so I made sure my selection isn’t smaller than that.

Then just go to Image > Crop, and it’s done!

7. Check to see if this is what you want, then resize: go to Image > Image Size to resize the picture. Make sure the little “link” between Width and Height is active (to keep the same aspect ratio), then set the width to 540px or whatever you chose. I always set the resample option to Bicubic.

Once that’s done, set the zoom to 100% right above the timeline, to see what it really looks like.

Almost done! A little note about the sizing: width is the important part for tumblr, but if you want to make a whole gif set (especially with more than 1 gif per row!!!) make sure to make all the gifs the same height, otherwise they won’t line up and tumblr will do whatever it wants.

I ended up making mine 540 x 400 and ended up with this:

8. Time to save the gif!! Go to File > Export > Save for Web (OR just use the shortcut Ctrl + Shift + Alt + S) (or whatever it is on Mac).

In the pop-up, you can change things about the gif, but most things should already be the way you want it (Image size, Looping option forever). Selective should be the default, just like the rest.

You can choose between Pattern and Diffusion, some gif makers swear on one or the other, I go back and forth.

On the bottom left, you can see the size of your gif. Keep an eye on that! I believe Tumblr allows every single gif to be up to 10mb, but I try to keep mine under 5mb or close to it, because I think tumblr adds compression if it gets closer to 10mb?? Anyway back in my day you couldn’t upload anything over 1mb. You’ll never know our struggles.

Then just save it, and that’s it, you made a gif! Well done!! Here’s the end result:

:)

#2 Sharpen

There are countless ways out there to make gifs as smooth and clean as possible! Here I’ll show you the easiest way, but it also provides a good basis for other methods. The main difficulty is that you you need to sharpen the layers, but you don’t want to 100 layers one by one. So what we’re gonna do is convert the layers into a Smart Object, which functions as one layer!

1. Convert the frame animation timeline to a video timeline with the little button right underneath on the left:

It should look like this, and I’m sorry but I can’t explain this one because I’m not an expert here, but you can just ignore it:

2. Select all layers: Select > All Layers, or just manually. 

Then right click on the layers > Convert to Smart Object. Now there’s only one layer left, but don’t worry, the frames are still there!

3. De-noise! It reduces noise, takes away some of that grain. More necessary in some videos. It also makes it less sharp, so I do this one first. Filter > Noise > Reduce Noise

My default settings are, Strength: 6, Preserve Details: 60, Reduce Color Noise: 45, Sharpen Details: 25, Remove JPEG Artifact: No. But you can play around, especially with the strength, and see how the little preview looks. Don’t apply too much of it! Or it will look weirdly smooth with no details in the end.

4. File > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen. 

Settings: I usually have mine at Amount: 500, Reduce Noise: 5, and Radius at either 0.2 or 0.3, depending on the video. I’ll actually do 0.3 here, because I find it a bit blurry otherwise. If you sharpen more, it can quickly get grainy.

The difference isn’t huge, but here’s a little before and after denoise & sharpen:

5. Technically you can just save it as a gif (save for web) as shown above now, or you can convert it back to a frame animation, which I’d recommend especially if you use certain other sharpening methods (I’ll show you how to convert it back at the end of the colouring part), but for now, let’s go straight to the next part:

#3 Colouring

Now, you CAN do this part right after part #1, still in frame animation, without a smart object. I prefer it like this because sometimes PS acts weird, but if you want to skip the smart object stuff: select all frames, and add the adjustment layers at the very top, above all the other layers. (It only affects selected frames; and it only affects the layers under it.)

The adjustment layers should be above the layer tray, and these are the ones we’ll use today: Brightness/Contrast, Curves, Vibrance, Color Balance, Selective Color.

All of these are optional! You can do one, or all, or any combination. This is just the very most basic for me to get a gif to a point that I like. I’d recommend sticking to these for a start, but once you get the hang of it, definitely feel free to play around! It’s fun! Every gif maker has different preferences here, too, so there’s tutorials for everything.

1. Curves: Just click Auto, tbh. You can play around, but Auto works fine for me as a start, just to brighten or darken some parts as a base.

2. Brightness/Contrast: Usually videos are a bit dark, and contrast can help to make it seem sharper AND cut down on gif size, so I usually just up both of them a bit (but not too much! Or it’ll look cheap). Here I put them at B: 19, C: 23

3. Vibrance: I love very vibrant and colourful gifs, so I usually up the vibrance (and sometimes the saturation). This one is already very vibrant, so I only put +5, but if you try to colour, say, a very moody tv show, this can help wonders, especially if you want to work with the colours more later.

If you prefer less vibrant gifs, you can also lower the values here!

4. Color Balance: getting a bit more complicated now. Often, videos will have a slight yellow or green or blue tint, and this is where you can correct that. This video is a bit yellow, so I added +17 Blue. It was still too warm, so i added -11 Cyan as well. This neutralized the yellow tint, but I wanted some of the reddish tone back, so I added -5 Magenta. I usually do a similar process like that, depending on the tone. 

Instead of Midtones, you can also do this for Shadows and Highlights individually.

5. Selective Color: now this is the most complicated, but also the most fun to play around in my opinion! Be careful here, if you do something too extreme it’ll look like shit or make the gif super grainy. I some rough goals in mind here: make the blue hair as blue as possible, make their skin tone a bit less pale, and enhance the black and white (which I always do).

You choose a colour at the top, and then add or subtract cyan/magenta/yellow/black values for that colour.

Skin tone: yellow and red. For this gif, I just added black to both, making them darker. Sometimes, if you change one or both those colours for a different part of the gif (for example, if I wanted to make the background less yellow, I’d subtract yellow from the yellows - but then I’d add yellow to the reds, to make the skin tone natural again.)

Blue hair: Just ramp up the cyan for the blues. Be careful with putting anything to +100, but here it’s already so bright that it should be fine. His roots are more purple, so I changed the magentas by adding cyan and black, and subtracting magenta and yellow. It’s not super clean, but fine for our purposes.

Black/white: depending on the gif, I often either add or subtract black to the whites. Adding makes the highlights less blinding, a bit darker, and flatter (I like to do that if one side of the face is bright white in the sunlight, for example). Subtracting creates contrast, makes it brighter, can wash it out. It can also lessen the gif size, and here it’s mostly just the tracksuit instead of important details, so I subtracted black. For the blacks, I almost always just add a bit of black, to make it more intense. Just like adding contrast, this can make the gif seem sharper and less grainy.

And done! 

6. You could just save it as gif now, but as I said, I prefer to convert it back to frame animation timeline first, if only because I like to let it play through before I save it, and it works better for me there than in the video timeline.

Select all frames, then click the little menu on the top right of the video timeline > Convert Frames > Flatten Frames into Clips

7. When you scroll down to the bottom of the layers now, the old smart object + adjustment layers should be at the bottom, under all the new layers. Delete the old ones, we don’t need them anymore.

8. Convert the timeline back to frame animation, by clicking the little button at the bottom left of the video timeline:

9. Click on the menu top right of the timeline again > Make Frames from Layers

10. Now, just some potential cleaning left to do. Sometimes, there’s a doubled or empty frame or layer at the beginning or end, just delete those as necessary. The timing of the frames is probably off, too, just select all frames and set the delay time to 0.05 (or whatever).

Now your done! Save as gif, and you should get this:

I included some bonus links and tips after this but tumblr ate that whole part so I guess it’s going into a separate post. (Here is is)

Anyway, I tried to make this as easy to follow as possible for beginners, but feel free to send me an ask for clarification anytime. Hope this helps, now go make gifs and have fun!!

[wolfythewitch]

Hi! i saw you commenting something on twt about saving your drawings in jpeg instead of png or something and if irs not mucb of a bother could you please explain the diference and why is jpeg better? Feel free to ignore this if youd like, i was just curious :]

Uhhh I don’t know much about it but apparently it’s best to save jpeg on twitter and png everywhere else, because Twitter kinda compressed your thing into jpeg anyway? So posting with jpeg makes it so that it won’t compress as much? Maybe? Agshssjs