Status: fully resolved

    Problem uploading .png image.

    Issue Number:
    199
    Severity:
    Minor
    Description:
    I've tried uploading a .png image in the Second Sathar War project and for some reason, when you click on the link you just get a URL (that you can't click on) instead of downloading the image.  The image in question is the Dramune, Battle of (PNG version) download in the SSW project download section.  I've uploaded others, "Current Ship positions" for example that work just fine.
    Comments:

    Corvus's picture
    Corvus
    April 17, 2008 - 10:22am
    I'm guessing "don't use PNG" isn't what you'd consider a helpful response? Wink
    If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. -- Carl Sagan

    TerlObar's picture
    TerlObar
    April 17, 2008 - 2:33pm
    You are correct since the PNG format is a very standard and good lossless (as opposed to JPG which is lossy) image compression (and PNG stands for Portable Network Graphic, it was kind of intended for putting things on the web).  It was designed to replace the GIF format since GIF is a propriatary format owned by Compuserve (whowever owns them now).
    Ad Astra Per Ardua!
    My blog - Expanding Frontier
    Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network & this site
    Founding Editor - The Frontier Explorer Magazine
    Managing Editor - The Star Frontiersman Magazine

    Corvus's picture
    Corvus
    April 17, 2008 - 11:38pm
    PNG is often misued, Terl. People mistakenly use it as a replacement for large JPG images, leading to titanically-sized files with only a marginal visual improvement over JPEG/JPG images that use lower compression values. PNG was originally intended to replace small GIF images, usually in black and white such as text and lineart, as you mentioned, but people have latched onto the "lossless" quality and ignored the fact that the format was not designed for its most common use -- horribly bloated, large-dimension full color images. Please consult http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_network_graphic#Comparison_with_JPEG for more information.

    None of this addresses your issue, of course. I haven't seen what you map looks like, so it might be a properly-used PNG -- no condemnation of your format choice, I assure you. What I said before was intended in jest, so I apologize if it didn't come across that way. I sometimes forget that not everyone knows me (and my hatred for misused PNG) as well as my close friends elsewhere on the internet. I'm sure Bill will be able to handle the problem with a bit of time.
    If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. -- Carl Sagan

    TerlObar's picture
    TerlObar
    April 18, 2008 - 6:46am
    I knew it was in jest, I just forgot the smiley after the "You are correct" part of my responseSmile.  I agree with you completely on the use of the two formats.  Generally for large images JPG IS better.  Normally I try both and use which ever is smaller.  In this case the map has small numbers and icons on it that can start to get blurred.  Plus there aren't a lot of colors (in fact, if I spent a bit of time on the icons, it could get it down to exactly 4 plus a few for the movement lines, I'm just lazy) and I can convert the image to an index palette instead of RGB which PNG can handle and JPG can't since it always want's RGB.

    Just some numbers.  The best jpg compression I could do without the yuckiness of the smearing begin more than I like was about 85%, even that started to be noticiable (not on the grid numbers but on the icons).  That gave me a file size of 1.7 MB.  Even at 25% compression which really hacked the icons and started in on the grid numbers I could only get a file that was 798 kB.  I converted the map to a 255 bit palette and saved it as PNG and ended up with a 107 kB file, a factor of 16 improvement.  If I didn't do to palette converstion the file was 157 kB still about an 11x improvement.

    So I agree with your observations about the two formats, but in this case PNG is a better format.  Plus the upload used to work just fine but something broke.
    Ad Astra Per Ardua!
    My blog - Expanding Frontier
    Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network & this site
    Founding Editor - The Frontier Explorer Magazine
    Managing Editor - The Star Frontiersman Magazine

    simple's picture
    simple
    April 18, 2008 - 8:20am
    Bill, I looked on the site and viewed multiple PNG's.
    Some .png work, others do not.

    AZ_GAMER sent me his .png's via email. I can view them just fine but if they are uploaded to this site somehow they are getting corrupted. (I grabbed the files from /files and saved them on lappy and could not open them with GIMP)

    --
    simply w00t

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    Ahhhhhh!


    Corvus's picture
    Corvus
    April 18, 2008 - 10:48am
    Somebody who knows how to use PNG properly?  I may have a heart attack!  Surprised  Looking forward to seeing the map, Terl.
    If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. -- Carl Sagan

    TerlObar's picture
    TerlObar
    April 18, 2008 - 11:05am
    I used to do it with GIF's now I do it with PNG, same thing.  I used to work at a web publishing company back in the early 90's and learned a few tips from the graphics designer there.  Back then it was squish it down as small as you possibly can.  He rarely if ever sent out a graphic with more than a 50 color palette and they always looked great.

    You can get the blank hex map (just grid and numbers) in the Second Sathar War downloads section.  It's the blank hex grid download (about 80kB)  I was a bit rushed so the numbers are not as neatly lined up as I'd like but they work.  The one that doesn't work was the battle map from our drammune battle with the planet, station, ships and move lines on it.
    Ad Astra Per Ardua!
    My blog - Expanding Frontier
    Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network & this site
    Founding Editor - The Frontier Explorer Magazine
    Managing Editor - The Star Frontiersman Magazine

    Full Bleed's picture
    Full Bleed
    April 23, 2008 - 10:19pm
    The other major advantage of PNG over JPG is that PNG supports transparency which is essential to producing objects that are to be used on or over a background image.  It's fairly standard in the world of VTT's to produce most maps as JPG's and most objects/tokens/virtual mini's as PNGs.


    simple's picture
    simple
    April 24, 2008 - 6:06am
    This has been resolved. I believe there was an issue with disk space that caused the problem.

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    Ahhhhhh!