Sending Scanned Articles By .GIF Files: Is Compression Possible?

[kelticwizard]

I am scanning articles and sending them to members by Email.

I do not use OCR software, it's too frustrating. I send the scans .GIF. They print out beautifully that way.

.GIF files are quite bulky, about 200 KB a page.

I use ZipItFast, because I never really liked WinZip. However, I used ZipItFast to try to make .ZIP files and CAB files from the .GIF scans, and there was no saving in file size.

Can I compress .GIF files? If so, how? I think the scanner also allows you to make TIFF files and bitmap files.

Any advice here would be appreciated.

[pinkmouse]

Hi KW

I sympathise with the OCR thing, trying to sort out those two articles you sent me was taking about 2 hours per page, what with sorting out typos and finding the right symbols for all the equations, so in the end I gave up.

AFAIK, Gifs, are pretty heavily compressed as is, so I don't think there is much potential for decreasing their size further, although if you have the option, sometimes saving as .png decreases the size by about 10%, but not consistently enough to be a proper solution.

[kelticwizard]

Originally posted by pinkmouse
Hi KW

AFAIK, Gifs, are pretty heavily compressed as is, so I don't think there is much potential for decreasing their size further..

Damn. I thought that might be the case.

A friend of mine told me that in Japan, they have scanners with onboard dedicated computers that do the Optical Character Resolution far better than the software method we use in the West.

I didn't realize the urgency for such a solution until I downloaded a freeware Optical Character Resolution program and started scanning.

[fdegrove]

Hi,

A friend of mine told me that in Japan, they have scanners with onboard dedicated computers that do the Optical Character Resolution far better than the software method we use in the West.

Well, they don't.
What they do have is indeed onboard processing so they can use the scanners on handheld computers and other similar devices that lack the computing power to do the maths.
So the task is divided between the scanning device and the computer proper.
Much the same way as some of the later dial up modem for windozs work or some graphics cards...either way, not very well.

No computing power is going to improve on the original quality of the scanner, all it does is extrapolating etc.

Compression is always done at a loss of quality and once you're down to a *.gif file you've pretty much the smallest size you can get.

If you have the need to exchange larger files, say 2Mb+, and don't have ADSL or similar...or the addresse hasn't here's a solution: use Hypersend ( from the people that brought you Hyperterminal amongst other telcom proggies).

For none commercial use it's free ( it is to me so I assume it is to you as well), you use their webspace as a placeholder.

The upload is a cinch and works like all FTP, the adressee gets notified and you can have them (Hypersend, that is) track the status so you actually see whether it all worked.

Locally, on your PC that is, all you need is Hyperagent which you can download from their site.
Once installed you need is tell it your e-mail account and a password...I may have the chronology wrong here since I have it on our machines for years already...and off you go.

Alternatively you can set up a webpage with your ISP but that a little more complex.

HyperSend

Cheers,

[kelticwizard]

Originally posted by fdegrove

Alternatively you can set up a webpage with your ISP but that a little more complex.

Frank:

I thought of the webpage solution, but there was one tiny hitch. The material I am sending is copyrighted. Yes, I know that copyrighted material is all over the internet in people's web pages, but still.

Since this is made for secure sending, not open to the public, this would appear to be different.

I will try Hypersend. Thanks for the tip.

[fdegrove]

Hi,

I thought of the webpage solution, but there was one tiny hitch. The material I am sending is copyrighted. Yes, I know that copyrighted material is all over the internet in people's web pages, but still.

You can make a website as secure as need be but it's a tad more complicated for you'd handing out access passwords to people of your choice...extra work and relationships are dynamic, aren't they?

Hypersend is secure as it works on a one to one basis depending on whom you put on your recipient list...never had trouble with and it saves you a lot of hassle.

Cheers,

[Bill Fitzpatrick]

kelticwizard:

I may have an idea for you. Would you send me one of the .gif files in question so I could check it out?

[kelticwizard]

Bill:

Thanks for the help. Although the main idea did not work out, the file size reduction that comes from sending a smaller physical size page is a good idea.

I think I will try the Hypersend Idea first, though. The reason is that I don't want to do anything that might make it harder for the person on the other end to scan the article themselves. Just because I want nothing to do with Optical Character Recognition process does not mean that I want to make it more difficult for the recipient to use it.

However, the smaller page size is an option that I think will come in handy.

[DRC]

GIF file are already compressed with a lossy compression algorithm. Trying to compress with ZIP (lossless) will do nothing as you now know !

AFAIK, gif does not use a particularly good lossy compression so you **might** get better results (in terms of file size / legibility) with jpg or png formats. Also gif was at the center of a nasty attempt to "extort" money via licencing so I would not ues it out of principle (unless it gave the best results - naturally ).

BTW - don't scan to gif then convert to jpg or png - scan to bmp then use one of the many tools around to convert to jpg or png and don't forget to experement with the compression options / colour depth to get the best results. My guess would be jpg will give the best results and is well supported.

Dave

[kelticwizard]

Dave:

I didn't know anything at all about graphics before I came to diyAudio and started posting graphs. I didn't even know how to put a graphic in a file, (self-taught computer guy, LOL).

When posting response graphs, I found that .GIF seemed to give better quality for much smaller file size than .jpg. Png was about equal to .GIF.

However, that is for graphs and pictures. I am surprised that you think that .jpg will give better results than .GIF with printed articles, but I am certainly going to give it a try and tell you the results later.

Thanks for the tip.

PS: As for my graphics converter, I use XnView, which seems to have just about every graphics format ever invented, LOL.