Desperately needed new feature

I have a question - is it by design that the process that chops the image into four parts also recompresses the image? I'm noticing that my displayed cel images are now showing a lot of jpeg artifacts that the original pictures I uploaded don't have. This applies to both images that were resized to the new 500 pixel width maximum, and images that were already at or below this width limit.

Not intentionally, but it might. The JPEG algorithim in the GDI+ toolkit is known to be not even close to the best one out there. It originally looked worse but I had to figure out how to recode the compression ratio. Right now it's set to 80 of a possible 100. The trouble is that you always have to recalculate compression if you're making a new image.

The artifacting Gabriel is referring to is more obvious in the gallery buttons, where I left the quality setting at the default 40.

JPEG in general wasn't designed for simple tonal changes you find in cel images. It's more for natural photo tonal ranges with gradients and such. I would suggest to minimize this effect, upload higher quality JPEGs that will survive the conversion better. Let me know if doing that makes it more palatable.

I'll experiment with a straight dump-to-screen of images that are less than 500px this weekend if I get a chance and see if that helps too.

I would...but the jpegs I upload are already at the highest quality conversion that can be achieved thru Photoshop, so I can't make the original image any better :(

Maybe if there was an option to turn the splitting on or off on an individual gallery level? As far as I know, the only time some chimp stole images out of my gallery, they had saved the entire screen as a bitmap and cut the cel image out, so this wouldn't have helped anyway. And I'd prefer clean scans at least in my own gallery.

Infomative image/scanner/jpg., etc. tip site for people like me that didn't know what you were talking about :-)

http://www.scantips.com/basics09.html

Well...I for one really like the new feature...It's taken a lotta' work, and I really appreciate all the hard work that's been put into it =)!

Here's an idea though...Would it be possible so that we could have the larger images password protected? So, we can dictate who get's to see the larger images, etc? That would be a cool thing to do...Sometimes people wanna see the detail in cels, only attained from a larger-sized scan =). It's just a thought, but would be cool.

I know image stealing really sux...If someone were to steal my images...without asking...I would go nuts. But...You put your image up on the net...It's there for the taking. I know reading that statement stinks...Stinks to me too...But...There's always gonna be someone out there who will take it if they can...Steps being taken like this will make it harder for the vast majority of image stealers to get them. If you don't want your images used...Don't put them up for the public...Keep your gallery private...But doing that will make less people view your cels, or want to have to go through with the *hassle* of getting a password from you.

I hate image stealing. I scanned that image so the public can enjoy what I paid for...Not to be stolen for the soul good of promoting another website. Now...If someone were to ask permission to use my image...I would say..."HEY! NO problem...I can even give you a larger scan if you like!" I wouldn't even ask for credit on the page...But that would be nice too...So more people can come and enjoy my cels too =).

Just my two cents =^.^=