User talk:Snoyes

Hello there, welcome to the 'pedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you need pointers on how we title pages visit Wikipedia:Naming conventions or how to format them visit our manual of style. If you have any other questions about the project then check out Wikipedia:Help or add a question to the Village pump. Cheers! --maveric149

Thank you very much! I'd be interested to hear how Wikipedia sustains itself financially. (I don't see a "donate" button/banner anywhere). And no, I'm not offended by a "RTFM" reply - just tell me which manual ;-). snoyes 06:49 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC)

You're Welcome! Right now all the bills are paid for by Jimbo Wales who owns the server and an ISP/search engine at http://bomis.com . But Jimbo is setting-up a non-profit to manage Wikipedia and states that he will give the non-profit the server plus bandwidth. --mav

That is very generous of Jimbo (even if he does stuff like give away his ferrari;-)). Anyway, I'll be happy to donate as soon as the facilities are up! snoyes 06:58 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC)

Welcome! And thanks for correcting the mispeeling of "iss" in deprogramming. --Uncle Ed

Thank you very much! And my pleasure. Here's to the productive & fun collaboration among all wikipedians - cling. snoyes 22:54 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC)

Hi Snoyes, I don't think changing the word 'with' to 'on' on the [UN . . . Iraq] page solves the problem. on and with are both used, the former by anti-war people, the latter by pro-war people. So we have just moved one POV and replaced it for another. I've another suggestion: instead call it ' The UN Security Council and the proposed Iraq war'. That way you avoid any hint of bias, by all words that could be seen as in any way expressing a POV and instead calling it a term that all sides would be able to use: the Proposed Iraq War. What do you think? JTD 00:32 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

Hi! My name is Adrian and I'm very active adding pics to articles. I've just noticed that my "peacock displaying" pic has lost the credit to me. If I click on it it just says something about "better picture than the previous uploader did" To me there's no change in quality but that's not what I'm concerned about.
It would have been friendly to let the world know that Adrian Pingstone took it and not to have eliminated all reference to me.

I know I put the pic into the public domain but it would be nice to see my name still there. I won't put my name back in to your pic description until I hear if you think I'm being reasonable.
Best Wishes, -- Arpingstone 11:40 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

Further comment: I've just put your 250 pixel pic and my 250 pixel pic side by side in Photoshop and the difference is trivial, certainly not enough to have been worth your effort in deleting mine. That means the "my pic is much better " in your pic description is exaggerated. Your comments please -- Arpingstone 13:07 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

Arp, your pic is still at Image:Peacock.displaying.800pix.jpg, Snoyes has uploaded Image:UberPeacock.displaying.250pix.jpg.

To thicken the plot, I may have a better picture I took of a peacock in my back garden, I'll have a look :-) -- Tarquin 13:46 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

Hi Arpingstone, sorry for not giving you credit on my resizing of your picture, I'm in the process of adding it. I do not mean to be antagonistic, but simply put - at least on my screen, the resizing I did was vastly superior. I actually undertook it because I happened upon the peacock page and was astonished at how fuzzy the peacock picture is. I'll put the pictures next to each other here, maybe some other impartial people could give a shout as to which one looks better. --snoyes 16:14 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

File:UberPeacock.displaying.250pix.jpg, File:Peacock.displaying.250pix.jpg

MyRedDice beat me to adding the appropriate credits, thanks! - and my apologies for not doing it. MyRedDice, You didn't have to add that I resized the pictures, but thanks. --snoyes 16:59 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

My point proven I think!! (that the two images are nearly identical). Have a look at the two 250-pixel pics above. My peacock is on the right and Snoyes resize from my 800 pixel version is on the left. My monitor is a good one (Iiyama Master Pro 410, 17 inch) so I would be able to see any important difference. Only the body of the peacock showes a minor extra sharpness. At any rate, I thank all involved for their assistance. I appreciate your kind reply, Snoyes.

I think we'll simply disagree on the improvement you say you've made. Any comments on the two pics, from anyone else, would still be of interest. -- Arpingstone 19:04 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

Snoyes' version is certainly clearer. The feathers are clearer, the trees are clearer, and even the grass is clearer. --Zundark 19:31 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

I think the left one is marginally better defined, but I have a suggestion that I think could make it better: If you could crop the 800 pixels version to 750, by losing some of the trees, then it should be possible to shrink it fairly accurately to 250, since that's an exact 3:1 ratio... Martin

Snoyes' version is a far cleaner image, with only a modest increase in file size. Sorry, Arpingstone, but if your version is the one on the right, I would throw it away assuming it's a corrupted image. I'm wondering if it is actually a corrupted image, and that maybe there's a final layer of quality that only falls on in some particular application? What are you using to view the image? (I've tried Mozilla 1.2, IE 5.5, and Photoshop 6. Please check that the file size is the same on the uploaded version as the one on your hard drive?) --Brion 20:04 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

I agree with Brion, the left version is of much higher quality (sharpness). Arpingstone, thanks for uploading the images, but please do not stand in the way of necessary improvements. --Eloquence

OK, guys, I'm defeated. ZUNDARK - thanks for your input.
MYREDDICE - I'm interested that you use the word "marginal", which does not agree with Eloquences "much higher quality" and Brions "far cleaner image".
BRION - I view the internet with IE5.5 and all my pic preparation is done from a 2048 pixel-width digital image in Photoshop 6.0 (including the jpeg compression). Yes, my hard drive and uploaded versions are identical at 25237 bytes.

ELOQUENCE - I don't stand in the way of improvements, I only wanted to understand why I can't see the big differences that you and Brion and Zundark can see. I can, of course, see minor differences.

My 19 year old son has just come in and agrees that there is a real difference. So I've wasted all you guys time. I'm sorry! It seems I just don't have proper vision for assessing small pics (I'm 62 years old and wear glasses) so I would be grateful if someone (Snoyes?) would prepare my thumbnails for me in future. I could let him(?) know a new pic exists on his talk page. I'll carry on uploading the big ones, and also an "awful" thumbnail to mark the place in the article. I have nearly run out of images to upload so the rate will slow down a lot now. Thanks for your understanding and I'm sorry I've wasted your time on this matter. -- --Arpingstone 21:08 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

I'd be happy to do the resizing of your pics for you, just leave me a note on my talk page whenever you have a new one. Also, do you want me to upload these resized images, (and obviously note the credits on the picture page, or would you like me to put them on my webpage so that you can upload them under your name? Either way is fine by me. --snoyes 21:37 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for your offer to solve my eyesight problem, I really appreciate it. Don't worry, you won't be snowed under, I don't have much to upload at the moment. I think I would happiest if I go through the whole upload process myself, including making my own thumbnail as a placemarker in the article. Then you grab my big pic, re-size it and upload it as a replacement for my thumbnail. I would like the credit for the big one and you take the credit for the little one.

Maybe I can learn to do a decent thumbnail. Are you prepared to reveal the secret of how you do yours? Why couldn't I simply repeat what you do? I will understand if you would rather not reveal your secrets! In Photoshop 6.0 I re-size the 800 pixel image (it's a .jpg of course) to 250 pixels and do Save As. Then the program asks what Quality I want the Save to be, on a scale from 0 to 12. 12 is almost uncompressed and 0 is appalling! I choose whatever gives me a 20K file size. What can I do different? It's a puzzle!

On a personal note, I'd love to know the meaning of snoyes. My username is simply from my full name : Adrian Ralph Pingstone --Arpingstone 22:16 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

There's not much to reveal, I simply use the GIMP (which is free software). I assume you use microsoft windows (IIRC, photoshop is not cross-platform) - you can get a windows version of the GIMP here: ftp://ftp.arnes.si/software/gimp-win/gtk+-1.3.0-20030115-setup.zip & ftp://ftp.arnes.si/software/gimp-win/gimp-1.2.4-20030119-setup-1.zip (you apparently need to install gtk+ first, and then the gimp. Confusing instructions can be found here: http://www2.arnes.si/~sopjsimo/gimp/).

For resizing in the gimp, right click the image to open the menu and select Image>Scale Image. Insert the selected width, hit enter and click "ok". Unfortunately the gimp usually opens pictures with a 1:2 ratio - press "1" for a 1:1 ratio. Then select "File">"Save as" and save it under a new name. There will then appear a slider for the quality of the image. It is defaulted to .75, "1" being best quality. I usually use values in the range of .75 to .9, but the problem is that I look at the quality of the image to determine this. A good rule of thumb would be to use something like .8 all the time. Good luck, although you might want to stick to Photoshop, in which case you could do a resizing of slightly higher quality than you did with Image:Virgatl.a340-300.g-vfar.250pix.jpg or Image:Tillandsia.single.250pix.jpg -- these are the only resizings of yours that I did not redo (maybe you noticed).

I guess I'm also as inventive as you with my user name: My full name is Sascha Noyes (and I'm male although Sascha is often also used for females - yay for androgynism!) --snoyes 16:43 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

Forgive my intrusion into your user talk page, Snoyes, but seeing the discussion is here already, I'll addd my 2c to it. (Feel free to move this stuff off to somewhere else if you like.)

Here are the two images again, Adrian's on the left, Snoyes' resize from the 800px version on the right:

File:Peacock.displaying.250pix.jpg: File:UberPeacock.displaying.250pix.jpg

File:Peacock-PMV250.jpg File:Peacock-PMV333.jpg

plus two more resizes from the 800px in the second row.

File sizes are (in order) 24.6k, 21.4k, 13.5k and 15.1k. For simplicity, let's call them

(1) (2)

(3) (4)

As all agree, image (1) is fuzzy. Images (2) and (3) are hard to tell apart, though I think that image (2) is maybe just a fraction clearer (albeit nearly double the file size). Image (4), at the cost of being very slightly larger than the 250px guideline, is easily the clearest of the lot, and still only 15.1k.

Image (3) I made from Adrian'r 800px original not by using the mega-expensive and horribly cumbersome Photoshop, but with a simple, cheap ($US30 or so) 30-day shareware image viewer called PMView. (Doubtless there are many others of merit, this happens to be the one I am most familiar with.) It took me about 4 seconds to start PMView, load the file, do 4 mouse clicks and type the number "250". (How long does it take in Photoshop?) No special skills or setup required, I just used the PMView defaults.

Image (4) was made the same way, but instead of specifying 250px, I told PMView to shrink it to 33.333% because (as Martin notes above) even fractions shrink the best. It could be cropped to exactly 250px or (better) just left as is - 267px is close enough IMO.

It's a fairly safe bet that Adrian's original is in a much higher resolution - 2048px or something - and working direct from that may give better results again.

My point here is that shrinking images is very easy if you have the right software. (Again, there are sure to be plenty of other good ones, PMV just happens to be the one I use.) Adrian, your not-so-young eyes and glasses need not prevent you doing it for yourself!

I hope this is of some help. Tannin 06:03 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

Sascha, or Tannin, or anyone <G>! Can you tell me what I can do to get the and smaller? I thought I'd give it a shot but I think I'm denser than i thought. -- Someone else 08:06 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)~

Done. Hit reload in your browser. All resizing done with the GIMP. --mav

Likewise used GIMP to resize, also "levels" and "thresholding" to clean up the "dirtiness" of the background. If you like it better cleaner I've got Hanno2 also done (I just need to upload). --Ducker 08:29 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

Upped Hanno2.png, you can keep it or not to your liking. --Ducker 08:37 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

I do hope that the very interesting discussion about image resizing can be preserved and made available generally, even if snoyes ends up not wanting it here for all time! Nevilley 09:57 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Image use policy would be a good place. --mav

Wikipedia:Image use policy now contains a brief precis of this discussion. Martin

Snoyes when you resize or otherwise edit an image in order to replace it in a Wikipedia article, please keep the same name so that the person who originally uploaded it still gets credit for it and any text they place in the image's page is still there. --mav

Thanks, mav. I had just finished pasting all my credits back where they should be when I read the note above. They are now seen when the article pic is clicked, which is what I had expected to happen. Anyhow, I remain grateful to snoyes for hugely improving the little pics so thanks to him once again. Now I shall start experimenting with my graphics progs so that there are no more complaints in the future! -- Arpingstone 10:57 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

mav, I did not know that this was at all possible, but I have now realized that it is! My apologies again (you can see I'm new at this). This would have saved me _so_ much trouble in not having to change every page that contained the pictures and not having to list all of the old resizings for deletion. Oh well - you learn. --snoyes 16:03 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

Hi Snoyes - I'm afraid my only secrets with regard to disambiguation are months of practice combined with lots and lots of coffee! Heavy metal was a relatively fast one to do, because almost all the links were about heavy metal music, so I could just copy that to the clipboard, do all the links for there in one pass, and then go back and do the couple that were about heavy metals separately. Also, most of the articles were quite short, so I didn't have to search for the link to be disambigged. I'm usually slower than that, honest! --Camembert

Don't believe him, he has signed a pact with the Devil! :) Nevilley 22:09 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

Hi!! from Adrian (aka Arpingstone). I've put on another pic, see "Kaprun disaster". The big pic quality is not up to usual standard because it's a scan of my colour print (I didn't have a digital camera in 1998). I've used the idea (from someone during our resizing discussions) to use a multiple of 250 so that the downsizing is an exact ratio. Therefore the big one is 750 pixels. Can you do better? If not, then maybe this ratio thing is the solution. Adrian 19:10 Feb 25, 2003 (UTC)

&#38634 &#25033 (snow+yes) -&#35918&#30505

Huh, I don't get it !?!? --snoyes 04:58 Feb 28, 2003 (UTC)

OK, after looking at Ed Poor's talk page I get it ;-) --snoyes 05:01 Feb 28, 2003 (UTC)

That wasn't vandalism and I still disagree re: Wikipedia:Volunteer Fire Department.