[Hallicrafters] SX-117 Help

[Horace W. Hall]

>
One of the programs that is available from BAMA is IfanView. 
>

Irfanview is the correct spelling, I think. I don't use it (yet?) but for a
free-ware image viewer it comes highly recommended by people who *really
know* graphics software.

>
K4XL uses GIF for a lot of things since the
file sizes are slightly smaller than JPEG. 
>

GIF is inherenly superior to JPEG for high contrast items like pages of
text or line drawings. JPEG, in addition to being a lossy image
compression, generates compression artifacts in large areas of similar
colors and at the boundaries of contrasting colors. The artifacts tend to
make the results fuzzier looking than the original. The higher the
compression ratio, the fuzzier the results.
 
>
However, he usually keeps JPEG for anything that has a photo since it gives
a MUCH clearer image than GIF when dealing with B&W photos.
>

Actually, I have found that most small b&w pictures will often save in GIF
nearly as small as JPEG files, and generally better in quality. GIF is
inherently limited to 256 colors, but a 256 tone greyscale image looks
surprisingly good. What is sometimes the problem is that the b&w picture is
actually an umpty-million-color representation (JPEG or BMP) of a b&w
image. What is often required then to get a good GIF picture is to convert
the inage to pure greyscale first, and then make the conversion to GIF. At
least that works well for me.

hmmmmm....is this what they call 'thread drift'? <vbg> 

--Wayne Hall
  WB4OGM