hi, I wanted to ask if anyone would know a site with wallpapers or other kinds of art, this may seem a simple question, but when PNG quality (or other lossless quality format) is required, it starts to be (*MUCH*) more difficult to accomplish, im looking for one such site, and for as long as I am searching I have yet to encounter a site like that, I am asking your help im really getting desperate, maybe I should have been born an artist and make a site of my own.

all I can find is paysites and jpg/gif bs .

appreciate your help people, thanks.

Hi monohouse,

have you tried www.kdelook.org and www.deviantart.com
also why didnt you just open the jpg/gif in gimp or similar and then save it as a png.

And another perpetual favourite, www.digitalblasphemy.com. The freebies and user galleries are pretty good - okay, they're jpegs, but as Bad Penny says, it's easy enough to convert them if you must have another format.

In any case, would you really notice the difference between a high-res jpeg and a png on the average desktop.....?

indeed ! that is the case, I really DO notice MUCH difference, that's why I can't use jpeg's (in fact I will tell you a secret, I can't use mp3 either) I know deviantart but that's full of jpegs and gifs, im talking about real high quality graphics, I am not saying I have a SGI monitor to actually tell a serious difference, I only have a Chromaclear which is just enough to notice a considerable difference, maybe if I used 16-bit color depth I would use jpegs (and even then not always cause jpeg's aren't only color-depth wise low-quality, it also groups similar colors together...)

I don't have a problem converting anything to a new format, but it is not the format that bothers me, it's the quality, unless you know a magical way to convert a jpeg quality graphics into a lossless-quality (or bmp/tga for that matter), I really need originally lossless quality graphics, that what this is all about.........

I already know deviantart, I will check the others, thanks, hope to find something.

*sigh* im really getting frustrated, I think im wasting my time when im searching for it, well I guess I will have to spend some time to make my own with GIMP.

Ah, well. Sorry I couldn't be of more help - looks like I need either a new monitor or new glasses, because jpegs look okay to me at 24-bit colour depth. I've no problem with listening to mp3s either...

Hope you have more luck with the GIMP. If you succeed in creating your own artwork, I hope you'll share it with us.

Cheers,

Dave

Ewwww....
When was the last time , you had your ears checked?

well, he probably buys speakers in computer stores..............didn't you ?
anyway back to our own topic here, I think I will manage to compile gimp.

but still I feel it's strange that there are no lossless resources on the net, not only in the graphics subject, but in many others as well.

the internet is probably not yet fast enough for those things, but a png image only takes half a megabyte, this isn't that much is it ?

anyway I hope to change that, I guess I need to install apache and get a nice lossless-only site, although I will need artists for that, but well..........we'll see where it goes time will tell, anyway as for the music, I use monkeys audio which is barely taking a few mb's more that a 320 k dual-channel mp3........while the quality remains identical to the source (100% bit-wise match to the original).

yet still, if anyone can find something in that field let me know plz.....
you just might need to check the eyes, although it's hard to avoid the fact that most people are using lossy image formats, but I believe that is a problem of the internet today, which is bandwidth of corse......it's expensive

maybe in a few years that would change (hopefully) but for now it's still important to note that many places already have a symmetric 10 MB/s connection for less than 50$/month though..........sweden I think, anyway, I would appreciate any sites you may know.

and yeah sure if I will do something that worth posting I will

My eyes and ears are fine. I see perfect and using any kind of monitor I struggle to see the difference between high Q JPG and PNG. I think you need to be a tad less picky. And 128kps MP3 is good enough for me and almost everyone else. I have an expensive surround sound system and the difference is negligible.

i'll take your word for it of corse, assuming your speakers are good enough, the rest depends on what kind of music you are listening to...
as for the difference between a png and a high quality JPG...........try seeing a difference between them on an SGI workstation :P

bottom line is, PNG has higher quality than ANY jpg right ?
and .wav/.aiff/.ape quality is better than ANY ogg/mp3/etc..... right ?

yeah well, I am not sure why I am "picky" as you say, it's just this strangest feeling when I look at a jpg image...........as if something is missing.........it looks so strange when the image is SO nice and a great work but when you actually see it and look at the details you find that............they are not there.........hard to explain, could someone help me out here ?

Monkey's Audio? Why not FLAC? That already has cross-platform compressors and is well supported.

the reasons are

1. compression ratio
2. compression speed
3. best compression ratio to speed compromise
4. decompression speed
5. decompression CPU usage
6. best decompression cpu usage to speed compromise
Edit : 7. best compression to decompression ratio

I hope I didn't leave anything out.........

I know FLAC.....I tested it once but I don't use it because it is not as good as .APE...........which brings me to the reason I want to show you something ...........

http://members.home.nl/w.speek/comparison.htm

What do you mean by decompression? Does that mean decompressing the file back to it's original format, or decompressing it in a media player to hear it?

Because if it's the latter then unless you think at near light speed thus slowing down the world around you, how can you tell the difference?

PS those test are interesting but I'll stick with FLAC since it's GPL

PPS I wonder how different FLAC would've faired had it been used on Linux compiled from source...

Thats one great quote.

I hope I speak for both of us when I say that the most important parameter of a lossless codec is it's compression ratio, here is my priority chart :

1. compression ratio
2. real-time playback decompression cpu usage
3. compression speed

that should be all the important stuff......

ape is almost-GPL

I really have a lot of faith in compiler optimizations, I really do (in fact my .APE plugin for xmms and the mac library and encoder are compiled from source) and in order to demonstrate the difference between them (and believe me I made quite a job with those optimizations) here is my jack output.........

before :
~~~~~~
\Benchmarking: Standard DES [32/32 BS]... DONE
Many salts: 116172 c/s real, 118061 c/s virtual
Only one salt: 115558 c/s real, 116961 c/s virtual

Benchmarking: BSDI DES (x725) [32/32 BS]... DONE
Many salts: 3929 c/s real, 4101 c/s virtual
Only one salt: 4025 c/s real, 4082 c/s virtual

Benchmarking: FreeBSD MD5 [32/32]... DONE
Raw: 4011 c/s real, 4118 c/s virtual

Benchmarking: OpenBSD Blowfish (x32) [32/32]... DONE
Raw: 240 c/s real, 250 c/s virtual

Benchmarking: Kerberos AFS DES [24/32 4K]... DONE
Short: 160307 c/s real, 165265 c/s virtual
Long: 414668 c/s real, 436493 c/s virtual

Benchmarking: NT LM DES [24/32 4K]... DONE
Raw: 1230860 c/s real, 1250874 c/s virtual

and AFTER :
~~~~~~~~~~~
Benchmarking: Standard DES [32/32 BS]... DONE
Many salts: 133568 c/s real, 135739 c/s virtual
Only one salt: 126387 c/s real, 129760 c/s virtual

Benchmarking: BSDI DES (x725) [32/32 BS]... DONE
Many salts: 4601 c/s real, 4666 c/s virtual
Only one salt: 4563 c/s real, 4600 c/s virtual

Benchmarking: FreeBSD MD5 [32/32]... DONE
Raw: 4022 c/s real, 4146 c/s virtual

Benchmarking: OpenBSD Blowfish (x32) [32/32]... DONE
Raw: 245 c/s real, 247 c/s virtual

Benchmarking: Kerberos AFS DES [24/32 4K]... DONE
Short: 163942 c/s real, 167288 c/s virtual
Long: 435456 c/s real, 447080 c/s virtual

Benchmarking: NT LM DES [24/32 4K]... DONE
Raw: 1208870 c/s real, 1238596 c/s virtual


obviously you may not approve this because this one does not use any multimedia functions.........
but I am always open for suggestions, if you got a nice multimedia benchmark tool I am sure interrested to hear about it

damn im losing the topic ..............