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Sunday, August 31, 2008

What page size you prefer to read a comic? Please register your opinion.

Concerning the resolution of the scanned images, an interesting anonymous comment I received on the last post. It goes like this:
Anonymous said...
The greater the original image is, the better I can get it to read / print due to computer technics (dithering / smothing, etc.) A friend of mine says: "there is no need of 10 MPixels digital photo camera, 2MB are enough" ! I do not think so, I explain to him and let him do what he feels is good for him. Cheers.
Now, it's an old debate. What should be the ideal page size of a scan to be read without disturbing comfort level? Most of the indrajal comics posted on blogs are typically of a size smaller than 800 pixels wide, and no one had any problem reading them so far. Most of Mr. Ajay Mishra's work fall in this category. CW is also posting his scans in the same range. In fact he has set the height of the imges at 1024 pixels which makes the width falling somewhere in between 760-770 px.

Over three years ago, when TCP started posting indrajals, most computer screens were having 800x600 resolution set, but during this period many of them have migrated to 1024x768 px or even higher. The new comers are also having a higher resolution on their PCs. The sitemeter stats shows that majority is using 1024px resolution today. That makes the old pages to appear quite small on screen.

Obviously this is the time to increase the size of the page so that the comics can be enjoyed to the fullest. But what should be the ideal size then? For last many issues I am posting 1024px wide pages. Most of the comics contributed by Anurag to the indrajal community are even larger than this. While it is good to have big pages but that poses another big problem: a huge file size of around 20 MB per comic.

Today most of the visitors are on broad-band, so we can imagine that they would not have any issue with a large file size. But I still believe 20 MB is a bit too much for a 32 page comic. It is like a luxury that everybody cannot be expected to afford. Aren't we limiting the expansion of the community by providing such big files when under 10 MBs can be achieved rather easily? I happen to think so.

One very important aspect of all this discussion is to remind the bloggers of the target audience. I do believe, to attract new generation towards sweet comic culture the things must be made as simple as possible for them. Isn't that the expressed goal of most of our fellow comic bloggers?

Think it over friends. It's ok with established comics lovers. They would be going for even 50 MB file but can you really expect someone who has not tasted the thrills of Indrajalian era to download and read that big a comic? Then how are we going to increase our user base?

And now for our anonymous friend. Dear anon, You may be quite an expert with the graphical software (smoothing/dithering etc), but for majority of the visitors a good trade-off between page size and file size is also important. A 10 MP camera is always better than a 2 MP camera "IF" you don't have any budgetary constraints to take care of.

Have your say on the issue friends.

I wanted to announce a new experiment in comic posting in this post. But the current post has already become too lengthy. Will give the details in my next post. Don't forget to check it.

Cheers.

9 comments:

  1. Wonderful,well said,TPH.iam glad you think from viewer's point of view.
    You are absoutely right.IT DOES POSE SERIOUS threat to Indrajalians who cannot afford big file size.
    I wud reckon the file size under 10 mb,preferably 5MB to be precise.

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  2. Great.... TPH. Size does matter.... in this case it is better to be between 7-10 mb. this will also preserve the clarity of the comics. I know its difficult to download big file for some, it certainly dont matter for me.

    I however agree with Chandan about threat to indrajalians who cannot afford big file size.

    Saif.

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  3. TPH: I believe 1024px wide pages are good enough. I think about 6 to 8 MB is a good size for an Indrajal (with ads & all).

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  4. the current standard is (width)1280
    which may increase someday considering the popularity of wide screen monitors.
    as for size data storage is becoming cheap day by day, so that should not be problem.
    internet connections are also expanding day by day.
    a single page scanned at 300dpi and saved as 1280 witdh is normally in the range of 400-700 KB
    but i believe that size should never be a problem or looked into that much.
    still there are some users who dont have high speed connections,
    for them 2 versions can be provided a low quality (size ~ 5-10 mb) version and a high quality (saved at best possible quality as can be done) can be provided.

    remember never compromise quality for quantity for such rare gems which may never see a rescan...

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  5. Sure.... quality is primary, big file sizes will not be a problem. Please continue with the posting and regularly, too. How about once ina week? Thanks.

    Mozz.

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  6. I always check this particular blog on IC and get very desponded if there is no posts for days together. Please post at regular intervals, agree with Mozz, even twice a week would be better.
    Take care... dude!

    Ajit

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  7. I would personally prefer mid quality (less than 10 MB size). Its for practicality. They are readable, prints are not too bad and do not take ages to download.
    Ravi Gokhale

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  8. Am agree wid Ravi,allthough high reslutions r good,but there r some HUGE files which I personally don liked!

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  9. Hi all,

    I am the original "anonymous" who talked about small sized comics.

    The solution is not perfect: create a small resolution for people who can't get hi-res and the hi-res archive. I started to see 1600 (or greater) hi-res scans.

    OIC wrote:
    remember never compromise quality for quantity for such rare gems which may never see a rescan...

    Yes, this is also a good reason to talk about quality (and Hi-Res) scanned files.

    BTW: I do not wanted to sound "offensive", but I really like quality.

    EARS

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