Mary Fisher wrote:

Hmm, I think you're right too for most cases. But there's something you
don't reliase, which is that we don't WANT to be selling any more than we
do. I keep telling magazines who try to sell us advertising space that any
more would mean that we couldn't keep pace without giving up something else.
We're playing at it, it keeps us off the streets, that's all :-)

And that's a special case - I almost metioned it in my last post, but
didn't. If you're fulfilling the needs of your particular market, and
have no desire to expand, then just keep doing what you're doing. :-)


That's my point. The people who do want them do know exactly what they're
like. Those who might like to see them wouldn't know what to do with them!
We're not catering for the curious.

My instincts say "but the curious have money and run web searches!" -
but given what you've already said, it makes perfect sense.


Not really. They're functional, that's all. A nåhlbindning needle is simply
a fat bodkin made from bone - real bone. A tablet is a square piece of
plywood with a hole at each corner and one in the middle. An inkle loom is a
slab of timber with dowels sticking out of it. They're beautiful only in
that they work, like an S bend under a sink :-)))))))))))

They still *sound* pretty.

--
Grunff

On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 22:05:21 +0100, Mary Fisher wrote:

It's a specialised market, not a site which is of any interest to
people who don't know what the stuff is all about, those who do know
what it's about know what things look like :-)

The sewing stuff yes but bone/wooden combs? I can see that being of
interest to many people who may like to see before they buy.

As for dipped candles thats a mass market item. OK you say (here)
you'll send pictures to anyone who asks but I didn't see that on your
site and it's making your potential buyer jump through a hoop that
other sites don't. Which one are they most likely to buy from the one
where they can see the product or the one where they can't...

A second look shows that you are into authentic reproduction for your
articals, but remember many people may find your site from a google
search, indeed guess who has the first two hits from "beeswax
candlemaker"...

--
Cheers
Dave. pam is missing e-mail

Mary Fisher wrote in message 407b01eb$0$8568
As an aside, I noticed a shrub we have was absolutely smothered in bees on
Monday. I think it's called skimmia japonica. They ignored everything else
in flower. Is it the fragrance that attracts them?

In article ,
Mary Fisher wrote:

I'm very happy to send e-pictures to anyone at any time. What would you like
to see?

Ok, Whats an "Ear spoon"???

Does it actually have anything to do with ears?

Darren - showing his ignorance

In article , dmc wrote:

Ok, Whats an "Ear spoon"???

Ok, should have googled first

I assume you are talking about something similar to:

http://lakdiva.org/coins/ruhuna/ruhu..._spoon_cu.html

It appears to be a spoon for the the ear. who'd have thought it ;-)

Darren

"Dave Liquorice" wrote in message
ll.com...
On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 20:41:41 +0100, Grunff wrote:

Pictures ...

And for web use they needn't slow things down, I use a nominal 320x240
image size for photographs on my website compressed so that each is
just over 20k. Even ones with lots of detail and thus hefty
compression to get the size down don't show it on screen.

Tell me more.

Mary

"Dave Liquorice" wrote in message
ll.com...
On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 22:05:21 +0100, Mary Fisher wrote:

It's a specialised market, not a site which is of any interest to
people who don't know what the stuff is all about, those who do know
what it's about know what things look like :-)

The sewing stuff yes but bone/wooden combs? I can see that being of
interest to many people who may like to see before they buy.

I doubt it, we've never yet sold one to an OMP even when they've been able
to see and handle them. They really are very specialised.

As for dipped candles thats a mass market item.

horror!)

Not beeswax ones and a dipped candle is a dipped candle. To make people want
them who don't know them they have to be able to feel the silky smoothness
and smell the delightful aroma. The special property of my candles is their
burning quality and no still picture can express that.

OK you say (here)
you'll send pictures to anyone who asks but I didn't see that on your
site

The penultimate sentence on the 'policy' page says it.

and it's making your potential buyer jump through a hoop that
other sites don't.

Ah, but how many other sites in UK - or anywhere - offer what we do? When
you're unique and people have been searching for what you offer they'll jump
through any hoop - and enjoy it. We're not talking about impulse buying
here.

In truth there IS another UK site which offers needles, pins and hooks and
eyes and shows pictures of them. They are far more expensive than in our
list - and they are made by us - we sell them to that supplier (a great
friend) at the price in our list. See www.chimera-costumes.co.uk :-)

Which one are they most likely to buy from the one
where they can see the product or the one where they can't...

In the above case they have the choice of paying more for what they can see
(and we have exactly the same return but in advance) or paying less and
trusting us. We have a reputation to maintain, it's a very good reputation.

A second look shows that you are into authentic reproduction for your
articals, but remember many people may find your site from a google
search, indeed guess who has the first two hits from "beeswax
candlemaker"...

No idea - but I suspect it's a US company which doesn't specialise in period
candles.

And we have sent them to USA, despite telling enquirers that they can get
similar ones there or make their own. I even send instructions, free, on
line. They still order ours - because of our reputation.

Some things are more important than bulk sales. We're too old to want to
expand and have to employ people and have all our time taken by our hobby.
Gini at Chimera is like that and while she loves what she does she's worn to
a frazzle and has lots of outworkers, that's not for us.

We're also control freaks, we need to know that what we offer is absolutely
our own work :-))))))))

Mary

--
Cheers
Dave. pam is missing e-mail

"stuart noble" wrote in message
news:bzNec.8$9z1.1@newsfe1-win...

Mary Fisher wrote in message 407b01eb$0$8568
As an aside, I noticed a shrub we have was absolutely smothered in bees on
Monday. I think it's called skimmia japonica. They ignored everything else
in flower. Is it the fragrance that attracts them?

Not all flowers produce nectar, bees (and other insects) are attracted to
nectar because they need the energy food - the sugars.

I'm not at all sure about fragrance but there is another attraction - which
humans can't normally experience. Some flowers (I don't know about skimmia,
I'm not a garden flower person) don't look to bees and other insects as they
do to us. Our eyes can only detect a certain range of wave lengths, there
are others and bees etc. can 'see' (for want of a better word) colours at
the ultra-violet end of the scale (they can't 'see' colours at the infra red
end). Under certain conditions - 'black light' is it? - these 'colours' show
and it can clearly be seen that the patches of those colours guide the
insects directly to the base of the flower, where the nectaries are. The
nectaries are the organs which exude nectar.

I guess that on Monday it was warm, it wasn't dry and that the bush was
producing nectar.

Being attractive to insects can't be just a function of scent though because
some flowers don't have scents. Or none that we can detect.

So saying, some plants produce 'extra floral' nectar - nothing to do with
the flowers and with no guides we know of. You will sometimes see insects -
especially social wasps - near the base of the underside of laurel leaves.
There are two small openings which exude efn - a form of sap - and how the
insects know about them I don't kno. We can smell laurel leaves even without
crushing them, the efn is so weak that we can hardly taste it, yet the
insects flock to it.

Bees and mammals are very, very different and not only in their physiology
and natural history. They rely on different wave lengths for their sight,
they communicate by chemicals rather than noise - and probably by vibrations
too and they are cold blooded yet need heat to function .... We can't
compare our existences in any way except that we share the planet.

I'm not preaching!

Mammals and plants and birds and reptiles are all wonderful too, every
single cell in any living creature is so complex as to be beyond our normal
understanding.

Mary

"Grunff" wrote in message
...
Mary Fisher wrote:

Oh, beekeeping isn't a hobby. It's a terminal disease.

? Do go on...

If the beekeeping bug gets hold of you it's very difficult to tear yourself
away. There's so much to learn and so many delightful experiences and
excitements. That's probably true of very many activities but I do think
that beekeeping is rather special among all the others. And I've done all
sorts of things in my life!

I've been to lots of funerals of very old people - last Monday I went to a
91 year old's. I don't know if he still had bees because he'd moved to the
north a few weeks ago but he would still have called himself a beekeeper and
still took part in activities. He first had bees in his teens and won a
prize at a National Honey Show at the Crystal Palace in the 1920s. Most
beekeepers don't just give up, it seems to have a hold on them. I've given
up actually having bees but I still read the bee press, attend beekeeping
events and use the products of my hives (honey and wax don't spoil if cared
for properly). Honeybees have given me very many friends, the only
travelling abroad I've done has been bee-related - speaking, judging etc -
and I can go almost anywhere in the world and be put up by a beekeeper. It's
been the core of our activities for the last almost thirty years and I
expect it to be the same when I die.

There's something so mysterious about honey bees that it's impossible to
tear yourself away from them, permanently. And when you understand how much
Man depends on bees, especially for pollination, they can't be ignored. The
relationship, through millenia, between honeybees and Man is very deep.

Not a satisfactory answer I'm afraid, some things can't adequately be
expressed in words.

Mary

"dmc" wrote in message ...
In article ,
Mary Fisher wrote:

I'm very happy to send e-pictures to anyone at any time. What would you
like
to see?

Ok, Whats an "Ear spoon"???

Does it actually have anything to do with ears?

Yes, nowadays people use (against all instructions from nanny) cotton buds
to clean out the ear wax. Early man probably used twigs. The Romans refined
that practise and used bronze or bone scoops, then a multi-purpose tool was
invented (Innovations was around even then) which brought together the ear
scoops and tweezers in one tool.

Mary


Darren - showing his ignorance

"dmc" wrote in message ...
In article , dmc wrote:

Ok, Whats an "Ear spoon"???

Ok, should have googled first

I assume you are talking about something similar to:

http://lakdiva.org/coins/ruhuna/ruhu..._spoon_cu.html

It appears to be a spoon for the the ear. who'd have thought it ;-)

It is. Except that I though we called ours ear scoops. And our bone ones are
much nicer:-)

Mary

Darren

On Tue, 13 Apr 2004 10:10:31 +0100, "Mary Fisher"
wrote:

Good Morning!


Ah, but how many other sites in UK - or anywhere - offer what we do? When
you're unique and people have been searching for what you offer they'll jump
through any hoop - and enjoy it.

I've been following this thread with some attention, and have learned
many new things about the way of bees for which I thank you!

I've been involved with the web since it crept out of CERN - initially
as an information resource and laterly as a marketing and transaction
medium. I had great hopes of it in the early years but have now come
to view it with a deal of scepticism, although still deriving my main
income from it!

On the whole I agree with Mary Fisher - she has identified precisely
the What and Why and When And How and Where and Who of her site and
its audience - things that many Information Architects, Web
"designers" and Knowledge Managers signally fail to do. I would
counsel leaving that part of the site well alone.

It is obvious that there is much to be learned about these artifacts
and their uses and history. I wonder if a set of illustrated pages,
not necessarily aimed at selling your wares, would be a useful
addition to the web - there's so much dross and inaccurate
cut'n'pasted repetition that truly original material is a welcome
discovery. And if you do ... please include the bees!

DN

On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 22:21:06 +0100, Grunff wrote:


Please trust me on this one - getting people to buy something from a
website (either online or by picking up the phone) is what I do for a
living. A few pics can really make a difference to people's perception
of the product and the supplier.

I don't think we really need a picture of the supplier do we .. ?

T i m

"T i m" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 22:21:06 +0100, Grunff wrote:


Please trust me on this one - getting people to buy something from a
website (either online or by picking up the phone) is what I do for a
living. A few pics can really make a difference to people's perception
of the product and the supplier.

I don't think we really need a picture of the supplier do we .. ?

Just for that ...

:-)

Mary

T i m

On Tue, 13 Apr 2004 15:06:54 +0100, "Mary Fisher"
wrote:


"T i m" wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 22:21:06 , Grunff wrote:


Please trust me on this one - getting people to buy something from a
website (either online or by picking up the phone) is what I do for a
living. A few pics can really make a difference to people's perception
of the product and the supplier.

I don't think we really need a picture of the supplier do we .. ?

Just for that ...

Ok, I'm sorry .. I'll take it all back!

(don't be rude to Mary folks or she'll send you some pictures of
herself dressed in some very bizzare gear ..!) shudder

Sorry again ...

T i m

And I though only bees haid hairy legs!

"Dev Null" wrote in message


On the whole I agree with Mary Fisher - she has identified precisely
the What and Why and When And How and Where and Who of her site and
its audience - things that many Information Architects, Web
"designers" and Knowledge Managers signally fail to do. I would
counsel leaving that part of the site well alone.

That's very kind. I don't like many of the sites I see, too much colour,
movement, noise, pictures ... it seems that if it *can* be done designers
*will* do it. I worked on the KISS system - partly through ignorance
-) -when I 'designed' my site. I still haven't mastered Dreamweaver but I
enjoy learning new skills more than anything else so am prepared to be
guided. At the moment a grandson (of course!) answers any questions I ask.

It is obvious that there is much to be learned about these artifacts
and their uses and history. I wonder if a set of illustrated pages,
not necessarily aimed at selling your wares, would be a useful
addition to the web

I had wondered about that but don't know how to go about it. At the moment
all the pictures are stored in My Pictures folder, carefully classified for
easy retrieval. Not that I need to retrieve them often. It's mostly so that
Spouse can be reminded of previous work and specifications.

- there's so much dross and inaccurate
cut'n'pasted repetition that truly original material is a welcome
discovery.

I know ... to say that I distrust all websites is not true, there are some
excellent ones. But you have to sift them from the rest. I don't think
that's peculiar to websites though, I have a lot to do with bee book
publishing and know that plagiarism is the rule rather than the exception
there as it probably is in much hobby literature. My publisher always says
that there are only two good books on beekeeping, they're both out of print.
And he makes his living from publishing bee books! Being on the inside, like
you in your discipline, he knows ...

And if you do ... please include the bees!

LOL! I don't have the facility for close up photography and there are some
excellent professional shots of them anyway. As for hives and beekeepers,
well one set of hives looks much like another set, beekeepers mostly look
the same too when they're dressed in their 'My God They've Landed' suits ...

I do have one or two pictures of me with honey and candles but I think
they're uninspiring. They were taken by my photographer boss when I did have
the idea that p.r.o. pictures might be useful. They weren't. The only ones
publicity people do want, to put in event leaflets and the like, are those
of us in period clothing. And no bees.

Thank you for your comments.

Mary

DN

"T i m" wrote in message
...


I don't think we really need a picture of the supplier do we .. ?

Just for that ...

Ok, I'm sorry .. I'll take it all back!

(don't be rude to Mary folks or she'll send you some pictures of
herself dressed in some very bizzare gear ..!) shudder

Shhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry again ...

T i m

And I though only bees haid hairy legs!

Mary Fisher wrote in message 407bb1e2$0$8570
Not all flowers produce nectar, bees (and other insects) are attracted to
nectar because they need the energy food - the sugars.

I'm not at all sure about fragrance but there is another attraction - which
humans can't normally experience. Some flowers (I don't know about skimmia,
I'm not a garden flower person) don't look to bees and other insects as
they
do to us. Our eyes can only detect a certain range of wave lengths, there
are others and bees etc. can 'see' (for want of a better word) colours at
the ultra-violet end of the scale (they can't 'see' colours at the infra
red
end). Under certain conditions - 'black light' is it? - these 'colours'
show
and it can clearly be seen that the patches of those colours guide the
insects directly to the base of the flower, where the nectaries are. The
nectaries are the organs which exude nectar.

I guess that on Monday it was warm, it wasn't dry and that the bush was
producing nectar.

Being attractive to insects can't be just a function of scent though
because
some flowers don't have scents. Or none that we can detect.

So saying, some plants produce 'extra floral' nectar - nothing to do with
the flowers and with no guides we know of. You will sometimes see insects -
especially social wasps - near the base of the underside of laurel leaves.
There are two small openings which exude efn - a form of sap - and how the
insects know about them I don't kno. We can smell laurel leaves even
without
crushing them, the efn is so weak that we can hardly taste it, yet the
insects flock to it.

Bees and mammals are very, very different and not only in their physiology
and natural history. They rely on different wave lengths for their sight,
they communicate by chemicals rather than noise - and probably by
vibrations
too and they are cold blooded yet need heat to function .... We can't
compare our existences in any way except that we share the planet.

I'm not preaching!

Mammals and plants and birds and reptiles are all wonderful too, every
single cell in any living creature is so complex as to be beyond our normal
understanding.
Thanks for the insight. I'm not a garden flower type either but that skimmia
scent blows your head off, and obviously the bees appreciate it too.

"stuart noble" wrote in message
news:wbTec.757$Rf.653@newsfe1-win...

Mary Fisher wrote in message 407bb1e2$0$8570

do to us. Our eyes can only detect a certain range of wave lengths, there
are others and bees etc. can 'see' (for want of a better word) colours at
the ultra-violet end of the scale (they can't 'see' colours at the infra
red
end).

That's not the whole story, they can't see several colours at the red end of
the spectrum, which we can. Sorry if you were misled.

Thanks for the insight. I'm not a garden flower type either but that
skimmia
scent blows your head off, and obviously the bees appreciate it too.

I was at Harewood House on Saturday and the scent of the intensely blue
hyacinths in the parterre was blowing my head off too but there wasn't a bee
in sight in that area ...

There's so much we don't know - although I'm sure someone somewhere has made
proper stuies of what bees smell. They certainly have on what a bee can see.

Mary

"Mary Fisher" wrote in message . net...
"Rob Graham" wrote in message
Last week I dismantled equipment which was occupied by a swarm last July.
the colony had died, I found a small cluster which obviously couldn't travel
across the comb to access the large quantities of honey. It was, I'm sorry
to say, convenient for me that the bees died but it could be said that if
they were strong enough to survive they would have done. There was one wasp
in the pile, dead. That's meaningless!

Where abouts are you -

Inner city Leeds. I'm just west of Edinburgh.

As you talk of an
apiary, I take it that you have a significant number of hives; I think
in my enthusiastic youth I got up to 8 at one stage but 3 or 4 is
quite enough now.

No, I don't think we ever had more than fifteen but more than two would have
been too many to keep in our garden with unsympathetic neighbours. A friend
who has an organic goat farm wanted bees on her land and invited us to put
them there. It was idyllic. But I've developed arthritis and because
sometimes my fingers are too weak to turn the page of a magazine I know that
it would be dangerous for me to handle frames. I sold or gave away almost
all my equipment and some of my books, the bees themselves went to an
enthusiastic and intelligent man I met on a newsgroup.

I've seen too many old beekeepers neglect their bees through infirmity, it
does no-one any good (including the bees) and I was determined that it
wouldn't happen to me.

I'm so sorry to hear about the arthritis - suffer a bit myself but not
seriously. Really damning when it destroys your interests. Just
about to get new neighbours ourselves - hope they aren't going to be
the difficult type. I've kept bees here for 30 years and it would be
just my luck if some poser with a 4x4 gets stroppy about them.

I started with bees in my early twenties - a friend's father had moved
his bees to a derelict house near Fort William that we used as a
climbing base. I still have a vision of one of the kids we were
looking after retreating very rapidly one day with some bees in
pursuit. But it was enough to kindle an interest and the father later
became allergic and had to abandon the hives, so I got all the
equipment (full of wax moth and muck !! :( ) and then a couple of
nuclei from somewhere. Curiously another previous beekeeper came into
give me a hand and discovered he had become allergic in the
intervening years as well.

Going to get a dose of rape this year as the nearest field is just
coming into flower. Will build the hives up quickly but it's no real
use otherwise and will have to be extracted very quickly.

Regards

Rob

"Rob Graham" wrote in message
om...

I'm so sorry to hear about the arthritis - suffer a bit myself but not
seriously. Really damning when it destroys your interests.

It hasn't destroyed any of my interest, there are always other aspects to
one's intereests. It's not as though I played the double bass ... :-)

Just
about to get new neighbours ourselves - hope they aren't going to be
the difficult type. I've kept bees here for 30 years and it would be
just my luck if some poser with a 4x4 gets stroppy about them.

Don't pre-judge what they'll be like. You know the ways to avoid conflict
but if you have to move them that's no great problem.


Going to get a dose of rape this year as the nearest field is just
coming into flower.

I was amazed, driving up the A1 last week, to see that OSR was in full
flower in some fields.

Will build the hives up quickly but it's no real
use otherwise

?

and will have to be extracted very quickly.

It does but I believe that it's been the saviour of British beekeepers. It
makes excellent soft set honey and mixes with other honeys very well. I
won't have anything said against OSR honey, it's only problem is one of
management and that's up to us. If we can manage to eat on time daily we can
manage to take off the frames on time - especially if they're in your
garden.

Mary

Regards

Rob

"Mary Fisher" wrote in message
et...

snip

I was at Harewood House on Saturday and the scent of the intensely blue
hyacinths in the parterre was blowing my head off too but there wasn't a
bee
in sight in that area ...

There's so much we don't know - although I'm sure someone somewhere has
made
proper stuies of what bees smell. They certainly have on what a bee can
see.

Mary


I think Winnie-the-Poo puts it particularly well...


"It may be that. You never can tell with bees."


--
Richard Sampson

email me at
richard at olifant d-ot co do-t uk

Pictures ...
And for web use they needn't slow things down, I use a nominal 320x240
image size for photographs on my website compressed so that each is
just over 20k. Even ones with lots of detail and thus hefty
compression to get the size down don't show it on screen.
Tell me more.

I don`t know if you have a digital camera (or can get access to one), but
reducing the size of the image is really pretty easy. I use a program
(free) called Irfanview for most of my simple image manipulation, and
there`s an option under the "image" menu to "resize / resample". You
simply tell it the width (or height) or a percentage you want the image
shrinking by and hit OK - it will resize the picture instantly, and you
just "save as" a different filename if you don`t want to overwrite the
original picture.

If you save the image as a .jpg file you will typically see the best
compression. A .jpg may also give you a "quality" option that allows you
to alter the compression ratio - the lower the %percentage, the lower the
resultant image detail - about 75% is the usual setting, but even 50% is
passable, and in a quick test reduced an image from from 27k at 80% to
20k at 50% (320x214). I`d stick the results on a webpage, but my b***dy
webpage server has fallen over, but to "describe" the difference, you
could still make out fine whiskers on my dog at 80%, but at 50% the
finest details were all but gone (the overall image was still good
though, and perfectly usable for normal purposes)

www.irfanview.com

You might also want to get a set of plugins that go along with the main
program (also free) which will allow it to handle a lot more types of
files.

--
Please add "[newsgroup]" in the subject of any personal replies via email
* old email address "btiruseless" abandoned due to worm-generated spam *
--- My new email address has "ngspamtrap" & @btinternet.com in it ;-) ---

On Fri, 16 Apr 2004 01:48:03 +0100, Colin Wilson
wrote:

Pictures ...
And for web use they needn't slow things down, I use a nominal 320x240
image size for photographs on my website compressed so that each is
just over 20k. Even ones with lots of detail and thus hefty
compression to get the size down don't show it on screen.
Tell me more.

I don`t know if you have a digital camera (or can get access to one), but
reducing the size of the image is really pretty easy. I use a program
(free) called Irfanview for most of my simple image manipulation, and
there`s an option under the "image" menu to "resize / resample".

www.irfanview.com

Hi Colin,

I'll second the use of IrfanView for such tasks.

I found it a few years ago when it was even simpler than it is now and
was probably the first example of true 'freeware' that was actually
very good!

It's one of the first things I install (after the OS) on a PC these
days, along with ZoneAlarm, AVG, AdAware, Popup Stopper etc.

I've had a digital camera for over 6 years (Fuji DX5, DX7, DX10 now
F420) and have used IrfanView to quickly 'crop' and / or resize the
pictures. I rarely 'retouch' the pictures as they are often
engineering refrence shots rather than portraits etc.

All the best ..

T i m

On Fri, 16 Apr 2004 01:48:03 +0100, Colin Wilson
wrote:

. I use a program
(free) called Irfanview for most of my simple image manipulation,



I'll give my vote to Irfanview too - it's an excellent utility.

Remember that you may not need a camera if you have a scanner - for
articles that are essentially a relief moulding or have a plane
surface you can get rather good results by placing the article
directly on the scanner bed (taking care to avoid scratching) and
covering with a black matte fabric rather than trying to close the
lid.

In past years there's been quite a bit on using scanners instead of
camera on the jewellery and craft USENET groups.

If you save the image as a .jpg file you will typically see the best
compression. A .jpg may also give you a "quality" option that allows you
to alter the compression ratio - the lower the %percentage, the lower the
resultant image detail -

In most cases that's quite true - however if you've a picture/image
that has large blocks of similar colour (eg black/white or charts for
eg. ) you may well find that .gif provides a lower file size for the
same visual quality. JPEG optimisation is a bit of a black art (or
red/green/blue one!) and the compression/quality trade-off isn't that
straightforward. It's possible to have a small file size that your
machine expands massively in memory whilst retaining a lot of the
original detail. (IN SOME CASES!)

Irfanview - http://www.irfanview.com/

Regards,

DN

On Tue, 13 Apr 2004 09:51:22 +0100, Mary Fisher wrote:

Pictures ...

And for web use they needn't slow things down, I use a nominal
320x240 image size for photographs on my website compressed so that
each is just over 20k.

Tell me more.

Sorry Mary missed this for some reason. See other followups for a
possibly simpler program to use. I use Paint Shop Pro, it has a great
many image adjustment/retouching tools. What I like about it is with
compressed images it calculates the resultant filesize and tells you
along with a view of the compressed image, so you can balance filesize
and quality "on the fly" without having to commit and see if the
results are suitable.

A number of other programs just have a "quality" percentage whatvere
that means and don't give previews or filesize so you are working
blind. You could stick with a known percentage but then the filesize
will vary depending on the detail in the image, I use *very* varying
amounts of compression to get the 20k filesize with very little impact
on the preceived image.

--
Cheers
Dave. pam is missing e-mail

"Colin Wilson" wrote in message
t...
Pictures ...
And for web use they needn't slow things down, I use a nominal 320x240
image size for photographs on my website compressed so that each is
just over 20k. Even ones with lots of detail and thus hefty
compression to get the size down don't show it on screen.
Tell me more.

I don`t know if you have a digital camera (or can get access to one),

Have had one for years!

but
reducing the size of the image is really pretty easy. I use a program
(free) called Irfanview for most of my simple image manipulation, and
there`s an option under the "image" menu to "resize / resample". You
simply tell it the width (or height) or a percentage you want the image
shrinking by and hit OK - it will resize the picture instantly, and you
just "save as" a different filename if you don`t want to overwrite the
original picture.

I do all that on an almost daily basis.

snip

I can do all that but that's not what I thought Dave was suggesting. If it
was I apologise to both of you.

Mary

"Dev Null" wrote in message
...

Remember that you may not need a camera if you have a scanner - for
articles that are essentially a relief moulding or have a plane
surface you can get rather good results by placing the article
directly on the scanner bed (taking care to avoid scratching) and
covering with a black matte fabric rather than trying to close the
lid.

I do that for records of all our smaller products, the result is better than
from my camera - and the process is shorter. But sometimes I have to use a
light coloured fabric for maximum contrast. Occasionally I've played and
used an appropriate fabric background.

snip

Irfanview - http://www.irfanview.com/

I'll have a look at that, never heard of it before. That's what comes of
living under a stone ...

Thanks,

Mary

Regards,

DN

On Fri, 16 Apr 2004 09:34:55 +0100, Dev Null wrote:

Remember that you may not need a camera if you have a scanner - for
articles that are essentially a relief moulding or have a plane
surface you can get rather good results by placing the article
directly on the scanner bed ...

Must try this with SWMBO'd eBay items which are flat, no space to
permenantly install the scanner though and I bet doze will get "upset"
if it constantly is (or isn't) "found".

... and covering with a black matte fabric rather than trying to
close the lid.

Is that more to get a dark background than to blot out what the
scanner can see? What depth of field does a scanner have, if it's only
an inch or so above the bed and the ceiling is the right colour do you
need to cover the item?

In most cases that's quite true - however if you've a picture/image
that has large blocks of similar colour (eg black/white or charts
for eg. ) you may well find that .gif provides a lower file size for
the same visual quality.

Bearing in mind the 256 colour limit of gif. Photographs generally
don't convert down to 256 colours very well any subtle shading ends up
as colour bands, can look very pretty.

--
Cheers
Dave. pam is missing e-mail

"Dave Liquorice" wrote in message
ll.com...
On Tue, 13 Apr 2004 09:51:22 +0100, Mary Fisher wrote:

Pictures ...

And for web use they needn't slow things down, I use a nominal
320x240 image size for photographs on my website compressed so that
each is just over 20k.

Tell me more.

Sorry Mary missed this for some reason. See other followups for a
possibly simpler program to use. I use Paint Shop Pro, it has a great
many image adjustment/retouching tools. What I like about it is with
compressed images it calculates the resultant filesize and tells you
along with a view of the compressed image, so you can balance filesize
and quality "on the fly" without having to commit and see if the
results are suitable.

I use Corel Photo House which seems to do all that ... but I still don't
understand why that would help on my website. Perhaps I should talk to you
direct, I think I'm missing something.

Mary.

--
Cheers
Dave. pam is missing e-mail