balesio contacted me via this blog for a review of their software and in exchange, offered a copy of this software ($35, downloadable). At first I declined, because of an obvious conflict of interest. I later decided to try the try a demo-version and then had to accept the paid version in order to complete the testing. The program has a unique purpose and should be of interest to my readers. This is not a white-washed review. You will find both good and bad with the software.
File Compression
"FILEminimizer Pictures 2.0", by "balesio," is a unique product. What it likes to do for a living is compress pictures to a smaller physical-disk/file size, without changing the nature of the original picture. This is *not a resize* -- a [1024 x 768] picture remains the same physical size but it will consume significantly less disk space.Features:
- Usually 60 to 80% smaller file sizes
- Smaller File Sizes = faster download times
- Images keep details; visually you cannot tell (amazingly true)
- Files can keep their original size and still be compressed
- Files retain their extension (*.JPG)
- Once compressed, no special software is required
- Images can be used anywhere
ToxawayFalls.jpg 3.2MB (original)
ToxawayFalls.jpg 900K (compressed)
The compressed picture looks identical to the original. Look at this composite view; one side is uncompressed and the other is original. Can you tell which is which? Click the image for a slightly larger view; click Back to return.
(Note: Original image: [3872 x 2582] pixels; reduced to 800 pixels wide for this page. For obvious reasons, the full image was not uploaded to this blog or the page-load times would have been horrendous. Even with this change, this composite image is over 600K. With a critical eye on the original pictures, I could not visually tell one from the other. At high magnification the differences were difficult to detect even with a relatively trained eye.)
Resize vs Compressed
Compressing the image, where the final image is the same size but takes less disk space and less time to transmit, is different than resizing the image. Programs, such as FotoSizer (reviewed here), can reduce the photograph's size (from say, [3872 x 2582] pixels to [800 x 600]) and the resulting file-size, as well as the image size, will be much smaller.
...but in the process of resizing, the image is stripped of detail and pixels are lost. If the image were re-sized small enough and then sent to a printer, the output would be noticeably degraded.
Contrast this with FILEminimizer. It keeps the file's physical size the same (for example, 3872 pixels wide) but can compress the underlying file-size without loosing obvious detail. I am not proposing you do this for archival picture printing, but if you wanted a full-sized picture displayed on a web page, the new size would be vastly smaller. And, if it were printed, the results would be indistinguishable from the original.
For example, many of the illustrations in this article were compressed with this product. Changes like this are normal:
230K to 82K
250K to 96K
1.8MB to 470K
This means: Webpages and Blogs load faster.
The Keyliner blog had problems with its top-banner, originally this file was about 400K and it took seconds to load the page. Now, with the compressed banner, the page loads noticeably faster. (Prove this yourself by pressing Ctrl-F5 right now, the browser will flush its cache and re-load from scratch, giving a real-world load time. However, this particular article, with its large demonstration graphics still loads slower than a normal page.)
Using FILEminimizer:
"FILEminimizer Photo" is straight-forward to use. Launch the program, click Open Files (or Add to List) and browse to your files.
(225K to 82K; this has not been resized. Click to view the full-sized image; Back to return)A resulting screen looks like this:
(253K to 96K; Click to view full-size; Back to return)
RealWorld:
In the past, I would never upload full-sized illustrations like the two directly above (even though blogspot reduces them for display, the entire file still has to be downloaded, regardless of its displayed-size).
Instead, I would use my photo-editor to resize the image down from [800 x 400] pixels at 400K, to a smaller size -- usually about 450 pixels wide (82K). Once resized, the smaller file could be uploaded. This way, you the poor reader, would not be trounced by large download times. But because the images were resized, you can't click on them to view the full-size.
With FILEminimizer, I can upload a full-sized image, in all of its glory and let BlogSpot size it for the column width. With a single-click, the graphic opens in a new, full-sized window and yet the entire file is just (96K). Clicking one of the two graphics above to see the real-size; note the graphic does not download a second time, you already downloaded it when the page was first displayed. Click Back to return to this article.
Why not a Photo Editor?
With most photoeditors, you can compress the images manually. When saving JPG, most have options that let you pick the compression level. But you have to do this manually for each image and if not careful, the original image can be overwritten. With FILEminimizer, I can grab all of the articles in one pass and compress them with no risk to the originals. This has turned out to be surprising convenient.
The compressed results are nearly identical. Compare the original file with the manual and FILEminimizer method: Look at the highly-magnified closeup.
- Original, uncompressed image (Keyliner banner graphic)
- PaintShopPro Compressed at 17%
- FILEminizimer Standard Compression
(This image is uncompressed. Original graphic 398K, PSP: 24K, FM: 24K) Click image for a full-sized view (this image: 222K); click Back to return. This is a harsh test; in any normal photograph you can not detect artifacts such as these and these are here because of the homogeneous coloring. Dithering on single-color backgrounds is common in JPG images and is normally not visible. At the top of this blog, note the banner-graphic -- it has been compressed with FileMinimizer; I bet you would have never noticed the dithering until now. This compressed graphic has noticeably improved my page-load speeds.
How do they Do this?
I do not claim to be a mathematician, but I ran an experiment. A completely black JPG box with bisecting white lines was built and compressed. Using a hex-editor, I compared the two files, knowing there would be wide swaths of repeating code. At the risk of scaring readers, you can see where FILEminimizer replaced repeating sections with more compact structures -- all apparently legal with JPG files. However, I admit I did not find similar patterns in a normal photograph but knowing how compression works, the idea must be similar. This was a fun experiment.
(this image: 477K, compressed to 133K Click for larger view; Back to return)Problems with the Software:
No review is complete without finding rough spots. None of the problems were insurmountable and most are just observations.
- By default, the software can switch file-types (from JPG to PNG, BMP to JPG, etc.) as it does the compression. In practice, this rarely happens: JPG's tend to stay JPG, but there are exceptions. For example, the all-black square converted from JPG to PNG (with a monsterous 99.1% compression -- no surprise). But the new extension surprised me.
This was easily changed with an option but unsuspecting new users might not understand this. I think this option is best left unchecked. However, without this option, some filetypes, especially BMP, will not compress -- but who uses BMP's anymore?
- Also by default, the software can make image-size changes to the original. For example, in the waterfall pictures above, I found the image changed from [1440 x 900] to [1152 x 864]. It took a few moments to find out why. In the Custom settings, I found this oddly-placed screen-size list. My screensize was not in the list:
(original image: 112K, now 33K)- This was resolved by unchecking the option, "Allow image to resize".
This pointed out several issues. First, I believe the software is choosing from this list when it makes the decision to resize and when it does, it crops the image to fit; Having an image resize and crop surprised me. Conservatively, this option should be left off by default. See this article for instructions on how to properly crop an image: Desktop Wallpaper Cropping.
- Also, by not having my screen-size represented, this feature may not work properly, as I proved with my monitors. And there are other sizes missing; for example Netbooks have unusual sizes: [1024 x 576].
- It strikes me odd this screen-size setting is in the Custom Compression panel. It should be near the "Allow Image to be Resized" switch.
Overall Design Concerns:
Although the opening screen is easy to understand, there are 3 places you can click to add files. This may be nit-picky, but I wondered what the differences were -- and when all was said-and-done, I wanted a fourth method, which balesio did not supply: I can't drag-and-drop from Windows Explorer on top of the window; this was the first thing I tried.
(resized before compression from 290K to 75K; then compressed to 15K. Notice you cannot click this image to see the larger size.)
I also noticed the program would compress already-compressed files. I wished it wouldn't. With all the testing I had to do, this may be a non-event and you wouldn't see this in real life, but it could happen. It seemed like I could compress a file into oblivion if I tried hard enough.
Parenthetically, wouldn't it be neat if PaintShopPro could tap into this software, from within its own menus? And it would be neat if I could resize and compress the photos at the same time; this way, this one tool could handle all of my post-editing needs.
Real-World Photographs:
There are times when I would not use this program:
- For professional photographic printing or archival storage, I am inclined to use full-sized, uncompressed images. Yes, they can get big, especially with the new DSLR cameras. (Like most software, it cannot work with RAW photographs.)
- For large 10, 12 and 20 megapixel images, you may want to resize them, just for convenient viewing (email programs often show the images at full-size. For example, my waterfall picture displays at 53 inches wide on my monitor). If emailing, consider resizing and then compressing; this would be the best of both worlds. With this, you could easily send dozens of photographs, even to a dial-up user.
- Sometimes you need a physically smaller file -- for example, as eye-candy on a web page, where there was no need for a larger image. In this case, the original may need to be resized for layout and design reasons, but once resized, the same image can still benefit from compression. Images in this blog and future can benefit from this.
- In real-world, ordinary photographs, the compression cannot be seen by mere mortals. After working with dozens and dozens of photographs -- I was amazed (surprised, impressed, had-to-look-twice) at the quality. You will be surprised.
Important Windows 7 Update:
2010.01.05: A month after installing, I discovered a bug with FileMinimizer on Windows 7.
Symptoms: When selecting "Run as Administrator", you will get a message "Context Menu Platinum - Unregistered Version" with a count-down timer.
WorkAround: When installing for the first time, choose the custom install and uncheck the "Context Menu Extension". If you have already installed, you will have to de-install the program in order to fix this problem. The vendor is working with me on a solution and I will post an update.
From the split image, above: The right side is compressed. The flat-faced rock near the top fall is blurred in the original; probably due to the water on the rock.
Vendor: balesio
http://www.balesio.com/corporate/eng/index.php
Website shows other great examples and the software is downloadable as a demo.
Software runs well in Windows 7 -- see above for important information
Related articles:
fotosizer Review
DSLR Cameras
Cropping Desktop Wallpaper Pictures
Corel PaintShop Pro X2 Observations
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