Sciencemadness Discussion Board - Ferrofluid-Art

Ferrofluid-Art

BJ68 - 6-1-2015 at 21:23

The swiss artist Fabian Oefner used ferrofluid for art see:
http://fabianoefner.com/?portfolio=millefiori

Starting point for me was this article:
http://www.geek.com/geek-pick/ferrofluid-and-water-colors-ma...

Over New Year's Eve I tried this, too and here are my results:

Part 1:

Bj68

BJ68 - 6-1-2015 at 21:26

Part 2:

I made the error to save the image file as JPG, so I lost much of the details....

Bj68

Etaoin Shrdlu - 6-1-2015 at 21:42

I really like these.

CHRIS25 - 7-1-2015 at 00:22

Quote: Originally posted by BJ68

Part 2:
I made the error to save the image file as JPG, so I lost much of the details....
Bj68

No you did'nt don't worry. Every image even captured in the best manner via DNG file format (and these are around 10 Mb upwards) needs to be compressed for the web. As far as "Joint expeditionary photographic group" (Jpeg) images are concerned they will always be compressed to just a few megabytes of information, less if it is necessary for a particular site. If you take the image in JPEG FOR the WEB this is preferred rather than taking an image in DNG or TIFF where you need to LOSE information in order to put on the web. Having said all this, You are not losing much, I see the images are 2 Mb each, compression on JPEG's are Very good indeed, probably you took a 4 mb image? you will not lose precious detail on this.

(When you said other file formats, do not save as png or gif, these are designed for totally different purposes).

[Edited on 7-1-2015 by CHRIS25]

Etaoin Shrdlu - 7-1-2015 at 07:07

Quote: Originally posted by CHRIS25

No you did'nt don't worry.

Yes, he did. The images are riddled with artifacts.

.png is a perfectly acceptable lossless format, what are you going on about?

Amos - 7-1-2015 at 07:24

These are spectacular! I'm totally adding this to my list of projects, thanks for sharing.

Oh, and for the record, I like yours a lot better than the original artist's.

[Edited on 1-7-2015 by No Tears Only Dreams Now]

CHRIS25 - 7-1-2015 at 07:47

Quote: Originally posted by Etaoin Shrdlu

Quote: Originally posted by CHRIS25

No you did'nt don't worry.

Yes, he did. The images are riddled with artifacts.

.png is a perfectly acceptable lossless format, what are you going on about?

No He did'nt! PNG portable network graphics image, with the stress on graphics, and why? because PNG is suitable for line and vector graphics, JPEG designed for Gradients and thus Photos. Jpeg's lossy format encodes and compresses but saves much more space than a png. Besides his artifacts could well have been caused by other things, such as the quality of the original, or even too many passes between jpeg and another file format, or even excessive sharpening, it all depends on the original pixel dimensions of his image and how he even re-sized it. So many factors can cause artifacts.

Etaoin Shrdlu - 8-1-2015 at 22:14

Mkay. Allow me to repeat myself. PNG is a perfectly acceptable lossless format. Gradients do not work better in JPEG. Photos do not work better in JPEG. Nothing works better in JPEG except final file size. JPEG's lossy format loses information. Generally speaking this should not be used to shoot photos or save raw files for editing later.

See those areas of solid color? The sharp boundaries? These are not even the type of image that JPEG excels with. As for the rest of your comments, yes, quite unsurprisingly editing or repeatedly recompressing an image can also cause artifacts.

Are you reading from an Intro to Web Design book or what?

(Psssst, PNG has gamma. JPEG doesn't.)

CHRIS25 - 9-1-2015 at 01:44

Gamma, if you understood the meaning of this word you would not have said ===Psssst, PNG has gamma. JPEG doesn't.)====: Gamma refers to a curve on an ICC profiling spectrum and EVERY single file format, computer screen in the world has GAMMA. and apple mac is Gamma 1.8 and Microsoft gamma 2.2 on its screens (however for photographers we are able to convert the apple to 2.2 in photoshop's ICC through a monitor spectroscopy profiling and its software) , PNG 8 and PNG 24 in this context is the very reason why PNG was created - to confine its colour spectrum to the roughly 256 available colours and greyscale tonals to the RGB monitors of today so as to keep screen and software colour management policies consistent and to allow graphic designers to maintain a low Kb usage on the web in order to allow for fast user experience and PNG is very very good for this. JPEG does not need this type of gamma since it is DESIGNED for photographic use.

Colour management is about the very thing you have said which is incorrect ====you said: see those areas of colour and sharp boundaries, JPEG does not excel at this===== I am so sorry but this is so absolute and utter nonsense to the nth degree. You really need to do some research on this: look at those abbreviations "Portable NETWORK GRAPHICS" and "Joint Expeditionary PHOTOGRAPHIC Group", then look up "Tagged File Image File Format" and "Graphics Interlace Format", I challenge the OP to send me the same image, exactly as he took it, I will convert it to png and will edit it in jpeg and post the two side by side.

You said JPEGS not good to shoot photos in ???? I rest my case on your lack of understanding about the whole nature of photographic file formats. And It sounds as if you are not sure what a raw file is. Camera raw is what you shoot an image in and is the BEST most EFFICIENT photographic format in the whole world at this moment in time, there is no better. You then edit in camera raw OR convert to DNG the adobe standard RAW file. From this you convert to any other format in the whole world. You can not convert anything to a raw file as this is like converting a vegetable stew into all its component parts and back into a whole unsliced and unpeeled condition and then back into the bags in perfect order back into the freezer.

Editing files? Everything depends on the amount of Mb/pixels you have in the digital image, edit in jpeg is fine, FAR better than to edit in png which no sensible photographer would ever ever do in his lifetime - this is just plain stupidity. If you can not edit in camera raw, then edit in TIFF, if you can edit in TIFF then edit in JPEG in this order of quality. However you can not take a JPEG and convert it to RAW, this is also impossible and it has no sense at all to take a JPEG and convert that to TIFF. It's like taking 100 pixels and trying to expand them to 1000 pixels.

===you asked===Are you reading from an Intro to Web Design book or what?=====
I have years of photographic experience behind me, have taught photography and this includes every file format for both web and photography, and very familiar with graphic design, colour monitor profiling and colour management principles. So No, I am not reading from an encyclopedia.

@BJ68: Firstly, my Apologies for hijacking this thread, I wonder if you could tell me how you took these images, format, type of camera, any alterations to the file before posting. With this info I would be able to help identify a specific issue if you are interested.

[Edited on 9-1-2015 by CHRIS25]

smaerd - 9-1-2015 at 11:21

Looks really cool BJ68! I bet it would make a cool demonstration with some quasi-'cymatics' or similar. Like putting a speaker cone underneath the paint and ferrofluid stuff

Bert - 9-1-2015 at 15:28

Cool techy art.

Cool headed art tech discussion/appreciation?

Everything's... :cool:

Etaoin Shrdlu - 9-1-2015 at 19:21

Chris, nearly everything you said there is backing up my statements, or not opposed to them. Is it that I'm speaking unclearly? I admit I have some difficulty with this.

Yes indeed, PNG stores gamma information. Yes, this is to adapt to different systems. Yes, this is what makes it good! JPEGs will brighten or darken going from one gamma setting to another. This is not somehow avoided because it was "DESIGNED for photographic use." (PNG was designed to store gamma information to get around this problem with image formats like JPEG.) It's irrelevant to ability to edit but very relevant to display.

This is of course broken in a couple browsers and probably other software, but hey, that's another story.

Apropos of this, every single file format does not store gamma, the gamma from the system is baked into the JPEG pixels...

"Network graphics" doesn't mean "not good for photos." Network graphics can be photos! The name of a format has nothing to do with how good it is, anyway.

Yep, JPEG is crap to shoot photos in. Also crap to save working photos in. Since you seem to agree with me completely on this I have no idea what you're going on so anxiously about. You seem to think I'm not familiar with the RAW format? No, I know what it is. I said JPEGs shouldn't be used to save raw files. Raw files are the base images you intend to work with. The RAW format was named after this (as in "unprocessed"). I'm not talking about the RAW format. We don't even have an argument here.

I never talked about editing in different file formats either? Any sensible photographer edits in PSD.

(I kid, I kid.)

Humor aside, it shouldn't matter at all what file format you open to edit. The potential problem only comes when you save it (or drop color depth, or crop, or paint the whole image black...). Since you seem to agree with me, you shouldn't save valuable raw photos or valuable final versions as JPEG, again, I'm not sure what the argument is.

As for JPEG being bad for handling large blocks of color and sharp edges, this is a well-known problem. This is why JPEG is not preferred for things like line drawings. JPEG is good at gradients. Still not actually better than PNG, but good.

I'm curious why you would jump from using TIFF files straight to JPEG. Yes, RAW is better, much better for storing the data. After that I would say PSD, then TIFF, then PNG, then very high-quality JPEG. But once you lose detail by saving to JPEG, it's gone forever (much like you pointed out you can't go to TIFF then back to RAW). PNG at least does not throw image details away to compression, it just loses some of the color range that you would have had in the RAW format.

I see your argument, and no, certainly nobody should avoid JPEG if they understand compression is happening, but I still prefer PNG for distributing photos on the web where high detail is preferable. Bandwidth has kicked up since the beloved (ha) 56k modem and it seems like a pity to me to default to tossing out information that didn't really need to go.

[Edited on 1-10-2015 by Etaoin Shrdlu]

CHRIS25 - 10-1-2015 at 02:59

Allow me to say that the following is in a friendly tone

My divergence from your stance is only on this point: That the OP remarked that the loss of detail is due to saving in the jpeg format. This, I emphasize sooo courteously, is impossible. I should have done this before but I took one of his images and pulled it into my photoshop. I noticed straight away that it has 72 ppi. Good, for the web, though 100 is now the norm since a lot of screens do 95 ppi. Anyway this 72 ppi revealed a problem. He also has the image dimensions 1272 on the longest side giving a massive 17 inches if printed. BUT his images are also averaging at 2 Mb. This is the problem, he definitely did not use any software that allows you to "save for the web" otherwise at 72 ppi this 2 Mb would have been brought down to about 300 or 200 Kb quite well at high quality. I then summize the following by also seeing the extremely heavy pixelations and colour fringing and colour noise. This is a sure sign (based on the 72 ppi at 2 Mb and 1200 pixels) that what he has done is to take the image at a high ISO rating (800 maybe or higher) and maybe he has enlarged a portion of the photo after cropping unneccessary borders out and used flash as is seen by the blown out highlights, which also ADDS to the problem of colour noise, (and by the way photographers hate flash - we never use it - two things hated by photogrpahers are bright sunny days and flash

), but did that at 72 ppi? A 1272 pixel length at 180 ppi (which is the standard ppi for small compacts) would have made this image 7 inches on a print out at good quaility. I really believe that the problem lies in the way the file was handled after capture and has nothing to do with saving in a jpeg. I can take any image you give me, and save in a jpeg format at twice the size knowing precisely in what order to handle such a file and how to treat it. This has nothing to do with the file format in this particular case, it is all about file handling after capture, and this is my only contention here. Unless he gives me the original I can in no way be 100% sure, but I would bet a litre of 65% peroxide and a case of saint emillion gran cru that it has nothing to do with our innocent Mr. Jpeg.

Amos - 10-1-2015 at 09:47

^^^
And this is what happens when you try to hand art to scientists...

Etaoin Shrdlu - 10-1-2015 at 12:04

Quote: Originally posted by CHRIS25

Allow me to say that the following is in a friendly tone

My divergence from your stance is only on this point: That the OP remarked that the loss of detail is due to saving in the jpeg format. This, I emphasize sooo courteously, is impossible.

Ah, yes, this is where we differ. I have several apps on my iPad which make it impossible to avoid screwing up an image by saving to JPEG. I imagine a lot of phone programs and low-level computer programs work similarly. Not all of them implement as well as Photoshop and GIMP.

EDIT: Some mobile devices "shoot" at resolutions they're not really capable of as well.

C'mon Dreams, file formats are serious business.

[Edited on 1-10-2015 by Etaoin Shrdlu]