Joined: Nov 28, 2005 Posts: 299 Location: Near Frankfurt/M. Germany
Posted: Wed Mar 29, 2006 10:13 am Post subject:
Having a first glance at the condensed OCA thing just now, my very first impression was: I personally would not need so many ways of showing icecream (a handful would be enough) and the blue man is there twice in different forms, one of them would be enough. I personally like the 2nd one more;). Will have a closer look later.
One thing towards the election of themes/folders: many people like to have religious symbols e.g. in private use for creating invitation letters to religious things. I would not omit that category as a whole.
Joined: Nov 21, 2005 Posts: 1285 Location: Witless Protection Program
Posted: Wed Mar 29, 2006 3:25 pm Post subject:
Orgleser wrote:
Having a first glance at the condensed OCA thing just now, my very first impression was: I personally would not need so many ways of showing icecream (a handful would be enough) and the blue man is there twice in different forms, one of them would be enough. I personally like the 2nd one more;). Will have a closer look later.
One thing towards the election of themes/folders: many people like to have religious symbols e.g. in private use for creating invitation letters to religious things. I would not omit that category as a whole.
Peter, DITTO!
This is a great cut. Many thanks for removing all the Stars and Pantyhose!
1. I agree on the Blue Man, second set is better (and enough).
2. I REALLY like the clipart of Lemons but maybe I have a strong ... Preference!?
3. There seems to be several sets of Signs_and_Symbols. I did not have a chance to double check but maybe there are duplicates that could be removed?
4. Religious? Someone will object either way but I vote for including some (but which ones?? ) - maybe under a different folder/name.
5. Holidays! Many items are already covered like: Christmas trees, Hearts, Snow Man.
Got any Fireworks, Easter Bunnies, Lillys, Thanksgiving Horn of Plenty, Sheep? (for those who prefer... ) .... It would be nice it this was a Folder/Category. More suggestions?
Many folks use these items for personal and office flyers and notices.
6. Seasons (Nature?) - Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter. This could cover some holidays too. Got to have a some Autumn Leaves, Winter Snow, Sunny Beaches, etc? Maybe this is a good place for some nature photos?? Did I mention "Sunny Beaches"?
7. Art / Paintings? This is another either or....
Everyone preferences are so different that it's hard to please all, or not miss someones favorite. Depends on the picture/art and the person looking at it. I would not turn down some good examples but would not try to please all. sigh.
Joined: Feb 12, 2005 Posts: 607 Location: Australia
Posted: Wed Mar 29, 2006 5:05 pm Post subject: Thanks
Thanks guys for quick feedback. That's easy to folow up. Glad you liked the lemons. Are there too many limes? I'll have a hack around and come up with a new set later. Sunny beaches aplenty here right now, for a month or two anyway, then wet and windy beaches! I've found pdphoto.org in the meantime. Should be very handy: and lots of beaches and firweorks! Er...what's a thanksgiving horn of plenty, or will I regret asking?
Joined: Feb 12, 2005 Posts: 607 Location: Australia
Posted: Wed Mar 29, 2006 5:46 pm Post subject:
LemonAid wrote:
7. Art / Paintings? This is another either or....
Everyone preferences are so different that it's hard to please all, or not miss someones favorite. Depends on the picture/art and the person looking at it. I would not turn down some good examples but would not try to please all. sigh.
Philip ( Loves the smaller sample set!!! )
What I really needed for guidance, and to remove my personal biases, was a list of The 100 Greatest Artworks of all Time - US publishers are good at bringing out such things I even have a terrific CD here called "Pachelbel's Greatest Hit" - 7 versions of the famous Canon with a "cannon" on the front -get it?
Joined: Nov 21, 2005 Posts: 1285 Location: Witless Protection Program
Posted: Wed Mar 29, 2006 5:50 pm Post subject:
Grin,
Well Sandy Eago is having it few weeks of Winter/Rain. I hope to visit Down-Under in the next few years.
Limes? Well "they" are from the other side of the Family Tree. We don't talk about them to much. They do go Very well with Mixed Drinks!!
Horn of Plenty (Thanksgiving)? Wikipedia says "Horn of Plenty may mean:
* Cornucopia, a symbolic, hollow horn filled with celebratory fruit". Maybe it's just a US symbol (but We use to be ... English?!? )
Pictures.... I just have an "ill feeling" when we get into the subjet of Photos/Pictures. Who has copyrights?, do they really?, do we have to attribute them? Size, Selection, and more. Jons at http://pdphoto.org has a lot to say on the subject.
I think where possible ... individuals should get the pictures/photos/Artwork from sources for their personal usage. We can have instructions in the Wiki to make this an easy task, with little risk. OK, so I'm a coward where it comes to publishing and copyrights. Years of mis-takes have made me a little shy.
Thanks to all for their efforts!! What a fora!!!
Philip ( has lots of opinions. and sometimes I'm even correct! )
Joined: Feb 12, 2005 Posts: 607 Location: Australia
Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 1:30 am Post subject: A Cornucopia? horn of plenty? of images
Thanks Philip
Australia is now waiting with anticipation
In relation to copyright, I am only using images that are clearly and absolutely in the public domain. That's why I'm waiting on release from sanjay pindiyath before doing anything with any of his photos. I think Jon Sullivan's advice is spot on: don't use people unless they are un-recognisable [or figures in public life anyway, or you actually have model release - which I don't and won't], and take care with logos, signs and commercial stuff. So, I won't use the Macca's symbol that sanjay has a good pic of, nor some of his nice candid "people" shots..
As to size and resolution*, I am using the minimal size and resolution I can get away with . Generally ~ 400 pixels as the small "side", 72x72 ppi.
I think if you are making a modern clipart collection, you can't get away without some photos, although the bulk needs to be sketch-clipart, if only for reasons of space.
*PS on that issue of size and resolution there's an issue with the png's from openclipart.org that I would love an answer to: the png's are awful compared to the svg's. Basically, I would like us to agree on a collection, then I/other can go through and collect all those 1500-odd svg's and [hopefully] have a way to batch convert them to png's with no transparency. I can do it individually with each file, with a variety of programs eg Gimp, Inkscape, Seashore. It's a lot of work, but it's acheivable. Or I could pass them on to somone who can do it as a batch, or tell me how I can. That would be much less work And no, Graphic Converter won't work. It can do the second bit, but it's not successful at svg reading: the developer Thursten Lemke is aware of this.
Joined: Nov 28, 2005 Posts: 299 Location: Near Frankfurt/M. Germany
Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 1:52 am Post subject:
As for your last question, Peter, I can not batch convert. But I have a question on this: Which format would be most useful for Neo as a compromise between size of the individual file and quality and scaleability?
I personally do not know enough to decide that.
As for copyright and the photo-question: I think, IF the copyright thing is cleared, we should think of photos, too.
T.
Joined: Feb 12, 2005 Posts: 607 Location: Australia
Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 2:52 am Post subject: Photos
I've lobbed a selection of Jon Sullivan's photos from pdphoto.org onto the temporary website that I set up. The file is a pdf. Did I need to zip it?
ALL of these photos are completely free of restriction, and in a few cases I've cut out people and brand names to make sure there's no probs at all. They are ready to go. I will let Jon know we are thinking of maybe using them, if it's ok with others. There are beaches, fireworks, pizzas and beer. As an instance of the advantage of photos cf clipart-sketches, see Jon's pic of pizza vs the openclipart sketches! But he has no horn of plenty!! He has wontons for thanksgiving! Get with the program, Jon!
As to best format, I presume you mean png vs jpg vs tiff, Thomas? I guess in terms of compression, it's png vs jpg. What's the thinking on these? The Space pics are jpg's, the openclipart is png, so far [although we will have to convert them again from svg, so we could go jpg if we wanted]?
Joined: Nov 28, 2005 Posts: 299 Location: Near Frankfurt/M. Germany
Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 3:15 am Post subject: Re: Photos
aussie149 wrote:
As to best format, I presume you mean png vs jpg vs tiff, Thomas? I guess in terms of compression, it's png vs jpg. What's the thinking on these? The Space pics are jpg's, the openclipart is png, so far [although we will have to convert them again from svg, so we could go jpg if we wanted]?
Cheers
Peter
Well, .tiff's might be a bit large. But I am not experienced enough to rule out .gif or other formats. Perhaps someone else is knowing more. I personally could live with .png and/or .jpg and any other thing that works. My question was just: Is there a "best thing" for the use with Neo? And what about rescaling inserted graphics? The .png's do not look very good when resized, especially when enlarged (am I wrong at this?).
Joined: Feb 12, 2005 Posts: 607 Location: Australia
Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2006 5:39 am Post subject: Re: Photos
Orgleser wrote:
aussie149 wrote:
As to best format, I presume you mean png vs jpg vs tiff, Thomas? I guess in terms of compression, it's png vs jpg. What's the thinking on these? The Space pics are jpg's, the openclipart is png, so far [although we will have to convert them again from svg, so we could go jpg if we wanted]?
Cheers
Peter
Well, .tiff's might be a bit large. But I am not experienced enough to rule out .gif or other formats. Perhaps someone else is knowing more. I personally could live with .png and/or .jpg and any other thing that works. My question was just: Is there a "best thing" for the use with Neo? And what about rescaling inserted graphics? The .png's do not look very good when resized, especially when enlarged (am I wrong at this?).
I'd like some opinions about this. I will have a set of svg files from openlipart.org later tonight [about 1500 images], in line with the discussion and feedback suggestions above. The reason I have gone back to svg files is that the png files in openclipart.org are really meant as thumbnails I think. They are quite low quality, and not suitable for our purposes here. So I will have lovely svg images later.
I will post a catalogue of these as a 3MB+ download. A prior note of warning about these: they will be produced by Graphic Converter, which is hit-or-miss in its dealing with svg files. Ignore that: the actual files are fine, it's just the GC conversion that sometimes doesn't work.
Next step I imagine is either jpg's or png's [see above]. I would imagine we would want to agree on a compromise level of compression. So, the task is to
1. convert all 1500 to either png or jpg
2. remove transparency
If anyone has suggestions as to how we can reduce the amount of work in those steps, let us know. Graphic Converter's batch conversion will not work.
Joined: Feb 12, 2005 Posts: 607 Location: Australia
Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2006 6:29 pm Post subject: Re: Photos
Orgleser wrote:
The .png's do not look very good when resized, especially when enlarged (am I wrong at this?).
No, you're right, T. I've put a page of comparison pics [sorry if you hate ladybugs ] up on this page. It's clear that we couldn't use the openclipart.org png's IMO
I spent a little time yesterday thinking about this issue; really, clipart should be in vector format for best quality (or else in really large and hi-res bitmaps that scale well for decent printing).
Problems:
* OOo and Neo do not support importing the most common free vector clipart format, SVG.
* OOo and Neo are not capable of displaying EPS files (only the bounding boxes), except when the files have ugly b/w previews (which increase the file size; a 72 KB SVG became a 432 KB EPS with 1-bit TIFF preview), but they can print them nicely
* Inkscape can only export in SVG or EPS for vector, or PNG and TIFF for raster; it can't add previews to EPS files, but exports them nicely otherwise
* Illustrator costs lots of money; it can import and export lots of vector formats (though its WFM/EMF export is really crappy--they may as well be raster instead of vector--and it doesn't export vector PICTs, only raster ones)
In search of the holy grail of vector graphics conversion....
Would it make any sense at all to convert the SVGs into EPSs (which will have similar sizes) and then add a small, lo-res PNG to go along in the package, so that people could have an idea what the image actually looked like, but direct them to use the EPS instead? Or will they be too turned off by seeing the red bounding box and having to go to Print Preview to see what the document will really look like?
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
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) .... It would be nice it this was a Folder/Category. More suggestions?
We don't talk about them to much. 
Years of mis-takes have made me a little shy.
