poor thumbnail quality
it seems like thumbnail quality is a lot worse than it could be. it makes it a lot harder to appreciate the project listings, also these thumbnails show up on the front page of the site which doesn't seem to reflect well on the quality of the site and project.
i took a look at some of these and the original photos that are perfectly good and sharp at full size are yielding blurry thumbnails. i played with some sharpening options in imagemagick. it seems like the site does get better image compression from the blurry thumbnails, but i think it goes to far! as an example look at this project:
http://www.instructables.com/id/The-Mighty-Thor-Costume/
the quality of the lead full size image is just fine. the 75x75 thumbnail is 1.3k but the quality is really poor (see attached). i re-thumbnailed used a basic unsharp mask (should be available in any image processing package), and i get a far better image (also attached). the new one is 2.5k - but really i think it is worth it.
i took a look at some of these and the original photos that are perfectly good and sharp at full size are yielding blurry thumbnails. i played with some sharpening options in imagemagick. it seems like the site does get better image compression from the blurry thumbnails, but i think it goes to far! as an example look at this project:
http://www.instructables.com/id/The-Mighty-Thor-Costume/
the quality of the lead full size image is just fine. the 75x75 thumbnail is 1.3k but the quality is really poor (see attached). i re-thumbnailed used a basic unsharp mask (should be available in any image processing package), and i get a far better image (also attached). the new one is 2.5k - but really i think it is worth it.
Vancouver Mini Maker Faire 2012
Rebuilding NordicTrack ski machine drive rollers
Looking for New Zealand-based Instructables authors for conference on August 27 in Wellington
Call to makers - Brighton Mini Maker Faire
Milk Crates - not as green as you think
TEDxBaghdad - Iraq - violence, dust storms and open sourced manufacturing
UK Mini Maker Faire - The Derby Silk Mill - New Poster to Share!
