4 ms·
This is going to be an odd comment, but I immediately recognised the parrot in the test images. It's the scarlet macaw from 2004 which is often used in many W
by susam 11mo ago
This is going to be an odd comment, but I immediately recognised the parrot in the test images. It's the scarlet macaw from 2004 which is often used in many Wikipedia articles about colour graphics.
I think this is the original, photographed and contributed by Adrian Pingstone: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Parrot.red.macaw.1.arp.750pix.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Parrot.red.macaw.1.a...
But this particular derivative is the one that appears most often in the Wikipedia articles: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:RGB_24bits_palette_sample_image.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:RGB_24bits_palette_s...
This parrot has occurred in several articles on the web. For example, here's one article from a decade or so ago: https://retroshowcase.gr/index.php?p=palette https://retroshowcase.gr/index.php?p=palette
Parrots are often used in articles and research papers about computer graphics and I think I know almost all the parrots that have ever appeared in computing literature. This particular one must be the oldest computing literature parrot I know!
By the way, I've always been fascinated by dithering ever since I first noticed it in newspapers as a child. Here was a clever human invention that could produce rich images with so little, something I could see every day and instinctively understand how it creates the optical illusion of smooth gradients, long before I knew what it was called.
- malfist 11mo agoThis also used to be a really common test image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna But its apparently a cropped centerfold from Playboy
- tux3 11mo agoThe original Lenna is controversial, but I'm delighted to share the "ethically sourced Lenna": https://mortenhannemose.github.io/lena/ https://mortenhannemose.github.io/lena/
- ziml77 11mo agoThis feels better than the original anyway. I never liked the yellow color that one had. Maybe it was an artistic choice, but to me it just looked degraded, like when white plastic is left exposed to the sun.
- cyclotron3k 11mo agoAgreed. Seemed like a particularly poor choice to show off the capabilities of an image compression algorithm
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- malfist 11mo agoOh my goodness that is delightful
- kelseyfrog 11mo agoWhat's the impetus behind replacing the image with something even sexier?
- DonHopkins 11mo agoCute, but still not as sexy as the original Mandrill test image! https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Original-standard-test-image-of-Mandrill-also-known-as-Baboon_fig9_259521525 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Original-standard-test-i...
- pezezin 11mo agoNow I regretting leaving the machine vision field, I would love to use this picture in a paper xD
- lelanthran 11mo ago> The original Lenna is controversial, but I'm delighted to share the "ethically sourced Lenna": https://mortenhannemose.github.io/lena/ https://mortenhannemose.github.io/lena/ How is this ethically better than the original Lena - the model in that also one expressly approved the usage of the photo for the purposes it was being used for.
- mark-r 11mo agoHow did she expressly approve the original, when she didn't know for decades that it was so widely used?
- lelanthran 11mo ago> How did she expressly approve the original, when she didn't know for decades that it was so widely used? Maybe I read the wrong interview with her, but when she found out about it she expressed happiness about it. Since this replacement image was created after her interview, how is it ethically better in any way?
- dinkelberg 11mo agoLena Söderberg expressed her wish for her image to be "retired from tech" in 2019 (see the end of this clip, https://vimeo.com/372265771 https://vimeo.com/372265771), when the above alternative image was published.
- amy_petrik 11mo ago[dead]
- TacticalCoder 11mo agoAnd a poster of Lenna is on the wall of the Richard Hendricks character in the Silicon Valley series. Which makes sense as he's working on a compression algorithm.
- kazinator 11mo agoIt was shot by an actual Hooker, too.
- DonHopkins 11mo agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42571652 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42571652 DonHopkins 10 months ago | parent | context | favorite | on: ASCII porn predates the Internet but it's still ev... EBCDIC porn really punched my cards. ;) I had to carefully select just the characters that would punch low resolution monochrome pornographic images into the holes of the punch card. Just joking, I'm not that old -- I started with ASCII line printer porn, like "MC:HUMOR;VICKI BODY", over the government sponsored ARPANET, at 300 baud, so it was like a nice long strip tease on taxpayer dollars. Vicki took almost 4 and a half minutes to finish at that rate, longer during busy weekday business hours. If I recall, the good stuff was all UPPER CASE, which made it much more intense. https://web.archive.org/web/20210512025608/http://its.svensson.org/HUMOR%3bVICKI%20BODY https://web.archive.org/web/20210512025608/http://its.svenss... Decades later, somebody on HN with a sharper eye than I noticed that Vicki's nipples were clearly labeled "A" and "B". Go figure! HN: Should computer scientists keep the Lena picture? (lemire.me) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15671629 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15671629 DonHopkins on Nov 10, 2017 | parent | context | favorite | on: Should computer scientists keep the Lena picture? Does "AI:HUMOR;VICKI BODY" get grandfathered in, too? NSFW: MS C0LLINS - 0UI - FEBRUARY 1973: https://web.archive.org/web/20210512025608/http://its.svensson.org/HUMOR%3bVICKI%20BODY https://web.archive.org/web/20210512025608/http://its.svenss... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_clause https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_clause mercer on Nov 11, 2017 [–] Is the nipples being marked 'A' and 'B' part of the joke? DonHopkins on Nov 11, 2017 | parent [–] As far as I know, those were not the points of the joke. I noticed them for the first time yesterday too, after not noticing them for decades! As a teen, I'd printed it out, pinned it up on my wall next to the Cray-1 centerfold, and scribbled a bunch of modem phone numbers, user names and passwords all over it, and never even noticed. I did a quick search for other A's and B's and found that it used those characters as much as any other character for shading, but that sure seems like something some mischievous student, lab member, turist or sentient TECO script at the MIT-AI Lab might have done. There was no file security so anyone could have edited them in. Maybe one of Minsky's grad students was performing some A/B testing or eye tracking experiments. Somebody should ask RMS if EMACS had some special mode for editing line printer porn.
- bdamm 11mo agoI got a bit wave of nostalgia for my CorelDRAW experience. Thanks!
- yzydserd 11mo agoUnsurprisingly, macaw test images go way back. There is one in this old Kodak test image dataset that is often used in CG tests. https://r0k.us/graphics/kodak/kodim23.html https://r0k.us/graphics/kodak/kodim23.html It seems to have been uploaded in 1999 from an old slide dataset. This seems to be the Photo CD from 1993. I suppose the source goes back earlier. https://www.math.purdue.edu/~lucier/PHOTO_CD/ https://www.math.purdue.edu/~lucier/PHOTO_CD/
- ajb 11mo agoThe predecessor of dithering was the art of wood engraving, which reproduced the texture of illustrations in wood blocks used for printing in newspapers and books; necessarily in black and white. It's difficult to imagine now, but there was an entire industry of engravers to many of whom solely practiced engraving of others designs (often supplied drawn directly on the block to be engraved, to save time). These engravers were highly skilled and the artistry with which a piece was engraved could make a huge difference. For example see "A treatise on wood engravings : historical and practical", by John Jackson and William Chatto, 1839[1]; here is a quote (p585 of the linked edition): "With respect to the direction of lines, it ought at all times to be borne in mind by the wood engraver, — and more especially when the lines are not laid in by the designer, — that they should be disposed so as to denote the peculiar form of the object they are intended to represent. For instance, in the limb of a figure they ought not to run horizontally or vertically, — conveying the idea of either a flat surface or of a hard cylindrical form, — but with a gentle curvature suitable to the shape and the degree of rotundity required. A well chosen line makes a great difference in properly representing an object, when compared with one less appropriate, though more delicate. The proper disposition of lines will not only express the form required, but also produce more colour as they approach each other in approximating curves, as in the following example, and thus represent a variety of light and shade, without the necessity of introducing other lines crossing them, which ought always to be avoided in small subjects : if, however, the figures be large, it is necessary to break the hard appearance of a series of such single lines by crossing them with others more delicate." There was even a period of a few decades after the invention of photography, during which it was not known how to mass produce photographs, and so they were manually engraved as with artworks. Eventually however, the entire profession became extinct. [1] https://archive.org/details/treatiseonwooden00chat/page/585/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/treatiseonwooden00chat/page/585/.... (This is the 1881 edition)
- yvdriess 11mo agoThis is the kind of nerd food I keep hoping to find on HN comments. Thanks!
- christophilus 11mo agoMalcom Guite’s new epic poem is illustrated that way: https://www.rabbitroom.com/merlinsisle https://www.rabbitroom.com/merlinsisle I love the look of it.
- quitit 11mo agoWhen teaching print (halftones, LPI, CMYK etc) I also use a parrot. I've used rainbows and chameleons too, but settled on the parrot as being the most appropriate. But now I begin to wonder if I was just parroting(har har) a paradigm.