3 ms·

Note to readers: the heavily dithered websafe thumbnails lead to full-color photos when clicked.

by syncsynchalt 10mo ago

altairprime 10mo ago
(And, once, also HDR.)
stronglikedan 10mo ago
only most do
0x1ch 10mo ago
Why is it dithered like this? To save bandwidth? I wasn't on the internet much before 2010, so maybe this is an old technique you don't see anymore.
- zahlman 10mo ago
  Originally, sort of. But also to work around limitations in GIF (which is palette-based; but see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF#True_color https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF#True_color) and because people didn't always have true-colour monitors (or ran the monitor in a different mode due to VRAM restrictions) anyway. In today's context, more for the aesthetic, presumably.
  - c0de517e 10mo ago
    Author - yes, it's "aesthetic", albeit not my best work and I might revert that decision at some point. Was inspired by lowtechmagazine but they did a much much better job. I do care about the blog being snappy and working also on very low-end, vintage hardware though, so that also somewhat achieves that goal.
    - joshuahaglund 10mo ago
      I like the aesthetic choice
- voxelghost 10mo ago
  Author answered below, but dithering techniques like these were common on old computers like the C64 and others, due to the limited ammount of graphics colors available ( 16 colors on C64 if I remember correctly), plus there were usually limitations on how many colors you could use within one 8x8 block , commonly 2 - 1 foreground , and one background color. C64 had a multicolor mode with 1 background, and 3 forground color. But that was still just 4 colors (out of 16 available ) usuable for each 8x8 character block. However switching to multicolor mode took you from high resolution ( 200x320 px) to low res ( 200x160 px) - and yes thats for the entire screen (25 x 40 chars)
- zzzeek 10mo ago
  it seems obvious for nostalgic reasons
  - 0x1ch 10mo ago
    I'm in my early twenties. I only really associate this dithering with comic books, not C64s (much before my time, i've seen one in a tech museum lol)
    - syncsynchalt 10mo ago
      I think the author did it for C64 reasons, but for other reasons it was a vibe in 1995: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_colors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_colors

Note to readers: the heavily dithered websafe thumbnails lead to full-color photos when clicked.

altairprime 10mo ago

(And, once, also HDR.)

stronglikedan 10mo ago

only most do

0x1ch 10mo ago

Why is it dithered like this? To save bandwidth? I wasn't on the internet much before 2010, so maybe this is an old technique you don't see anymore.

zahlman 10mo ago
Originally, sort of. But also to work around limitations in GIF (which is palette-based; but see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF#True_color https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF#True_color) and because people didn't always have true-colour monitors (or ran the monitor in a different mode due to VRAM restrictions) anyway. In today's context, more for the aesthetic, presumably.
- c0de517e 10mo ago
  Author - yes, it's "aesthetic", albeit not my best work and I might revert that decision at some point. Was inspired by lowtechmagazine but they did a much much better job. I do care about the blog being snappy and working also on very low-end, vintage hardware though, so that also somewhat achieves that goal.
  - joshuahaglund 10mo ago
    I like the aesthetic choice
voxelghost 10mo ago
Author answered below, but dithering techniques like these were common on old computers like the C64 and others, due to the limited ammount of graphics colors available ( 16 colors on C64 if I remember correctly), plus there were usually limitations on how many colors you could use within one 8x8 block , commonly 2 - 1 foreground , and one background color. C64 had a multicolor mode with 1 background, and 3 forground color. But that was still just 4 colors (out of 16 available ) usuable for each 8x8 character block. However switching to multicolor mode took you from high resolution ( 200x320 px) to low res ( 200x160 px) - and yes thats for the entire screen (25 x 40 chars)
zzzeek 10mo ago
it seems obvious for nostalgic reasons
- 0x1ch 10mo ago
  I'm in my early twenties. I only really associate this dithering with comic books, not C64s (much before my time, i've seen one in a tech museum lol)
  - syncsynchalt 10mo ago
    I think the author did it for C64 reasons, but for other reasons it was a vibe in 1995: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_colors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_colors