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BPG Image format

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Re: BPG Image format

#111

Post by plesner »

loudmax wrote: post #19

I appreciate the historical tradition of using the photo of beautiful young Lena Söderberg as a test image, but it's time to move on. It's fun for us hetero males, but like it or not, this sends a message to young women that they aren't welcome in this field. I wish Fabrice Bellard would have left them out of the demo set. Having said that, all those demo photos do look good. I was wondering how we were going to see…

I just stopped reading after I got to that image. Why, with all the photos you could possibly choose, use a sexually suggestive one? And one whose context is the kind of boys-club software engineering we should be doing everything to get away from. Sigh.

Also, looking at the other comments, the fact that you happen to be fine with that image is neither here nor there. It certainly doesn't cancel out the fact that I'm not.

Re: BPG Image format

#112

Post by j2kun »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #109
frontsideair wrote: post #104

Very out of topic but, is lena.jpg still acceptable? I mean, tech industry is getting better at inclusion but come on, are we still using that crop from Playboy?

Considering that Lenna herself is fine with it, I'd say so. (Unless you want to deny a woman the right to permit the use of her own body for aesthetic, erotic, or academic purposes, which is the logical if ironic outcome of some schools of feminism.) The problem with the Lenna imagery isn't political correctness, it's the fact that it's a crappy scan from a magazine that always had crappy photography to begin with.

The "fine" thing would be to let Lena use photographs of herself in her own work.

The problem is that women in science cannot read a paper on image processing without being reminded that it's a boy's club.

Re: BPG Image format

#113

Post by riffraff »

wmf wrote: post #99
TD-Linux wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are still patent issues, and you still need to obtain a license to use the software. You will never see this image format integrated into any other open source projects, like Firefox, for this reason.

Like how you'll never see H.264, DRM, or WebKit in Firefox?

webkit in firefox?

Re: BPG Image format

#115

Post by sp332 »

TD-Linux wrote: post #54
aidenn0 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that Daala has finalized it's I-frame format yet.

There's no reason to wait until the I-frame format is finalized - a still image format would probably be a separate codec anyway, so compatibility isn't important.

Especially if you're shipping the decoder in JS alongside the encoded file.

Re: BPG Image format

#116

Post by paulannesley »

frontsideair wrote: post #104

Very out of topic but, is lena.jpg still acceptable? I mean, tech industry is getting better at inclusion but come on, are we still using that crop from Playboy?

I briefly wondered the same thing. Tradition would probably be a poor argument for continuing to use it. But being able to directly compare the results with the lena.jpg results throughout its history might be valuable?

Re: BPG Image format

#117

Post by j2kun »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #101
geofft wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't just about having a picture. I'm not sure how you got that impression. It's about the context where it comes from and the repeated use of the picture in a scientific context. If you have a picture of your parents on your desk, that's great and I respect your love for your family. If you keep using a crop of your mother from her Playboy centerfold in the '70s as a test case for your algorithms, and you enco…

>If you keep using a crop of your mother from her Playboy centerfold in the '70s as a test case for your algorithms, and you encourage other scientists to use the same picture, I might be a bit weirded out. And who wouldn't be! But that begs the question, is there a son or daughter of Lena Soderberg who is also a researcher or software engineer working in image compression algorithms? http://www.ee.cityu.edu.hk/~lmpo…

It does not "beg" any questions. It is still a question of context. Sexualizing women has nothing to do with image processing research.

Re: BPG Image format

#118

Post by parfe »

j2kun wrote: post #61
loudmax wrote: post #19

I appreciate the historical tradition of using the photo of beautiful young Lena Söderberg as a test image, but it's time to move on. It's fun for us hetero males, but like it or not, this sends a message to young women that they aren't welcome in this field. I wish Fabrice Bellard would have left them out of the demo set. Having said that, all those demo photos do look good. I was wondering how we were going to see…

I think everyone is forgetting the fact that the uncropped photograph is pornographic. So the rule should be "If you use Lena, use a similarly cropped picture of a nude male model."

People aren't forgetting. It's a disgusting "in" joke. The entire point of including it is because it's pornographic.

Disappointing, but unsurprising, to see HN defending the use of literal pornography in a professional setting. I thought we moved past the Ruby on Rails jerks defending porn in a professional setting as harmless fun.

Re: BPG Image format

#119

Post by ANTSANTS »

j2kun wrote: post #98
ANTSANTS wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you know, there are other attractive women in those photosets, including at least one that appears to be wearing roughly as little as Lena. It's almost like our brains are wired for facial recognition and thus attractive faces are good test subjects for image compression algorithms or something.

Are any of the pictures cropped segments of pornographic images?

I dunno, it's kinda hard to tell with this one:

http://r0k.us/graphics/kodak/kodim04.html

The fact that you call the uncropped image "pornographic" (which, yes, it technically is) when Playboy centerfolds are rather tame by modern standards kinda hints at the real problem here: the boring old American prudishness that has been masquerading as feminism as of late. I sincerely could not care less if Bellard had used Billy Herrington's toned ass as a test subject. The sooner that our society can get past this ridiculous fear of sexuality and the human body, the better.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Bellard is from France, a culture much more accepting of nudity and sexuality than ours. I would not be surprised if he had simply not considered the possibility of prudes across the pond getting outraged over such an innocuous thing.

Re: BPG Image format

#120

Post by jjcm »

frontsideair wrote: post #104

Very out of topic but, is lena.jpg still acceptable? I mean, tech industry is getting better at inclusion but come on, are we still using that crop from Playboy?

I'd say it has enough historical significance to still be acceptable. Consider this: every image compression format out there has an example of their work done on the Lena image. The source code for various compression algorithms may have been lost, but the encoded Lena results for that compression algorithm may very well still exist. This means we can compare between compression algorithms of the past quite easily. We dont have to dig up old source code and find hardware that will run it to compare output - we can simply provide the same input that they had.

Regarding the image itself, it's not even a good test image. There are far better images out there that test the robustness of image compression, but those test images haven't been ran though every image processing algorithm since the 1973. Should we change default test images? Yes, but Lena should still be used as well. The historical data it provides is invaluable.

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