“Generation Loss” by David Elliott shows what a JPEG image can look like after saving it 600 times, each time slightly increasing the compression.
via Boing Boing
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{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Cool… if you keep staring at the final image, I swear I see Madonna on a horse wearing lederhosen.
Interesting, I’ve been curious about this. I’ve been wanting to do something similar with MP3 compression at various quality settings.
Come to think of it, I’d like to see this go far beyond 600 saves… I wonder if it hits homeostasis, or the noisy result keeps changing indefinitely.
JPEG is lossy compression; each time info is lost. Thus, it reaches a point where there is not enough info for an image. Would not happen with lossless compression. JPEG is a wavelet based technique based on sine waves.
@Robert Solomon.
I believe you’re thinking of JPEG2000, which is wavelet based, but JPEG itself isn’t.
@Robert, I understand what you’re saying but the precise compression depends on the image content. There could be an image which either can be maximally compressed without loss – for instance, by your reasoning, a solid black image, because an image cannot contain any less content than that. Or perhaps you get a cycle of images which repeats. I think an experiment is called for.
There are ways around it… try this with RealWorld Photos editor and it will stay the same after 600 saves.
Neat, it starts looking like a Monet at one point.
Reciprocal entropy
Should have chosen a better image, a face probably..Barack Obama?
Why increase the compression every time? (and how was that increase done 600 times??) Test should be done at a decent compression setting, like 80%, and that setting kept for the 600 times -more realistic. (like saving 600 times is realistic, lol).
PS: Very cool video. I should have said that first. :-)