Any tips for creating screensaver pictures on K3 ?

[Tumbleweed]

I see K3 screensaver hack is out, is there a thread already on tips to convert colour pictures to B&W for best K3 viewing?? If so, would appreciate a link to it, (already looked but couldnt find) otherwise, are there any tips?

For example, should I convert colour pictures to B&W first? Should I say how many grayscale levels if so when I convert and if so, is it 16 or some other number? Is the size 600w x 800 h?
Anything else?
Thanks

[Richey79]

Don't use it personally, but there's an on-line generator that resizes images automatically for you.

The size is 600 x 800 pixels, as you said. In my experience, the images needs to be in 'portrait' orientation, otherwise the Kindle will try to display it the wrong way around. The Kindle will handle .JPG and .PNG files. PNG is a less 'lossy' file format, so I always think it's preferable.

Should be 16 colour channels. I don't tend to bother changing this within PhotoShop, and just send pictures to the device that have millions of shades: - as long as the image is bold and doesn't have too many subtle colour-gradations, I find it tends to turn out alright. Experimenting with the brightness/contrast and highlights/shadows settings to make the most of the Pearl screen leads to bold images that really pop off the screen.

This thread on KindleBoards is good for getting ideas for what kind of images tend to work well.

[Tumbleweed]

Thanks Richie exactly what I was looking for.

[vkeios]

For small resolution images in grey scale, you can't get better than png. Especially if you pngcrush afterwords.

Also one thing I did was crop out the "Slide and Release Power Switch" from one of the original images to use as a layer in GIMP. It gives my screensaver images a legitimate feel to them.

[TomF]

Originally Posted by Richey79

The Kindle will handle .JPG and .PNG files.

And GIF. That's what the format is for the "dead authors".

[flandroid]

Originally Posted by Richey79

Should be 16 colour channels.

16 colours. Channels are a different beast altogether.

My process is to load them into Photoshop, crop them if necessary, then convert to grayscale, adjust the levels to make them pop, as you say. I also find the 'save for web' gives you enough control over the palette and dithering so you don't get too much banding/speckling in the gradients.

Sounds like a lot, but once you've done two or three it takes all of a couple of minutes.

[ChaoZ]

Yeah, processing in Photoshop, especially with the channel mixer set to monochrome, really makes a lot of difference.

I would also advise against using images with gradients, as they tend to produce a not-so-pretty banding effect on a 16-colour greyscale screen.

I found that vector illustrator art worked really well in the handful of Hitchhiker screensaver shots I created. Really popped off the screen.

Attached one of the best looking ones I adapted: