For programmers or Anime creators: Best resolution for pictures on the PRS-505!

[ProDigit]

For a while I've been busy determining the 'best' resolution for pictures, pdf documents, and lrf files.

The determining of the resolution could help improve image quality and battery life,and reduce filesize and loadtime at the same time;as well as prevent pictures to be stretched or misshaped.

The theory behind it is that any picture which has different dimensions needs to be resized in order to fit the PRS-505's screen.
Be it enlarged,or made smaller. This costs computing power,and therefor batterylife and time.

The aim of this thread is to find a 1:1 resolution, that the (hardware) reader does not need to stretch or shrink to fit the screen.

To prevent shrinking or stretching, one could already create files custom tailored for the Sony reader. So far I'm working out a matrix. Still a lot of info needs to be inputted.
I've done extensive testing on my PRS-505 and so far I've found the following info: (best and other advised resolutions):

1-Portrait pictures: BEST RESOLUTION= 600x767Pix.
(S)=Small, (M)=Medium, (L)=LArge zoom.
(S)- 600x767
(M)- 900x1050; 450x525; 300x350; 180x210
(L)- 1200x1534; 600x767;

2-Landscape pictures: BEST RESOLUTION= 800x567Pix.
(S)=Small, (M)=Medium, (L)=LArge zoom.
(S)- 800x567
(M)- 1200x850; 600x425; 240x170
(L)- 1600x1134; 800x567

3-PDF Portrait: Still under investigation
377x277

4-PDF Landscape: Still under investigation


5-Picture in LRF: Still under investigation
Book Cover:
In Document:
(S)-
(M)-
(L)-

Any help will be appreciated!



Side note:
On PDF, the best resolution I found to today is 377x277.
Any higher and the PRS uses interpolation.
I tried 754x554, which is to double the tested resolution, but somehow the higher resolution image still gets interpolated. I still need more testing to figure out the 'best' resolutions for PDF and LRF documents.

Formats for comic books

Black and white anime can best be converted to monochrome GIF images.
If you don't posses graphic tools, but only have Windows,I'd recommend you to save the pictures with the desired resolution of above in Paint, and save them as a monochrome BMP. Then later save it to GIF.
If you save the image directly as a GIF file, it will be saved as a 256color (8bit color) GIF instead of a mono (1bit) gif,and the filesize will be larger,and loadtimes longer on the reader.

Any colored anime/comic book, especially 3D animated or with shadow effects are best converted to JPG.

Any anime books with little shadows and details; or any 4color comic books (like pictures included in attachment), probably is better converted to GIF. If you can save only to 256color GIF you may want to read below.

I would recommend ACDSee free version for batch processing (converting any image format to GIF or JPEG).

I would recommend editing pictures in BMP fileformat, and as the last possible action convert it to Jpeg when needed. JPeg is a lossy codec,that will create artifacts. It is best to have as little artifacts as possible in the pictures.

When saving an image to 8bit GIF (256Colors),and don't have or want any editing tools installed on your pc, try saving the picture as a 24bit BMP in paint. Then save it as a GIF.
You'll notice artifacts appearing (rendering).
then in paint click "edit">>"Paste from",and select the 24bit BMP you just saved.
Paste the 24bit BMP over the gif, and save it as a second copy.

Test both images on the reader,and keep the most appealing.

The advantage with the second version of the GIF is, that the rendering will be removed, and colors will be rounded off to their nearest 8bit color equivalent.
This should save you a kilobyte or two per file.

Because the Sony Reader does not show colors,I think the 256 color GIF with rendering artifacts will be better for (Low quality/low color) anime and comic books on the reader.
YMMV though.


Pictures inside LRF
When creating an LRF file, I noted that pictures are not displayed above a certain resolution (further to be determined). I also noted that it is best to save those pictures as Jpeg with a good editing software,and then parse them (or insert them) inside an LRF.
Any non-.jpg picture (.png, .gif, .tiff, .bmp) will automatically be converted in BD to jpeg,with loss of quality.
It seems MS paint saves Jpegs way better than BD. I can not speak of other programs but assume Calibre also saves pictures to jpeg inside an LRF.
Images loaded in LRF are generally lower than 600x758; much lower (still to be determined exactly how low), and therefor having a comic book in LRF is not really recommended.


First picture JPeg; Third picture dirthered GIF; Fourth picture overlayed GIF(no dirthering)
The .rar file can be opened with winrar. Program at www.rarlab.com. it contains grid images for testing.

[ProDigit]

Added: Gifs: Dirthered and Overlayed 8bit image,for comparison.

I do have to say that the first JPeg (300+Kb) can be saved with paint to a 70kb file.

[TwiSteDCBloSsoM]

I was actually doing a lot of research like this about a week ago.

I tend to have constant migraines, plus the fact that my computer is REALLY old so programs like comiclrf and the manga converting program here just wouldn't work for me. Either because I couldn't figure them out or my computer wouldn't run them.

Anyway I basically went my own way to find the best way to convert a volume of manga into a file for my reader.
I started out with resizing all the images to 600x767 and basically put each image into a slide of a powerpoint. I fit each image to each slide and at the end I saved the presentation as a pdf with a virtual printer.. I think I use primo pdf or something.

I did the same thing without resizing the images.. had one saved in a normal mode.. on in a black and white mode. I used a vary of different dpi settings.

In the end I found that resizing the images did nothing on the file size.

Anyway I saved as a pdf from powerpoint, choose gray scale, fit to page, then in the advanced settings of the primo pdf virtual printer I choose black and white, and set it to 1200 dpi.
Oh not to mention I kept the setting at letter sized.. though the pages of the power point were set to 3.47 x 4.45
In doing that I ended up with pdf file that was about 12.4mb.

I put it on the reader and it was excellent. All the font was readable and the images were great. I found if I did higher dpi settings that I'd get these weird white lines on the pictures which made it difficult to read the text.

So my pdf was perfect by itself. Though for naming purposes I wanted it to become an lrf file and all since the titles of pdfs from power point are weird on the reader. I used prflrfwin on my pdf file and I ended up with a 7.92mb file for on volume of manga.
Note that I used the comic portrait format on pdflrfwin, but I unselected the settings like crop and such. It added extra blank pages.

Now I've seen some shots of manga online that people have on their readers.. but this was amazing. The text ended up like 100x better than the actual pdf.



I was very happy with it in the end. More happy about the smaller file size to.

I continued to do the same testing with the different dpi and different images sizes and it ended up that was the best way for manga. At least on my end. It might be more time consuming than those other programs but it made me feel like I achieved something. That and I learned how to get an excellent looking page on my reader =^.^=<3

[ProDigit]

Actually the best way to view a comic book is to save them as jpegs and view them as pictures.
I know that saving them as LRF or PDF you'll lose quality.
So far I said the best resolution for pictures converted to PDF is 377x277; all other sizes, the PDF will get resized.
You may not really see the difference between a picture with resolutions of 1600x1134 compared to a 8Mpix picture, but 6 or 8Mpix is way more stressing on the reader.

It is also possible that your PDF creator is resizing the pictures automatically.
Generally I would not use PDF for anime, because of the filesize, and seeming quality issues too. (I mean, it nearly always gets resized to fit the screen).
I have a version of Adobe Acrobat, and can save as acrobat 4, 5, 6, 7, or 8, or 9 file.
A file on Acrobat4 displays perfectly on the reader, but an acrobat 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9 does not.
My Acrobat 4 file (of a text book with images) also happened to be around 12 MB.
On Acrobat 9 that was only 3,5MB; displayed perfect on the computer, but not on the reader.
Perhaps because it uses Jpeg2000 instead of the Jpeg codec.

The fact is that it does not really matter which resolution you have your images on.
The reader will display them if they're encoded in gif or regular jpeg.
And you may not even notice a large difference at all in quality.
But like I mentioned, I just wanted to find that '1:1' resolution, that is easier on the reader to decode, saves you some milliseconds of decoding, and some battery life, and gives you your image 100% correct.
Eg: if you encode your images to 600x768, one horizontal line will be removed from the image.
Likewise, on 800x577, 10 horizontal lines will be interpollated.
You won't notice much of it on pictures though; except if they be very detailed.

[acidzebra]

This all sounds like a lot of work for something that comic2lrf already does near-perfectly for almost all the manga and some US comics I've converted so far. Depending on the lettering, I might opt for the -s option or on old comics throw in a -d, but that is as adventurous and troublesome as it gets.

But I admire your striving for perfection - even if it does make me feel like a lazy bum. Which I am, so that is fine too.

[ProDigit]

AcidZebra:Yeah; if programmers get the idea, they can work this data in their convertors.
Then you won't need to lay awake about these issues,but just use their convertor program.

But for the artist interested in manually creating their books, here they find the data needed.

[TwiSteDCBloSsoM]

I noticed that as a pdf the quality wasn't that great.
Once I ran it through pdflrfwin though it was amazing. I'll have to get around to taking a picture of both on my reader for you guys. I've seen images done with comiclrf and I'm sure this looks the same in quality if not better than that. I just couldn't figure out how to use comiclrf.

I'll get around to taking the pictures in a few weeks. I just had surgery on my head so I can't exactly do much. Even being at the computer is making me sick from looking around.

I'm just very happy with the results. That and I have the actual manga here to so I can compare it to the real thing as well.

[ishinay]

Hi, ProDigit.
Thank you very much for your work. I want the same as you. Today I got my PRS-505 and I wonder what resolution it has.
I was thinking about making a concentric black/white circles pattern. How good would it work?
Again, thanks for you work!

[ishinay]

Have you seen this thread?
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9182

[ProDigit]

Originally Posted by ishinay

Have you seen this thread?
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9182

Thanks for the link! I hadn't seen that one. It's an old post too (more then 2 years old)
However,I've already done some tests,that prove this post wrong.

I wouldn't go for circles. If I where you I'd go for a 1/1 grid.
I've added a compressed archive (rar) in attachment with some grids to test or play around with.

I apologize, but haven't had much time lately to do further testing.

You can create your own custom grids in Ms paint (or other video editing software) , and save them as monochrome BMP or GIF.

*See attachment on first post*

[athlonkmf]

Originally Posted by TwiSteDCBloSsoM

I was actually doing a lot of research like this about a week ago.

I tend to have constant migraines, plus the fact that my computer is REALLY old so programs like comiclrf and the manga converting program here just wouldn't work for me. Either because I couldn't figure them out or my computer wouldn't run them.

Anyway I basically went my own way to find the best way to convert a volume of manga into a file for my reader.
I started out with resizing all the images to 600x767 and basically put each image into a slide of a powerpoint. I fit each image to each slide and at the end I saved the presentation as a pdf with a virtual printer.. I think I use primo pdf or something.

I did the same thing without resizing the images.. had one saved in a normal mode.. on in a black and white mode. I used a vary of different dpi settings.

In the end I found that resizing the images did nothing on the file size.

Anyway I saved as a pdf from powerpoint, choose gray scale, fit to page, then in the advanced settings of the primo pdf virtual printer I choose black and white, and set it to 1200 dpi.
Oh not to mention I kept the setting at letter sized.. though the pages of the power point were set to 3.47 x 4.45
In doing that I ended up with pdf file that was about 12.4mb.

I put it on the reader and it was excellent. All the font was readable and the images were great. I found if I did higher dpi settings that I'd get these weird white lines on the pictures which made it difficult to read the text.

So my pdf was perfect by itself. Though for naming purposes I wanted it to become an lrf file and all since the titles of pdfs from power point are weird on the reader. I used prflrfwin on my pdf file and I ended up with a 7.92mb file for on volume of manga.
Note that I used the comic portrait format on pdflrfwin, but I unselected the settings like crop and such. It added extra blank pages.

Now I've seen some shots of manga online that people have on their readers.. but this was amazing. The text ended up like 100x better than the actual pdf.



I was very happy with it in the end. More happy about the smaller file size to.

I continued to do the same testing with the different dpi and different images sizes and it ended up that was the best way for manga. At least on my end. It might be more time consuming than those other programs but it made me feel like I achieved something. That and I learned how to get an excellent looking page on my reader =^.^=<3

You'd be better off using manga2ebook for that... http://kmfstudio.com/another_version...nga2ebook.html

[ProDigit]

Originally Posted by athlonkmf

You'd be better off using manga2ebook for that... http://kmfstudio.com/another_version...nga2ebook.html

Nice program; it saves to PDF however. It's good if you want to create pdf anime; I still think the best is anime in jpegs, in a compressed folder,to be uncompressed to a folder in the reader.

However,I'm less convinced the prs505 is made for anime.
The internal memory gets full rather fast with anime (10-100MB/book), and it's small screen isn't really optimized for images.

It'd be nice to have an anime/comic book reader available someday for those higher resolution (preferably archived) jpegs.

[acidzebra]

Originally Posted by ProDigit

Nice program; it saves to PDF however. It's good if you want to create pdf anime; I still think the best is anime in jpegs, in a compressed folder,to be uncompressed to a folder in the reader.

However,I'm less convinced the prs505 is made for anime.
The internal memory gets full rather fast with anime (10-100MB/book), and it's small screen isn't really optimized for images.

It'd be nice to have an anime/comic book reader available someday for those higher resolution (preferably archived) jpegs.

I find the 505 works fine for most anime, although I do use an 8 Gb memory stick. The images, especially in black and white comics look great, any potential issue is all about the lettering in my experience - nice big fat fonts work fine, itty-bitty thin fonts are nigh-unreadable.

I do tend to reorder or combine my cbz files first, I try to get the file size per "book" up to about 50 Mb per CBZ which then gets sliced and diced with comic2lrf to about 20-30 Mb files. More page turns, less opening and closing of files.

But a bigger screen would be nice - I do believe there is a cbz/cbr viewer for the Iliad.

[igorsk]

If you want to confuse people less, please use proper terms...
Japanese comics = manga.
Japanese animation = anime.

[acidzebra]

I copied prodigit's terms without thinking about it but I understood what he meant as should anyone. As soon as e-ink allows display of video files I'll be more careful about my terminology.