Rangefinder Magazine
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June 2000


MrSID Comes to Town
An Internet Solution with Far Reaching Implications
by Marshal M. Rosenthal

Software programs come and go, but there's no doubt that those involving compression techniques have been of benefit to photographers. Jpeg, Mpeg2 and others have enabled images to be made smaller while maintaining their look-for use in a wide variety of situations from fitting on a floppy disk to appearing on an web site.

Let's take a look at a new software product called MrSID [LizardTech]. It's designed to dramatically reduce the size of digital photo files for easy portability and increased storage capacity with little or no loss in image quality. By reducing files to less than 3% of the original image size without image degradation or pixelation-the MrSID Photo Edition can be used to encode digital camera photos or digitally scanned TIFFs, JPEGs or bitmapped photos into the patented MrSID Imaging Language. Images can be viewed full screen or zoomed into while preserving the high quality of the original by using a free plug-in with a standard web browser (such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator), or through use of a stand-alone viewer for Windows/Macintosh computers, or in one of over 200 MrSID-enabled software applications (a full list of products that are offered for placing MrSID files in major image editing can be found on the LizardTech web site).

As explained by Mark Gutkowski, Internet solutions product marketing manager, there are a number of values to using the product-including being able to store multiple photos in a minute amount of space and thus freeing up valuable computer storage capacity. "The resulting portability gives online users new freedom to share quality images via e-mail and standard web browsers in a fraction of the time previously required to send and receive photos," he says. In addition, when used in conjunction with the MrSID Image Server, users are finally able to provide high quality zooming and panning of digital photos over the web. "Each click on a MrSID image sends just the information needed to show the requested magnification," he says. \

For advertising use online, the value is simple-potential customers can now quickly view products online that have high detail and so are more enticing. According to recent surveys, if web visitors are not engaged within eight seconds they quickly move to another site. This has typically restricted web content to small, low resolution photos to ensure that content can be viewed quickly, sacrificing digitally descriptive detail. But since MrSID-enabled images load quickly and allow for greater detail, this makes them valuable for advertising use online-allowing consumers to download photos that can be magnified and explored at virtually any magnification while maintaining detail. "This is a necessity for business-to-business and e-commerce advertisers," says Gutkowski. "Imagine the tremendous values of being able to see the clasp on a $3000 piece of jewelry, or the gearshift on that new $2000 bike."
For off-line use, the same file being used on the web can be printed out or used to go into a magazine. "Because of the MrSID multi-resolution format, the same 72 dpi images being viewed online can be printed out at resolutions necessary for high-gloss printing," Gutkowski points out. Being able to maintain one image for multiple uses makes it easier to find when dealing with hundreds of pictures as well.

While the MrSID multi-resolution file format is free for non-commercial use, the cost for commercial use is just $49.00. Further information, along with product downloads, can be found on the LizardTech web site at www.lizardtech.com.

Key Features
* Dramatic photo file size reduction with little or no loss of image quality.
* Viewing and printing with no pixelation or loss in picture quality.
* Exploration of images by instant zooming and panning.
* Free viewer download.
* Encoding of RGB or grayscale TIFF and JPEG images 10MB or less, including images from the latest 3.3 megapixel cameras.
* Adjustable encoding levels for different file size reduction ratios.
* Windows (95/98/2000 and NT (4.0 support.
* Fast Internet/intranet distribution.
* Single-source image management

Marshal M. Rosenthal is a photojournalist based in Los Angeles, and a frequent contributor to many imaging and computer publications. He can be reached at marshalr@pipeline.com.