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Is TRAINS going to change its name to “Zero Photos Rail Magazine”?

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  • Member since
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Posted by Convicted One on Saturday, March 17, 2018 10:04 AM

K. P. Harrier
Who in their right mind would submit a screwed up photo?

 

Well, the otherside of that is that the JPEG format utilizes a "lossy" compression method that places artifacts,  i.e. degradation, into every image converted into that format.   So it begs the question "why would trains  want to encourage people to submit degraded photos for inclusion in their magazine?"

So by your own rationale, it makes little sense to include photos that have issues built in.

 

Personally, I prefer to use the *.png image format on my personal collections, the file size is notably larger but the image quality is noticeably better, especially after being copyied and saved multiple times.

 

The new tech is great but in many ways leaves much to be desired. I can hear consideable difference between music on my old phonograph records and the very same songs in the *.mp3 format. There is less "umph" and less presence in recordings made into MP3s.....no small margin, either.   I have all the "cool" toys, and enjoy them, portability being a big plus of the new tech. For instance I sure wouldn't care to strap a phonograph onto my bicycle for a trip through the park, but I recognize that the  benefit of a small MP3 player comes with built in limitations. I see the magazine's requirement as a recognition of that reality, and not the oppressive gesture you seem to see. (FWIW)

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Posted by Overmod on Saturday, March 17, 2018 1:35 PM

It occurs to me that the most useful 'metric' for this situation could likely be easily provided, by Kalmbach, with little or no breach-of-privacy concern: what percentage of 'accepted' photos were JPEG compressed submissions?

A slightly more expanded view would be whether JPEGs are relatively more accepted in some categories, or if 'stylistic' modifications or other darkroom-post-style manipulations get special attention ... pro or con ... in the assessment-for-publication process.  

The existing guidelines are, or might as well be, silent on these points, but should not be.

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Posted by zardoz on Friday, March 23, 2018 11:43 AM

Miningman

Well they finally changed the 'Photo of the Day' and it's ....it's ....what?

Fog with some lights. 

 

I see the photo today (Friday 3/23) is the same photo again. Perhaps Trains has run out of photos to use.

Regarding the comments from Convicted one regarding the artifacts in a JPG image (to which I agree), I wonder if photos in the TIFF format would be acceptable; it is lossless, but the file size can become some rather large.

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Posted by tree68 on Friday, March 23, 2018 12:03 PM

zardoz
Perhaps Trains has run out of photos to use.

More likely they just haven't had the time to pick one out and get it on-line.  

Perhaps someone has left the organization and there's work to be picked up by others until they are replaced.  Or something like that...

LarryWhistling
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Posted by Miningman on Friday, March 23, 2018 2:23 PM

It's a URO.

Unidentified Rail Object

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