Paul Bartram wrote:
"mike" wrote


I don't know the proper terms, but here's the idea.
Take a big pix at high resolution (eg spectators at a football game).
Use a combination of pixel scaling and compression to
get a highly compressed picture, small file size, picture 1.
Print picture 1.
Print the original picture.
Take scissors and cut out small parts of the high resolution
(eg a face)
pix and glue them on Picture 1 in the right places.

Wanna do that digitally.


Don't know if this is exactly what you mean, but XAT.COM Image Optimizer has
a 'magic compression' setting that only selects areas of unchanging colour
and density and hammers those while leaving the intricate areas alone. I use
it for compressing files to below a certain size for uploading to a website,
and it seems to work well. I think the older versions are now freeware, or
the current ones are available for trial.

Jpeg compression does that. You can help it along by masking out the
detailed areas and blurring the unimportant areas, then the compression
will be stronger in the blurred areas. Probably even non-lossy
compression (png?) would work with that trick.

--
Paul Furman Photography
http://edgehill.net
Bay Natives Nursery
http://www.baynatives.com