Trouble viewing B-45 drawings

[Oceaneer99]

A lot of you have posted comments with the B-45 plan that you are having trouble viewing or downloading the plan.


http://smm.solidmodelmemories.net/Gallery/displayimage.php?pid=5940

We have had similar images in the past, and at one time I did some testing on a large gif image that would not load on some computers.  I didn't find much rhyme or reason as far as which computers or browsers had problems, but here are my general observations:

• large gif images (large in number of pixels, not file size) will not load on some computers/browsers
• the problem seemed to be with displaying the image within the browser, but it didn't matter which browser (i.e., if Internet Explorer had a problem, Firefox did, too)
• older computers or lower-performance new computers were more likely to have trouble (iphones and some netbooks cannot load the B-45, for instance)
• Gif images do not store the dpi setting, so that is probably not the issue
• as far as I can tell, there is nothing wrong with the image itself
• for some reason, jpg images do not have the same problem, even for the same number of pixels (but jpg is not ideal for black and white, no gray, images like this)

Things to try:

I added a direct link to the B-45 image to the gallery page, which I've copied here:

http://smm.solidmodelmemories.net/Gallery/albums/userpics/10242/North_American_B-45_3.gif

1.  Try clicking that link.  Most likely, if you had a problem before, you'll also have a problem clicking the link

2.  Try right-clicking the link and using the "save image" selection to save the image to your hard drive.  Then try opening the image from the computer's operating system (in a file image viewer; the default one should work)

3.  If the default file image viewer doesn't work, try a free viewer such as Picassa or editor such as Gimp

Please report back what you find in this forum.

Thank you for your patience and help!

Garet

[lastvautour]

Thank you Garet. This would make a nice Post War era build.

Lou

[Balsabasher]

Thanks for your time on this Garet,the option 2 you have suggested worked fine for me and the image now opens up well.

I have built a B-45 Tornado solid in the past from 'Aviation News' plans,I built it as part of the cold war period when clandestine operations by the RAF with American serialled aircraft took place in the UK,the reason for this was that the RAF were awaiting deliveries of the Canberra,I once wrote an article on this and met with some opposition from the authorities but now it is fairly well known that these operations took place in the UK following the publication of a book 'The world is an aircraft carrier' which revealed the full story about these particular aircraft.

I will have to dig the model out and take a few pictures of it.

Barry.

[dave_t]

The easy solution would be to just delete it and make a smaller image, say half size. Except for maybe Lou, most of don't make solids with a 3-foot wingspan. I am almost sure that Photoshop, for instance, only saves gif files as 72 dpi as it is a format intended for web viewing. I think that is why those ID drawings and others are so big, and have to be reduced to 24% to match the original document. It happens when the format is converted (300dpi / 72 dpi= 4.167). Up until last year, I used a Mac from 2001 that was pretty low-powered by today's standards and never had a problem with big images on this site.

[R.F.Bennett]

We have always tried to make images as large and clear (150-300 dpi) in the gallery as practical. This is especially true of drawings with great detail or decals and photos. We did this knowing that computer and net speeds would increase over the years. This is an archive, so we like to put forward the BEST version of the image that we can. It is rare that we have difficulty, perhaps we should try to offer a low and high quality version of some of these larger files.

[dave_t]

I know because I have uploaded quite a few of them in the gallery over the past couple of years, but when pointing out there was a problem with this one drawing, basically I get the "no, it's fine, works on my computer" routine. Marshall uploaded a lot of multi-megabyte JPGs and they are fine as archive files. I think maybe we have discovered that gif files can only get so big before they become impractical.

Other than that, the gallery is one of my favorite places to visit online.

[Oceaneer99]

Gif files do not contain dpi information, so in general, they are opened at a default dpi, which can vary from program to program.  I saved the ID models assuming a 300 dpi resolution, so if you use software that lets you choose dpi (such as photoshop or gimp), you can set the dpi and then print 100% size.  PDF is pretty good at maintaining scale, and so I made a PDF set of the drawings, which Kenny started to put up on his site.  However, PDF files are difficult for many people to work with if they need to do any editing of the image, and the gallery is unable to make thumbnails, which is why we've continued to use GIF for black and white images.  My preference has been the TIF format for these files (that's how I maintain the original files I upload as GIFs), but there are no thumbnails, and users had even more trouble than with the occasion GIF image problem.

If I remember correctly, the original B-45 sheet was huge - something like 17 x 22 inches, so we had to keep the pixel count high so that you could read the small fonts.  Some of the ship plans have similar difficulties (large sheets, not with people opening the files), such as the Monogram ship plans.

We have a few early plans (from the original site) that were saved at low resolution due to equipment limitations at the time, making the plans barely useable.  Ray gave me the originals, and I have scanned most of them in at this point, but they are faded and yellowed and will need some work before I can post them.

In general, I haven't had problems with large images and Macs (even my old 2001 Mac), or with mid-range PCs running Windows 7, but I have definitely been able to reproduce problems loading large GIF images on other computers (at one point, I was visiting office supply stores and seeing which new laptops could load the problem images).

[Balsabasher]

Well done Garet for this background room work that you do on our behalf,I for one appreciate the huge amount of work that goes into getting these plans successfully installed so that we can enjoy the convenience of drawing on them to make our solids and keep on carving.
I can see from your comments that your working knowledge of the various formats stands us all in good stead with the steady flow of drawings we have in the vault.
I still have thousands of drawings here to scan and add in the future safe in the knowledge that you will work your magic with them,thank you sir.
Barry.