Old-system Jpegs not as clear in Windows 7

I have been checking some very old (10 years) jpegs I had shored on my
old HDD on the XP system.

Many of the images are fainter and the color seems a bit "washed out".
Is there some setting to fix this, or have the images degraded over
time? What is the best way to store these images?
Peter

On 08 Oct 2011, Peter Jason <> wrote in
alt.windows7.general:

> I have been checking some very old (10 years) jpegs I had shored
> on my old HDD on the XP system.
>
> Many of the images are fainter and the color seems a bit "washed
> out". Is there some setting to fix this, or have the images
> degraded over time? What is the best way to store these images?

jpegs are jpegs. They are now as they ever were. They don't degrade
over time. If they look bad now, they were bad then. You can
manipulate/"enhance" them with image editing software, but the process
of uncompressing them and then recompressing them back to jpg format
will likely make them look worse then before. jpg is a lossy format,
similar in that regard to mp3. The files are made small by permanently
throwing out information. That information cannot be regained.

Store them like any other data file. They don't need any special
treatment.

On Sun, 09 Oct 2011 11:15:29 +1100, Peter Jason wrote:

> I have been checking some very old (10 years) jpegs I had shored on my
> old HDD on the XP system.
>
> Many of the images are fainter and the color seems a bit "washed out".
> Is there some setting to fix this, or have the images degraded over
> time? What is the best way to store these images?
> Peter

It may not be windows, but your software.

http://www.getpaint.net/index.html

I had been using irfanview as my main graphics program. But Irfanview
always produced some rather shoddy images.
Comparing the same screen capture side by side, paintnet winds hands down
over irfanview.
Paintnet brings out finer details.

Electronically stored images don't degrade over time.

On Sun, 09 Oct 2011 11:15:29 +1100, Peter Jason wrote:

> I have been checking some very old (10 years) jpegs I had shored on my
> old HDD on the XP system.
>
> Many of the images are fainter and the color seems a bit "washed out".
> Is there some setting to fix this, or have the images degraded over
> time? What is the best way to store these images?
> Peter

After I stopped laughing, I came up with two serious ideas.

1. You are trusting your memory of what the pictures looked like.

2. Your current monitor is not the same monitor you used to view them
on.

These are not Kodachrome slides or Kodacolor prints. Each picture is a
series of bits telling the computer what to display. If some bits in a
picture had changed - and they could only go from 0 to 1 or vice versa,
not somewhere in between - the software would be unable to read the
picture, since the structure of the compressed data would be ruined.

OK, I'm not quite right. I just changed *one bit* (necessarily
arbitrarily, since I had no idea where I was in the picture) in a jpeg
file from a 1 to a 0. In fact, I could still display it, but there were
large and obvious artifacts in the result, namely, in this instance,
wide and visible borders around parts of the picture, with a couple of
contrasting rectangles within them.

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

On Sat, 8 Oct 2011 17:46:27 -0700, Gene E. Bloch wrote:

> On Sun, 09 Oct 2011 11:15:29 +1100, Peter Jason wrote:
>
>> I have been checking some very old (10 years) jpegs I had shored on my
>> old HDD on the XP system.
>>
>> Many of the images are fainter and the color seems a bit "washed out".
>> Is there some setting to fix this, or have the images degraded over
>> time? What is the best way to store these images?
>> Peter
>
> After I stopped laughing, I came up with two serious ideas.
>
> 1. You are trusting your memory of what the pictures looked like.
>
> 2. Your current monitor is not the same monitor you used to view them
> on.
>
> These are not Kodachrome slides or Kodacolor prints. Each picture is a
> series of bits telling the computer what to display. If some bits in a
> picture had changed - and they could only go from 0 to 1 or vice versa,
> not somewhere in between - the software would be unable to read the
> picture, since the structure of the compressed data would be ruined.
>
> OK, I'm not quite right. I just changed *one bit* (necessarily
> arbitrarily, since I had no idea where I was in the picture) in a jpeg
> file from a 1 to a 0. In fact, I could still display it, but there were
> large and obvious artifacts in the result, namely, in this instance,
> wide and visible borders around parts of the picture, with a couple of
> contrasting rectangles within them.

Want to have some real fun?
Use a hex editor to see the raw code.
Randomly select a bit and change it.
Let's say the bit shows AA. Change to AB.
I did that a few times and got all kinds of different results.

On Sat, 8 Oct 2011 21:18:09 -0400, richard wrote:

> On Sat, 8 Oct 2011 17:46:27 -0700, Gene E. Bloch wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 09 Oct 2011 11:15:29 +1100, Peter Jason wrote:
>>
>>> I have been checking some very old (10 years) jpegs I had shored on my
>>> old HDD on the XP system.
>>>
>>> Many of the images are fainter and the color seems a bit "washed out".
>>> Is there some setting to fix this, or have the images degraded over
>>> time? What is the best way to store these images?
>>> Peter
>>
>> After I stopped laughing, I came up with two serious ideas.
>>
>> 1. You are trusting your memory of what the pictures looked like.
>>
>> 2. Your current monitor is not the same monitor you used to view them
>> on.
>>
>> These are not Kodachrome slides or Kodacolor prints. Each picture is a
>> series of bits telling the computer what to display. If some bits in a
>> picture had changed - and they could only go from 0 to 1 or vice versa,
>> not somewhere in between - the software would be unable to read the
>> picture, since the structure of the compressed data would be ruined.
>>
>> OK, I'm not quite right. I just changed *one bit* (necessarily
>> arbitrarily, since I had no idea where I was in the picture) in a jpeg
>> file from a 1 to a 0. In fact, I could still display it, but there were
>> large and obvious artifacts in the result, namely, in this instance,
>> wide and visible borders around parts of the picture, with a couple of
>> contrasting rectangles within them.
>
> Want to have some real fun?
> Use a hex editor to see the raw code.
> Randomly select a bit and change it.
> Let's say the bit shows AA. Change to AB.
> I did that a few times and got all kinds of different results.

How do you think I did what I describe above?

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

On Sat, 8 Oct 2011 20:40:01 -0400, richard wrote:

> On Sun, 09 Oct 2011 11:15:29 +1100, Peter Jason wrote:
>
>> I have been checking some very old (10 years) jpegs I had shored on my
>> old HDD on the XP system.
>>
>> Many of the images are fainter and the color seems a bit "washed out".
>> Is there some setting to fix this, or have the images degraded over
>> time? What is the best way to store these images?
>> Peter
>
> It may not be windows, but your software.
>
> http://www.getpaint.net/index.html
>
> I had been using irfanview as my main graphics program. But Irfanview
> always produced some rather shoddy images.
> Comparing the same screen capture side by side, paintnet winds hands down
> over irfanview.
> Paintnet brings out finer details.
>
> Electronically stored images don't degrade over time.

Well, I just looked at a few pictures in IrfanView and in Paint.net, and
the differences were *very* small - in fact, the word "zero" comes to
mind...

Is it possible that you had zoomed in or out in one viewer? That can
affect rendering quite heavily.

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

On Sun, 09 Oct 2011 11:15:29 +1100, Peter Jason <> wrote:

>I have been checking some very old (10 years) jpegs I had shored on my
>old HDD on the XP system.
>
>Many of the images are fainter and the color seems a bit "washed out".
>Is there some setting to fix this, or have the images degraded over
>time? What is the best way to store these images?
>Peter

I keep jpegs in the refrigerator and that seems to work.

If you put them in a Ziplok bag, it's even better.

If they are Gifs, just store them out of the sun.

I don't know about bmp, I don't have any.

On 08 Oct 2011, WaIIy <WaIIy@(nft).invalid> wrote in
alt.windows7.general:

> If they are Gifs, just store them out of the sun.

Even better, put them through a fruit dehydrator. They'll last just
about forever!

On Sat, 8 Oct 2011 17:46:27 -0700, "Gene E. Bloch"
<not-> wrote:

>On Sun, 09 Oct 2011 11:15:29 +1100, Peter Jason wrote:
>
>> I have been checking some very old (10 years) jpegs I had shored on my
>> old HDD on the XP system.
>>
>> Many of the images are fainter and the color seems a bit "washed out".
>> Is there some setting to fix this, or have the images degraded over
>> time? What is the best way to store these images?
>> Peter
>
>After I stopped laughing, I came up with two serious ideas.
>
>1. You are trusting your memory of what the pictures looked like.
>
>2. Your current monitor is not the same monitor you used to view them
>on.
>
>These are not Kodachrome slides or Kodacolor prints. Each picture is a
>series of bits telling the computer what to display. If some bits in a
>picture had changed - and they could only go from 0 to 1 or vice versa,
>not somewhere in between - the software would be unable to read the
>picture, since the structure of the compressed data would be ruined.
>
>OK, I'm not quite right. I just changed *one bit* (necessarily
>arbitrarily, since I had no idea where I was in the picture) in a jpeg
>file from a 1 to a 0. In fact, I could still display it, but there were
>large and obvious artifacts in the result, namely, in this instance,
>wide and visible borders around parts of the picture, with a couple of
>contrasting rectangles within them.

Perhaps I have become used to the modern better-quality images, but
some old stored ones looked decidedly blotchy - especially the old
colour negatives I scanned years ago with a Minolta 35mm scanner. I
thought that Windows reconstructed all the jpeg images from some sort
of compressed format every time they are displayed, and there is some
loss every time. Originally I wanted to scan them all in the tiff
format but these files are too large. I have about 4000 images
laboriously scanned from old negatives and photos most of which I
can't get back anymore because I gave them back to the numerous
relatives. Now I'm worried.