classic arcade graffix artwork package down to $999.00

[markrvp]

To confirm what JoyMonkey is saying...

By converting the full-size Tiffs and PSD files down to JPEGs at a quality of 10 in Photoshop, you can get this whole collection down to less than 25% of its current size.  PSDs, especially if they are in layers, are big bloated files.  I kid you not, when I work with photographs I can have a PSD file that's 1 gig down to under 1 MEG and still get great quality by flattening the image and then saving as a JPEG at QUALITY 10.

I would suggest that 1 person keep the original drive, another person keep an EXACT DUPLICATE of that drive.  These two people are the "caretakers."  Once that's in place, convert all the files to JPEGs and make a DVD tree.  20 DVDs at MAX, probably less for the whole collection.  Then, two people still have the original files which could be available on request.

[ChadTower]

Would print quality be lost if converted to JPG?  Honestly, I can see reducing some of it, but say a person wanted to derive something from one of the pieces that had been converted to JPG?  One of the reasons I'd want to buy it is for the source material, not just the printable image files.  Source material is a lot more valuable than the compiled result.

[screaming]

I can't imagine that these are "source material". Aren't they just hi-res scans?

[markrvp]

Would print quality be lost if converted to JPG?  Honestly, I can see reducing some of it, but say a person wanted to derive something from one of the pieces that had been converted to JPG?  One of the reasons I'd want to buy it is for the source material, not just the printable image files.  Source material is a lot more valuable than the compiled result.

Print quality would not be lost.  The only time you lose visible quality with JPEGs is if they are compressed OVER and OVER.  If the PSD files have layers where each part of the artwork is a separate layer, then YES there is great value to that to make your own NEW artwork from the different pieces.  However, if you just want the art as it is, then you are doing yourself a service to flatten the image and save it as a JPEG as we do with all our final images in our portrait studio once they have been retouched.

I can't imagine that the TIFF files are in layers.  Those should definitely be re-saved as JPEGs.

[JoyMonkey]

The PSDs probably aren't in any useful editable form anyway, but the original PSD files would still be available from "the caretakers" if needed.

[ChadTower]

Okay.  So, given that this guy is a professional printer (or at least was), how reasonable is it of us to just assume that all of the PSD/TIFF files are only bloat and not actually stuff with layers and separations that make those heavy formats necessary?

I think we've reached the point where we can't really make much more useful discussion until the data is in hand and can be evaluated.

[CheffoJeffo]

Thanks JM and markrvp for the latest insights ...

I would possibly extend markrvp's suggestion and suggest that any "member" who wants an exact copy can have one (so nobody feels that they get shortchanged on "source material"), if they provide a 400Gb drive. Then proceed with flattening/conversions for DVD sets for everybody else.

Plan sounds solid to me.

Now, who wants to coordinate ?

Cheers

[ChadTower]

I would possibly extend markrvp's suggestion and suggest that any "member" who wants an exact copy can have one (so nobody feels that they get shortchanged on "source material"), if they provide a 400Gb drive. Then proceed with flattening/conversions for DVD sets for everybody else.

That does sound like it works.  The cost in that situation is borne by the individual's choice, and copying to a 400G drive is actually easier than making 25 DVDs.

[JoyMonkey]

If nobody has any objections, I'll start one of those fundable.org groups to get this thing rolling.
Does anyone know if shipping is included in that $999 ?

[NinjaEpisode]

You'll probably want to contact Classic to get full details.

[ChadTower]

Another thing that concerns me:  this guy has a ---smurfy--- rep, for quality, for customer service, for shipping, pretty much the whole picture.  And we're considering sending the guy a thousand dollars without inspecting the merchandise.

Are we doing something stupid?

[More Cowbell]

You guys have been busy this morning. I agree with the plan to do it on a person by person basis so everyone can decide what form they want their files in. I prefer the scaled down jpegs on a hard drive.

I guess this makes us the Fellowship of the Art.  

[MameMaster!]

I'm in for $50....and why not just do a drive mailing of this?

Person one copies the files (so we have a safe copy)....mails the drive to the next person etc. etc.

That way EVERYONE has a copy and it will safe on their personal HD.

[JoyMonkey]

Another thing that concerns me:  this guy has a ---smurfy--- rep, for quality, for customer service, for shipping, pretty much the whole picture.  And we're considering sending the guy a thousand dollars without inspecting the merchandise.

Are we doing something stupid?

I wouldn't even think about sending him any cash without first seeing a couple of samples picked at random out of his file list.

[ChadTower]

Oh, ech... just reviewed the listing, there is no pinball art in there.  That is a major interest for me... doesn't reduce it enough to bail, though.  He also says in one place that there are no multigame art pieces in there but lists them anyway in the breakdowns.

There is definitely a LOT of bloat in there...

Code: [Select]

   
276,972,933 Playboy Pinball backglass poster -folded.tif
299,117,037 pinbot poster.tif
751,126,808 peter-packrat_cpo1.psd
542,290,608 pit-fighter_marquee.psd
525,589,917 point blank sideart bot.tif
562,488,537 point blank sideart mid.tif
520,396,509 point blank sideart top.tif
471,992,911 police-trainer_sideart.psd
327,200,637 POW bezel.tif
306,651,057 Prehistoric Isle bezel -cutoff.tif
489,801,837 Road Burners header.tif
Directory of H:\R\RoboCop     ->   1,925,415,683 bytes
Directory of H:\R\Run & Gun   ->   1,359,489,949 bytes


That's just SOME of the gigantic stuff that could be chopped down as suggested.  So really, if we cut out the less desirable bloat, but keep the source material for the actual classics, we could still cut this sucker down but a strong double digit percentage and not lose a ton of usable classic source.

I would definitely suggest we take a close look at the Star Wars art as part of our evaluation.  Looks like there is a LOT in there and that is some of the largest value in the lot.

[Kremmit]

I used to work in the printing biz, and .jpg was a big no-no.  You always, always wanted .tif or .psd.  Now, it's been a few years, and maybe things have changed, but I definately lean towards a full, un-edited set.  On an HD; a giant set of DVD-Rs is crazy talk.

We're also going to have to decide just how many versions of the collection we are willing to create/manage/distribute.  Obviously, there are going to be full, un-edited sets- but then we're talking about a thumbnail set, a "useless files removed" set, a "compressed to .jpg" set- is that all? 

[ChadTower]

I used to work in the printing biz, and .jpg was a big no-no.  You always, always wanted .tif or .psd. 

That's my recollection from when I worked in animation.  That was the late 90s, though, and mark is a professional photographer/portrait studio operator, so I trust his opinion has real weight behind it.

[shardian]

a giant set of DVD-Rs is crazy talk.

It is alot of work up front, but I plan to tuck my set tidily into the bottom of one of my cab's. It's not like I am going to be accessing it all the time or if at all to tell the truth, so it is wasteful to put a $150 hd on the shelf somewhere just to collect dust.
I just think it would be neat to own a major collection of arcade history. 20 years from now, all this art will be long gone.

Personally, I think we should look to see if the CAG guys are located close to one of us in the group buy. Maybe they would let said person inspect the hard drive in person. They are in SO CAL. Anyone in here in the same area?

[Truecade]

I'm in for $50.  Just let me know where/how/when to pay.

My preference would be one of the following:

1) Compress all of the images to high quality .jpg files and hopefully burn to a small number of DVDs.  Honestly though, whoever does this is looking at a major time committment and needs a fairly powerful PC.  I also think whoever does this should keep the original external HD for their efforts.

2) I can send a 500GB external HD to whoever is the "caretaker" for the original with a pre-paid return shipping label.  After I get my copy, I would be happy to make additional copies for anyone who sends me their external HD with pre-paid return shipping label. This is my prefered option.

Here is a 500GB external drive for $185 shipped. 

Thanks,
Ken

[shardian]

In order to reduce the price we have removed the original raw scans which were real space hogs. These raw scans were not needed for most items since they had cleaned Photoshop versions already available in the collection. The few pieces that have not been cleaned still include the raw scans so every piece is still in the collection.

Has this little tidbit been noticed before? Apparently alot of those big files are already gone from the list. Wonder what the new actual total size is?

[ChadTower]

Has this little tidbit been noticed before? Apparently alot of those big files are already gone from the list. Wonder what the new actual total size is?

It appears as though the stuff being listed is after this was done.

[screaming]

Has this little tidbit been noticed before? Apparently alot of those big files are already gone from the list. Wonder what the new actual total size is?

It appears as though the stuff being listed is after this was done.

  Why? I was going to say the opposite.

[ChadTower]

Taking a closer look, I do see a lot of PSDs right next to a MUCH smaller JPG.

Of course, we don't know for sure those PSDs don't have more useful info (e.g. layering) than the JPGs do.

[Oddfeld]

Has this little tidbit been noticed before? Apparently alot of those big files are already gone from the list. Wonder what the new actual total size is?

It appears as though the stuff being listed is after this was done.

  Why? I was going to say the opposite.

It looks like the 400gig set is after they've weeded out the extra files, their website says this:

By removing the large unneeded scans we have reduced the size of the collection to under 400gigs.

I particularly like this quote though  :

No one can argue that the full collection is well worth the $7k price tag

[markrvp]

I used to work in the printing biz, and .jpg was a big no-no.  You always, always wanted .tif or .psd.  Now, it's been a few years, and maybe things have changed, but I definately lean towards a full, un-edited set.  On an HD; a giant set of DVD-Rs is crazy talk.

A lot of that was because people would bring 640x480 size JPEGs from their digital camera and want to use those in their print material.  Because the consumer had no understanding of pixel dimensions, places started saying "NO JPEGs."

Print shops still tell people they need a 300 dpi image.  300 dpi is an output resolution and has nothing to do with the actual pixels contained in the image.  I could give you a 300x300 image at 300 dpi and you could print it at one inch.  No offense to print shop guys, but almost all of the print shops I have dealt with don't really understand the mis-information they tell the consumers.

If you were concerned about the JPEG quality, then they could be compressed at the highest quality setting which is 12.  Typically an 8x10 image would be around 1 MEG at 10 and around 4 MEGs at 12.  The same size file would be around 18 MEGs as an uncompressed TIFF, soooo.....  You can still reduce the size of the set to 25% using the very highest quality JPEG setting.

[JeepMonkey]

I would be interested in having them as high res jpgs on DVD.  How often are say 20 of us going to have side art made for a cab?  I would venture to say that if someone was actually making art for a cab that that person could request the original version of the file.

[screaming]

If you were concerned about the JPEG quality, then they could be compressed at the highest quality setting which is 12.  Typically an 8x10 image would be around 1 MEG at 10 and around 4 MEGs at 12.  The same size file would be around 18 MEGs as an uncompressed TIFF, soooo.....  You can still reduce the size of the set to 25% using the very highest quality JPEG setting.

  Okay, so if someone were to get sideart done for a cab, and only had JPGs, what size (and filesize) would they have to send to get decent art producted?

  If the "average" filesize of that is 4MB, then that's only 16GB.  That could easily be put on 4 SL DVDs and sent to people.

[ChadTower]

Yes, after someone went through each and every file, evaluated it, converted it, and only if every single file fits those criteria.

[Truecade]

I will probably only use 1 or 2 of these art sets a year, but I would still like to have the whole colection.  My plan is to have my own gameroom over the next 5-10 years by building a replica of each of the classic cabinets by myself.  Having the art collection will just make the final product that much more fun to build.   

[JONTHEBOMB]

We put the artwork on discs.

400GB / 5GB (about the amount of data that can fit on a DVD-R) = 80 discs

A 50 pack of DVD-Rs costs $30 x 2 = $60 = 100 DVD-Rs

In addition a service like kinkos could perform the copying.

So the cost would be $60 + kinkos service = I will call when I wake up tomorrow and find out.

The kinkos service would cost $3 per disc for eighty discs and the time frame would be around two weeks.

$3 x 80 discs (this number cannot fit the whole collection of artwork at it's current state remember) = $240

I will keep adding members to the list since I have heard no opposition to this idea.  The more people we have the more the cost will go down.

[ChadTower]

Eff that, I'll dup them for half that cost. 

[Jabba]

I'm in on this project. 50$ should reeude the overall individual cost.

I'd prefer to get the full image of the set in one drive. I'd mail a 400 GB drive to the coordinator.

Good find guys...

[Wade]

You guys need to forget about the details and just assign a SINGLE, TRUSTWORTHY member to collecting the cash and acquiring the images before it's too late.  They could pull this offer at any time...

Then worry about a website or passing harddrives around LATER.

Wade

[NinjaEpisode]

You guys need to forget about the details and just assign a SINGLE, TRUSTWORTHY member to collecting the cash and acquiring the images before it's too late.  They could pull this offer at any time...

Then worry about a website or passing harddrives around LATER.

Wade

I'm w/Wade, we need to move quickly before he gets another buyer.

[screaming]

JoyMonkey has offered already, hasn't he?

I've put aside that time where he got me drunk and stole all my credit cards. He's probably changed his way by now.  I trust him.

[JoyMonkey]

Okay, I'll start the fundable.org group.

It seems there's more than 12 of us in on this now. Should we all give $50 anyway and use the additional funds for shipping and perhaps a random prize drawing?

[JONTHEBOMB]

Currently we have 24 members.

$50 x 24 = $1200

or

$1000/24 = about $42 each

perhaps a random prize drawing?

I like that idea.

[Nannuu]

Ok, so I'm super late due to vacation.  But I'll throw in as well.
So can I be number 25?

[ChadTower]

I'm w/Wade, we need to move quickly before he gets another buyer.

Says right on his site he will sell it to anyone who pays.  There is "no exclusivity" in the sale.

Joymonkey, I say we just let folks pay and see who actually sends funds.  12 folks may be in now but we've all seen enough situations like this to know it's common for people to drop out when the cash comes due.

[shardian]

Okay, I'll start the fundable.org group.

It seems there's more than 12 of us in on this now. Should we all give $50 anyway and use the additional funds for shipping and perhaps a random prize drawing?

FYI, you will need a business account with paypal to receive more than $500 in a month.