Introduction Collection by Name Collection by Appearance Whole-Scan Imagery

Seaweeds of Washington State

A Collection from Dan Penttila

Technical Notes

The Originals

All of the samples are mounted on paper. The large samples are mounted on 12-inch by 18-inch sheets, the majority are on half sheets (9"x12"), and there are four quarter sheets (4.5"x 6"). The yellow stains on the quarter sheets are from the glue used to attach the samples.

Dan has made notes on all of the sheets, all indicating species, location, tide level, and date, and some have notes such as distinguishing characteristics.

Imagery

All sheets were scanned at a resolution of 300 dots per inch on a Hewlett-Packard ScanJet IICX. Most of the large sheets had to be scanned in sections and stitched together. All of the image manipulation was done in Aldus (now Adobe) PhotoStyler 1.1A. Where possible without damaging the image, Dan's notes were edited out and transcribed to the web page. Other blemishes (dust, stains, etc.) were also removed.

For display on the Catalog page, copies of the images have been resized a maximum of about 200 pixels high for quick indexing. The actual size varies, dependent upon the resulting number of dots per inch (dpi). The target was to maintain a dpi in multiples of tens, but a few images would have been resized wildly larger or smaller, so ther were resized to integers of dots per inch. The resolution of the thumbnails are listed next to each of the species names, above each thumbnail.

Each sample page has a resized version with maxima of 980 pixels wide or 700 pixels high, whichever is smaller. This will keep the size small enough such that users of Microsoft Internet Explorer in a minimized menu mode (the F11 key toggles between minimize menus and full menus modes) and who run their PCs at a resolution of 1024x768, can view the images without having to scroll at all. The resolution in dots per inch and the file size will display when you hover the mouse over the thumbnail image. To enable the best views of any sample, some sheets with two or more samples will zoom onto only one in this mode. These images are linked by clicking on the thumbnail image.

Most samples will have a full-resolution (300dpi) 980x700 pixel portion cropped out to highlight some detail or feature. These details will be linked in the text.

Most samples will have a macro photo taken with a digital camera at extreme close range (two to four inches). These will highlight some detail such as embedded animals, or structure. These images will also be linked from the text.

All samples will have one or both of the detail imagery types.

Page Layout

The catalog pages have three columns:

  1. The species name in bold, the resolution of the thumbnail in dots per inch, and a thumbnail of the sample which serves as a clickable link to a full-screen version of the scanned sample sheet or a selected sample from the sheet.
  2. Dan's notes, transcribed from the sheets. This includes attributes such as underlining and line feeds.
  3. Additional text not authored by Dan, describing the sample and providing and describing links to detailed portions of the samples, either full-resolution (300dpi) or macro photographic.

All linked images will spawn a new window with just the image on it. If you're using Microsoft Internet Explorer, you can use the F11 key to toggle into a minimal menu mode. If you're running your PC at a resolution of 1024x768 or greater, you will see the entire image and no scroll bars. Click on the "X" in the upper-right to close the window.

File Locations

At right is a diagram of the tree of folders on this "Seaweed" CD.

The root folder has one file, "index.html", which is the "Introduction" page. The root has two folders as well:

  • In the "originals" folder are two more folders:
    1. "Photos" are the unedited image files directly from the digital camera, and
    2. "Scans" contains the edited scans in the original TIF format.
  • The "pages" folder contains the rest of the HTML pages, and four folders:
    1. "980x700" contains the full-screen, resized images of whole specimens,
    2. "details" contains the full-resolution outcrops from the scans, and edited macro images,
    3. "thumbs" contains the thumbnail-sized images seen on the "Catalog" page.
    4. "whole" contains the JPG versions of the TIF files from the "scans" folder, and is the folder displayed when going to the "Whole-Scan Imagery" link.
Note the three "BMPs" folders: they contain the final versions of edited images immediately prior to being compressed into .JPG images. It is the .JPG images that are displayed on the web pages. Note 1: if you use Internet Explorer (IE) to view these files, your hard disk space will be used at a high rate. You should delete your "Temporary Internet Files" and offline content before exiting IE. Note 2: if you are putting these pages on-line, you do not need to upload the BMPs folders.

Using Resolution

Knowing the resolutions of the scanned images will enable you to measure features precisely, so for all versions of the scanned images, this information is provided. To measure a feature, count the number of pixels it occupies and divide it by the dpi. For example, a 120-pixel-wide feature in an image with a 30dpi resolution will mean the feature is 4 inches long.

Introduction Collection by Name Collection by Appearance Whole-Scan Imagery