James Houx — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:06 GMT

I googled around for research information on Spatial Frequency Filtering, and I found several bits of information from academic institutions that described various blurring methods (guassian, box, triangle, bartlett, average) as low-pass filters. So I tried to find information specifically describing how the low-pass filter in ‘rimage’ works and I didn’t turn up anything. Matt do you know where to find the information about what goes on under the hood of rimage’s low-pass filter. If I could find that documentation, I could probably get some programmer friends of mine to implement a tool for it. Or I may even be able to come up with a way of doing it myself.

James Houx — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:07 GMT

I appreciate the word of caution from nemrut dagi, but I have to say that I think the proposed line-of-thinking only sounds reasonable because it is based on a use of icons which is flawed in nature. He said “Many of the icons consumers/users encounter in the computer environment are meant to serve more as visual relief or variety amid a sea fo text—or a more colorful bullet point if you will.” True. But, one could argue those icons are poorly designed.

Good icons should do more than constitute “visual relief”. They should support the typography surrounding them and help readers to absorb and retain information better. Every one of us can atest from personal experience that icons and graphics can do as much to convey information as a good line of type. Remember the last time you saw an unfamiliar icon on an alien interface, but you intuitively discerned the function of the icon because it looked so obvious?

All in all, Nemrut Dagi has a good point, but I think that the light shone by Matt Queen’s Analysis could lend more to intelligent design than we may even realize.

Boxes and Arrows: Comments by James Houx