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View Full Version : Kodak Accused of Compressing Pics to Save Space


Suhit Gupta
04-03-2006, 10:00 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.engadget.com/2006/03/29/kodak-accused-of-compressing-pics-to-save-space/' target='_blank'>http://www.engadget.com/2006/03/29/kodak-accused-of-compressing-pics-to-save-space/</a><br /><br /></div><i>"When you upload your pics to a photo sharing site, you're usually warned in advance if the site compresses the pics, right? Well, not if you used Kodak's online gallery, according to one former employee who is suing the photo giant. According to Maya Raber, Kodak's former director of engineering, the company "irreversibly damaged" customers' pics, rather than just optimizing them as claimed. According to Raber, Kodak rationalized the practice by saying that customers "wouldn't understand, anyway." Raber says that Kodak put the squeeze on pics as part of a cost-saving plan, and that she was fired after complaining about it. Kodak insists that the charges are "completely false" and that the company hasn't "compressed images ... without our customers' knowledge.""</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/crappyjpeg.jpg" /><br /><br />FYI - The above picture is NOT a sample from Kodak's site. Anyways, while Engadget won't take sides, and while I understand why Kodak wants to do this, I am going to take sides. I do believe that Kodak should have made this publicly known. In fact, read more on the <a href="http://www.eet.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=184401030">original story</a>. If we are to believe the ex-Kodak employee, this is pretty rotten of Kodak.

Jason Dunn
04-03-2006, 11:10 PM
Kodak was always a dinosaur and didn't understand online photo storage/sharing. I remember trying their service when I first started getting online prints, and they had this stupid concept of "rolls of film" whereby you'd purchase storage space sufficient for "x" number of rolls of film. Ofoto was a breath of fresh air with their unlimited online photos storage, then Kodak went and bought them out. &lt;sigh> Ofoto still seems to be a good service though, I've used them for printing 16" x 20" prints.

phillypocket
04-04-2006, 04:57 PM
How can you take sides? The article (EETimes) doenst have any actual information. I'm guessing that the employee objected to over agressive compresion tecniques, but the article doesn't specify. Only allusions to Optimization and damage.

It seems to me that are are two separate issues here 1) the "optimization and it's effect on picture quality" and 2) whether an employee was wrongfully fired. Frankly the article gives no real information on either.

Did I miss part of the article? Or am I just not getting it?