Furry stuff, oekaki stuff, and other stuff.
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Short answer: no. Chibi Paint uses about the same resources as ShiPainter.
On the server end, bandwidth is the only thing that matters. The only thing a client machine does is download the .JAR file from the server, and then send picture data, so there's no other resources being used up on the server.
Chibi Paint does have one quirk. When sending picture data, it has the ability to send a layers file, and the applet will ask people if they want to send the layers file every time they try to send a picture. This can be confusing for some people, because Wacintaki does not support the layers file. Also, the layers file can be equal in size, or in some cases, several times larger than the actual picture, depending on the number and complexity of the layers. This isn't really a big deal since uploads tend to use a very small amount of bandwidth compared to downloads, but it's still a waste.
Since Chibi Paint is licensed under the GPL, I've been thinking about modifying the applet so the layers file can be controlled by the server (with an applet parameter), and the layers file will not send at all if there is only one layer. I'm not a Java programmer, though, so I have no idea how long it will take to do that.
Curious, does chibipaint take up more resources (memory loading or anything besides bandwidth, got plenty of that) than the other applets? I'm considering adding it onto my other oekakis but my sketcher oekaki gets quite crowded at times and I wasn't sure if it'd cause a definite spike on my server load.
Thanks <3
Layers files are not saved, since they differ significantly from animation files and would cause too many problems to support (at least right now).
Unfortunately, there's no way to disable the requester when sending images, so some people might be confused when sending pictures. Clicking yes or no basically means the same thing, though.
Ah that makes much more sense. I've never had bandwidth problems with the oekakis, just all the other resources they take up. Still better safe than sorry.
One last question about chibipaint, does it support multiple layer saves currently? I know there's no animation for it, but when saving it asks to save multiple layers. I'm not sure if it's my edits or not but the layers aren't saving separately (chi file right?) or...at all for that matter.
There might be a quick and dirty way to detect if a PNG file has an alpha channel, but I'm not totally sure that the GD graphics library can make thumbnails with alpha channels.
Here's something you can try: in the hacks.php file, there is a variable called $wactest. Change it from zero to one. Then, anyone who is an admin will have the option to create PNG thumbnails. Where the [Thumb] link used to be, there will be two options. [TP] makes PNGs, and [TJ] makes JPEGs.
The major issue is that having a PNG as a thumbnail is just a bad idea. That's because they are saved only in truecolor with an alpha channel (32-bit), which makes them huge in size. In some cases, they can be 6-8 times larger than JPEGs! If your bandwidth is already high, making a lot of PNG thumbnails is not a good idea. It'd be pretty much like disabling thumbnails altogether.
The reason why I created the [TP / TJ] option is so I could set a PNG thumbnail, and then upload an optimized PNG via FTP. I often did this when the JPEG thumbnails looked really crappy and wanted to archive the picture with a really good looking thumbnail. But, that requires pulling the picture into Photoshop, reducing the colors, and using PNGout. The GD graphics library is pretty much braindead when it comes to making good-looking, optimized PNG files. In fact, pretty much every graphics program is.
Ahhh I completely forgot thumbnails save as jpg's.
Is that something that can be reverted to png?
This problem sounds like its saving as a jpg rather than a png
I don't even know if this is anything that can be modified, but Chibipaint allows pictures to have transparent backgrounds when sent. When the oekaki turns these images into thumbnails it turns the transparent areas into the color black.
I'm more curious about how thumbnail resizing works than looking for a fix, I don't think it's a necessity.
By the way, everyone at SROA is loving chibipaint. =}