The Quest for a Vectorized Image

In order to generate some (brief) new content for my blog, I'm posting here my first attempt at vectorizing an image. This is a process where an image is generated  by math, instead of from fixed pixels, the benefit being the vector is infinitely scalable without getting pixelated like typical .jpeg and .png files will when resized. I used the program Inkscape, which is free and open source. According to the little bit of research I did, my preferred image manipulation software GIMP doesn't do vectors easily. So without further ado, here's my sweet new vectorized Lake Sturgeon!

I'm definitely a fan of the color scheme, but there's a lot of lost definition in the tail, scutes, and barbels. So I'll need to keep tweaking it to get an image that I can use in presentations, but I'm proud of this first attempt.

Lake Sturgeon Spawning GIF

Files in the .gif format are pretty ubiquitous in social media. They're essentially moving pictures, which are more entertaining than static pictures but have a much smaller filesize than true video files. It's a pretty straightforward process in Photoshop to convert a video clip into a .gif, but I found today that the real trick is to figure out how to limit the filesize for use on Facebook, in PowerPoint, etc. For my first GIF, I decided to use some USGS footage (which I think [hope] is public domain) of Lake Sturgeon spawning in the St. Claire River over an artificially constructed reef below a hydroelectric project. I was able to get the file down from over 32MB to 1.7MB by importing every other frame from the video source, shrinking the size of the picture, and limiting the length of the video being played back, all by toggling settings within Photoshop. So, here it is!

Video collected by USGS, and you can watch the source video here.

I highly recommend watching the video, the divers get up close and personal with the sturgeon on the spawning reef, and highlight one individual carrying what I think are Sea Lamprey parasites. At the end of the video, they show sturgeon eggs down in the interstitial spaces within the substrate.

A comparison of single classification trees and random forest