I tried to make a jpg bigger than mathematically possible out of an entire year's worth of PC Gamer magazine pages
I used all the issues from 2004; can you tell what it is yet?
In a recent project, a journalist sought to create an image that encompassed every issue of PC Gamer magazine from its inception until 2008. To accomplish this, the journalist scanned each page of the archive stored in the flooded basement of the PC Gamer headquarters. Jacob suggested using these pages to form a photo mosaic, with each page functioning as a pixel in the final image.
The journalist then created a Python script to analyze the original image, manage, crop, and rasterize using Pillow (PIL), pypdfium2, and numpy libraries. The script also employed color matching and image stitching techniques to generate the final mosaic. Unfortunately, the journalist discovered a mathematical limit to how large a JPG image can be - 65,535 pixels.
The artist aimed to create an image 81,920 x 109,568 pixels, which exceeded the hard limit. Consequently, the journalist had to scale back the project. The journalist also pushed the 64 GB memory capacity of their home PC during the process, causing it to slow down significantly. Despite the challenges, the journalist successfully created a zoomable image using the OpenSeadragon viewer and the Deep Zoom (DZI) API.
Written by urgent.news from PC Gamer's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
