P.B.

یکی از ایرادهای این که آدم دیر به دیر بنویسه اینه که کسایی که پایه هستن و این‌جا رو می‌خونن فکر می‌کنن طرف حتما تخم دو زرده کرده که اومده قدقد می‌کنه! خود نویسنده هم ناخودآگاه یه همچین حسی بهش دست می‌ده و شاید اصلا بی‌خیال نوشتن بشه. یه عده آدم بی‌معنی مثل من هم هستن که عین خیالشون نیست و دیر به دیر هم میان و همون خزعبلات معمول رو می‌نویسن و می‌رن. بگذریم.
کسایی که تو کارImage Processing و این جفنگیات هستن (گور خودم رو کندم با این حرف، جدا نمی‌فهمم چه طور ممکنه عقل سلیم، چیز محشری مثل میدان رو ول کنه و بچسبه به سیستم.) احتمالا این تصویر براشون آشناس. اگه درست یادم مونده باشه توی برنامه های مثل Adobe Gamma Loader هم از همین تصویر به عنوان Sample Image استفاده شده. در واقع این عکس به یکی از تصاویر استاندارد دنیای پردازش تصویر تبدیل شده. اما این خانومه کیه و از کجا اومده.

Alexander Sawchuk estimates that it was in June or July of 1973 when he, then an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the USC Signal and Image Processing Institute (SIPI), along with a graduate student and the SIPI lab manager, was hurriedly searching the lab for a good image to scan for a colleague's conference paper. They had tired of their stock of usual test images, dull stuff dating back to television standards work in the early 1960s. They wanted something glossy to ensure good output dynamic range, and they wanted a human face. Just then, somebody happened to walk in with a recent issue of P.B..

For the curious: 'lena' or 'lenna' is a digitized P.B. centerfold, from November 1972. (Lenna is the spelling in P.B., Lena is the Swedish spelling of the name.) Lena Soderberg (ne Sjööblom) was last reported living in her native Sweden, happily married with three kids and a job with the state liquor monopoly. In 1988, she was interviewed by some Swedish computer related publication, and she was pleasantly amused by what had happened to her picture. That was the first she knew of the use of that picture in the computer business.

The engineers tore away the top third of the centerfold so they could wrap it around the drum of their Muirhead wirephoto scanner, which they had outfitted with analog-to-digital converters (one each for the red, green, and blue channels) and a Hewlett Packard 2100 minicomputer. The Muirhead had a fixed resolution of 100 lines per inch and the engineers wanted a 512 x 512 image, so they limited the scan to the top 5.12 inches of the picture, effectively cropping it at the subject's shoulders.

منظور از P.B. همون مجله آموزشی (!) معروفه که البته سانسوراسمش از منه. یه جایی خوندم که دهه 70 یه رقم خفنی در حدود 70 درصد دانشجوهای آمریکایی مشتری دائمی P.B. بودن! همون شماره نوامبر 1972 هم گویا پرفروش‌ترین شماره بوده با تیراژ 7.2 میلیون نسخه! متن کامل‌تری از چیزی که خوندین در شماره می 2001 از Newsletter of the IEEE Professional Communication Society به قلم Jamie Hutchinson اومده.