Blubox 4 Compresses Photos by 95%

Blubox 4 claims to be the world’s most advanced software compression application for digital images. It can apparently compress photos by up to 95% without sacrificing picture quality. Blubox 4 can also encrypt and protect pictures using 256-bit AES encryption technology. Blubox V4 is available now for £19.99.

Blubox Software Press Release

DON’T GET YOURS CAUGHT IN THE ZIPPER!

QUICKLY COMPRESS AND DE-COMPRESS YOUR DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHS BY UP TO 95%, MAKING IT EASIER AND SAFER TO SHARE THEM THAN EVER BEFORE!

Ever wondered what happens when you ‘zip’ a digital photograph?

Try it and you are guaranteed to be surprised by the fact that very little happens.  ZIP - the ubiquitous compression solution originally designed for PC nearly 20 years ago, is simply not designed to compress or secure the rich media file formats of the 21st century.

Launched by Blubox Software Limited ‘Blubox V4’ is the world’s most advanced software compression application for digital images available today.  Designed to use a variety of compression algorithms Blubox supports all ‘Zip’ formats, Blubox offers unprecedented compression of digital photograph formats, with bullet proof security. 

Blubox is an exciting new software application which combines state of the art data compression technology with industry standard encryption.  Blubox has been designed for the digital camera and Internet consumer market; allowing a user to dramatically improve the digital photo sharing experience over the Internet and ensuring the protection of private and personal information.  Blubox users can:

- Compress photos by up to 95% without sacrificing picture quality
- Encrypt and protect pictures using 256-bit AES encryption technology
- Dramatically reduce the time taken to send photos by email and FTP.  Send a whole album in the time it usually takes to email a couple of photos!
- Unlike other compression products, Blubox lets you view pictures while they are still compressed and encrypted
- Print directly from within the Blubox program or extract and then print
- Organise and store photos inside Blubox archives saving disk space and protecting private information from intruders
- Extract images back to their original file format for use in other programs

Too many of today’s computer and Internet users are getting their data caught in the Zipper! Users habitually ‘zip’ digital photographs believing that they are reducing the digital photo file size for easier Internet use…..this is simply not the case.  For most, getting caught in the zipper can be an embarrassing and sometimes painful experience.

“While working on a major healthcare project we discovered that ‘Zip’ compression utilities simply could not compress digital photos which led us to investigate the ‘Zip’ formats in more detail” explains Peter Boswell, CEO, Blubox Software.  “After extensive research we realised that there was a massive gap in the market for software that could offer compatibility with the existing ‘Zip’ products but go much further by offering the user the ability to significantly shrink their digital photos without sacrificing the Hi-Resolution quality of the original image file.”

For most PC users, the file formats that usually require compression are the memory hungry digital photos and video files.  The unprecedented growth of digital image file sizes over the last 3 years has been partly driven by the consumer’s desire for higher mega pixel CCD capacity for their personal digital cameras and mobile phones.  ‘Zip’ provides acceptable compression for text based files, but has been unable to cope with the demands of the modern file formats.

By storing digital images in a Blubox container the user is ensuring that these priceless memories are held in a protected stable digital environment suitable for efficient storage and communication.

Blubox V4.0 has been developed by Blubox Software Limited, part of the ROK Group of Companies.  It will be available from 1st December 2007 for £19.99.  It can downloaded from the Blubox website http://www.blubox.com

System Requirements
PC running Windows 2000, XP or Vista; Microsoft .NET framework version 2.0 or higher; License registration requires a connection to the Internet; We also recommend that you have at least a 400 MHz processor, 64 MB RAM and 15 MB free disk space on your hard drive.

About Blubox Software
Blubox Software Limited, formed in 2006, has already established itself as a leading innovator as an independent software application and technology development company specializing in the design and development of encryption and compression desktop and mobile software applications and utilities.

Published: Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Reader Comments

1. I've tried out bluebox on 40 of my 20D's CR2 (RAW) images totalling at 298,050,581 bytes. Bluebox created a ZIP archive of 290,572,124 bytes, only 2.6% smaller than the original bunch of photos.
   
   Compressing 15 JPG files of 2,147,133 bytes gave me an archive of 1,549,377 bytes. This is 27.9% less than the originals. With WinZip and -ex (extreme compression I've only achieved 2,128,886).
   But the uncompressed jpg files are not the same as the original. So maybe this isn't a lossless conversion.

   Andreas Falco at 10:32am on Tuesday, January 29, 2008

2. Some additional remarks:
   
   It is remarkable that using ZIP compression (all *.blu files I created were decompressable with WinZip even after uninstalling bluebox) bluebox achieves a much better compression ratio! The reason should be the lossy quality of the conversion. (Closer examination revealed that bluebox relies on the image processing libraries from leadtools so maybe they are the ones to praise.)
   
   As a comparison I converted the jpg files to jpeg2000 jp2 files without noticeable quality loss. The total size of the jp2 files were only 721,354 bytes (66.5% smaller than the original).

   Andreas Falco at 12:22pm on Tuesday, January 29, 2008