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crinkled image

I recently uploaded a book to Amazon with a cover carefully created with Latex.

I tried to make the cover as simple as possible so that whatever process Amazon was using would not interfere. I was horrified to see the effect pictured above.

You can see a clear "crinkling" effect that is an artifact of the image optimization process. Is this because certain colors are more susceptible to this? Should I have some kind of texture in the back to avoid this?

I had the same kind of problems with another cover, and I tried to correct them with this one. I don't know how to make my cover any simpler than white text on a maroon field.

Any advice would be appreciated.

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This looks like a jpeg compression artefact to me. In this case the "simpler" you try to go the worse things will become, because the algorithm is designed for photographs and throws away the high-frequency Fourier components needed to produce sharp edges on text. Of course this means that jpeg compression of text is just a bad idea, but if Amazon does it automatically that's probably not much comfort to you! – Ant Jan 28 at 10:55
@Ant If you would be willing to provide a link to exactly how these Fourier components affect image compression and computer graphics, that would be great. I can see a lot of stuff about Fourier components relating to music, but not so much relating to graphics. – Paul Jan 29 at 5:26
The Wikipedia article is a good place to start - it goes through a miniature example of the gory details in the section entitled "Discrete cosine transform" linked to above. Is this the sort of thing you're after? – Ant Jan 29 at 14:36
Yep, that's the kind of thing I am after. Thanks. – Paul Jan 31 at 13:02

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