Comments on: Lenna, the Utah Teapot, and...?

Question: Lenna, the Utah Teapot, and...?

sandettie light vessel automatic — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 12:32:13 -0800

There is Lenna, the go-to image for testing image processing software, and there is the Utah Pot, the standard with which to test 3D modeling approaches. Now Michal Migurski proposes that Oakland's Lake Merritt may be a GIS instance of a "Lenna". What other Lennae are out there, in other fields? Standard test instances in other domains?

By: Jairus

Jairus — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 12:34:45 -0800

The original version of Tom's Diner by Suzanne Vega is the Lenna for MP3s.

By: specialagentwebb

specialagentwebb — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 12:41:09 -0800

In programming, it's mostly Hello World and FizzBuzz (BizzBuzz) to demonstrate basic syntax.

By: ShutterBun

ShutterBun — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 12:42:09 -0800

Color Bars for video would apply, I think. Possibly Von Karajen's recording of Beethoven's 9th for CD's? (though that has to do only with disc space/recording length.)

By: finnb

finnb — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 12:51:02 -0800

At the bottom of the Lenna page on Wikipedia (I often don't scroll all the way down into the references, etc, so you may have missed this) there's actually a really good category collection of "standard test items," including test cards for television, GTUBE, SMPTE color bars, "Tom's Diner," Quick Fox and other pangrams for typefaces, and so on.

By: pipeski

pipeski — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 12:57:51 -0800

Maybe this is a bit too tenuous an example, by I overheard someone yesterday explaining that everyone who goes on a blacksmithing course makes a poker, because it's about the simplest object that can be made using all of the basic techniques.

By: finnb

finnb — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 13:01:47 -0800

Actually, something not mentioned in the Wikipedia collection is the enormous set of standard test items maintained by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, as the Standard Reference Materials -- the benchmarks used to measure physical objects for regulation purposes, everything from the ignition temperature of cigarettes to the consistency of baby food and the thermal transmission properties of fibrous glass board. (And standard cartridge casings with which forensic scientists can calibrate their cartridge analysis equipment!) There's a great interview about the SRM family of more than 1200 products here. You can order them, too, should you want some standard, benchmarking calibration peanut butter around the house.

By: ulotrichous

ulotrichous — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 13:04:12 -0800

The Stanford Bunny! It's a mesh you often see in 3d printing, graphics, and haptics demos. Here's a bunch of them, including what looks to be a photo of the original ceramic figurine that was scanned to make the mesh.

By: zsazsa

zsazsa — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 13:23:59 -0800

The HeLa cell line?

By: zsazsa

zsazsa — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 13:34:08 -0800

The Hybrid III 50th Percentile Male Crash Test Dummy.

By: kc8nod

kc8nod — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 13:38:57 -0800

Harvard sentences are used for testing the quality of various voice transmission channels.

By: Brittanie

Brittanie — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 14:20:50 -0800

Does Lorem Ipsum count? Or, The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog?

By: cschneid

cschneid — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 14:25:28 -0800

The non-malicious test file for virus scanners is a very short, entirely printable characters program. http://www.eicar.org/86-0-Intended-use.html

By: Chocolate Pickle

Chocolate Pickle — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 16:18:22 -0800

Chemists used to use Perrier as a standard for pure water, to test their equipment that looked for impurities and pollution. In 1990, a lab in North Carolina found benzene in the stuff, and I believe that chemists no longer trust it.

By: Devoidoid

Devoidoid — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 16:36:57 -0800

As I recall, the original vinyl pressing of the soundtrack to the 1967 version of "Casino Royale" was claimed to be the best-sounding record of all time, and was widely used by audiophiles and sound engineers as a reference disc.

By: scruss

scruss — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 16:48:34 -0800

The standard for microcontroller programming is Blink: [Arduino], [PICAXE], [MSP430], [PIC].

By: 7segment

7segment — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 16:56:12 -0800

It's not a testing standard, but somewhat related check out the Wihelm Scream.

By: 1f2frfbf

1f2frfbf — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 16:59:55 -0800

Very analog, but potters will use a 1/2 pound (.23 kg, for the rest of the world) of clay to throw a 6 inch (or better) cylinder as a test of skill.

By: 5_13_23_42_69_666

5_13_23_42_69_666 — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 17:10:44 -0800

There's a collection of them in projects

By: qxntpqbbbqxl

qxntpqbbbqxl — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 17:15:46 -0800

The Cornell Box, and many variants thereof, for scene rendering tests. Bonus: Stanford Bunny inside a Cornell Box

There's a "Laughing Buddha" model (on the left) that's used similar to the bunny, but I'm not sure of its official name or provenance. I've also seen a Chinese dragon model that seems to be popular with the SIGGRAPH set.

The Fifth Element is often used as a demo movie by A/V nerds to show off home theater setups.

By: Mai2k3

Mai2k3 — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 17:32:57 -0800

SL_2 in representation theory

By: jnnla

jnnla — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 18:07:58 -0800

I work in visual effects and we use Macbeth Color Charts for color matching lookdev to plates and for creating HDR environments...

By: emelenjr

emelenjr — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 19:57:25 -0800

This may vary from music genre to music genre, but nearly every live sound engineer I've worked with has used a Steely Dan track for EQing the front-of-house sound. But, really, any song or album you're so familiar with that you just KNOW how it's supposed to sound could work.

By: AsYouKnow Bob

AsYouKnow Bob — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 22:03:26 -0800

Before there was Lenna there was Shirley.

(Kodak used to include a sample standard color image in each Color Dataguide.)

By: ShutterBun

ShutterBun — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 01:01:49 -0800

It would be so cool and appropriate if David Bowie's "China Girl" somehow became the de facto standard for audio testing.

By: teriyaki_tornado

teriyaki_tornado — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 06:00:30 -0800

The sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" is used by designers and typographers to preview fonts, as its a pangram—meaning it contains every letter of the alphabet.

Also, is there a word to define what it is sound engineers do when they're testing microphones for a concert? That thing where they go to each mic and say some variation of "hey, hey, one, two, hey, hey?" That seems to be a pretty universal thing for testing mics.

By: hamsterdam

hamsterdam — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 11:07:09 -0800

This question reminded me of some of the test images (usually of women) that come on the heads of reels of 35mm motion picture film, which led me to this awesome site which catalogs a bunch of them.

By: ShutterBun

ShutterBun — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 19:55:55 -0800

Teriyaki, that's usually just referred to as a 'mic check'.

For things like two-way radios, they do a "five count" of "1,2,3,4,5" and are rated for signal strength and clarity ("five by five", etc.)