kasper@csli.STANFORD.EDU (Kasper Osterbye) (03/11/88)
Are there anyone out there in net-land that have a program that
will print IFF files as they are? That is - no perspective. I have
often wanted to draw some illustrations, mainly consisting of boxes
arcs and circles (Petri-nets) and some text. They look just great
in DPAINT II.
B U T then.
When I print the picture, the pixels come out in different sizes!!
That makes the text (esp. the smaller sizes) look like it is a very
bad quallity. What on the screen looks like:
* * * * *
* * * *
* * * * *
comes out like this:
** * * ** **
** * * ** **
* ** * *
** * * ** **
Anybody can suggest something?
I am aware that this non-uniform printing of pixels are used to make the
printed picture have the same proportions, but I am willing to give that
up.
Thanks in advance.
Kasper
Kasper Osterbye ||| /// ///|
Internet: kasper@csli.stanford.edu ||| /// ///||
UUCP: {decvax,ucbvax,sun,decwrl}!csli!kasper |||<<< ///|||
AT&T: (415) 323 9604 ||| \\\ ///=|||
USMAIL: 2420 Tasso st. #3, Palo Alto CA 94301 ||| \\X// |||MIGAhcmutt@hpcllld.HP.COM (Harry Muttart) (03/12/88)
* Anybody can suggest something?
*
* I am aware that this non-uniform printing of pixels are used to make the
* printed picture have the same proportions, but I am willing to give that
* up.
There are a couple of approaches to dealing with this in DPII. One way is
to fiddle with settings in the requestor that lets you adjust how much of your
picture should fill the page that you print to. When you choose the proper
values, you will get one pixel on the screen to on pixed on the printed page.
Even 1:2 ratio is OK if it is completely consistent and you have a fine print
dot. The other way to approach this is to ask DPII to set up a larger bitmap
to paint into; on my printer (Panasonic KX-1090) this lets me get a 1:1 dot
ratio between the screen and printer again. Note that this approach may take
too much memory if you want color and are using 512K. You might want to use
a test pattern to calibrate, like:
* * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * *
or
* * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * *
I agree with you that it would be nice to not have to fiddle around, but once
you figure out the correct ratios for you printer, you are in business until
you upgrade it.
Harry Muttartrichard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) (03/15/88)
X-posted to .tech It may not be "real", but it is real here, and about 15 articles a day come through. And guess what ? No *shit*. In article <2752@csli.STANFORD.EDU> kasper@csli.UUCP (Kasper Osterbye) writes: >Are there anyone out there in net-land that have a program that >will print IFF files as they are? That is - no perspective. I have >often wanted to draw some illustrations, mainly consisting of boxes >arcs and circles (Petri-nets) and some text. They look just great >in DPAINT II. > >B U T then. > >When I print the picture, the pixels come out in different sizes!! > Aha. Let me make a couple of tacit assumptions here. 1) you are using 640x400 in dpaint and 2) you have an epson printer. Now, whats happening here is that you have painted a picture on a 72 dpi (dots per inch) device - the CRT. You go to print it and it looks like shark cheese. This is because of _Pixel replication_. If dpaint made one pixel on the screen correspond *exactly* to one dot on your printer (assuming 240 dpi mode) you would have a large postage stamp that bared some resemblance to your original picture. So, every time is grabs a pixel from dpaint, it actually spits several pixels at the printer. Now, if the printer was an integral multiple of 72 dpi, you'd get a better looking picture. Ie, every pixel on your dpaint screen would be rendered as a square of 2, 3 or 4 pixels, depending on your printer resolution. Ok, thats why it looks like shit, how do you fix it ? Well, what you do is this: Go into Dpaint, and select a page size that "looks" more or less like a piece of paper in size. SOmething around 640 x 800 or so. Now draw diagonal lines from the top left to the bottom right and the top right to the bottom left. Print it, using left margin 1, right margin 89, height 100%, width 100%. It'll look like this: * * * * * * * * * or it'll look like this: * * * * * * * * * either way, that means the page height is not quite right yet. Change it. Print it again. Did it get better ? Good, keep changeing it. Did it get worse ? Change it the other way (ie, if you made the page taller, make it shorter). Repeat until you get a clean diagonal line. Now, I've never done this on an Epson, so I'm assumimng some reasonable replication factor exists. I have a canon which is, guess what 72 dpi, same as the screen. Dpaint needs a 640 x 825 screen, lm 1, rm 89, width 100% height 100% to get a 1:1 repilacation factor. There is some program you can get from CATS or somebody that lets you fiddle with the replication factor. That'll be $5 please. -- "...(alright Nils, alright)..." richard@gryphon.CTS.COM {ihnp4!scgvaxd!cadovax, rutgers!marque, codas!ddsw1} gryphon!richard
walker@sas.UUCP (Doug Walker) (03/17/88)
You should take a look at a back issue of the Amigan Apprentice and Journeyman, a technical newsletter/magazine for the Amiga, which discusses how to get good-looking printouts of IFF pictures WITH PERSPECTIVE and no pixel 'noise'. Basically, you must change the size of the picture in DPAINT II so that it is a multiple of the printer size*printer DPI, then print the picture out. Since the screen pixels should now fall on the printer pixels exactly, the picture comes out MUCH cleaner. I don't have my back issues of the Amigan here, so I can't give an issue number, but if you are interested I can give you an address to mail to.
john13@garfield.UUCP (John Russell) (03/18/88)
In article <6790003@hpcllld.HP.COM> hcmutt@hpcllld.HP.COM (Harry Muttart) writes: >* Anybody can suggest something? >* >* I am aware that this non-uniform printing of pixels are used to make the >* printed picture have the same proportions, but I am willing to give that >* up. > >There are a couple of approaches to dealing with this in DPII. One way is >to fiddle with settings in the requestor that lets you adjust how much of your >picture should fill the page that you print to. When you choose the proper >values, you will get one pixel on the screen to on pixed on the printed page. I got so sick of this I wrote my own single-plane rastport dump and now use that for printing black/white (usually 640 X 400) images from DPaint. Even if you stretch the printer.device to its limits by fiddling with the settings you can't make it double strike (I think this took 3 lines), skip blank lines (another 3 or 4 lines of code) or set special resolution modes. To the original author: my e-mail to you bounced, but if you are interested and have either a Panasonic/close compatible printer, or know anything at all about C to customize the source, reply to me if you are interested and I will see if I can send you a copy. John (...!utai!garfield!john13) -- "What do you know... Joe Shlabotnik!"