richard@gryphon.UUCP (09/08/87)
I just got a copy of the shareware program 'IFF2PS' written
by William Mason and Sam Paolucci.
Really a phenominal program. It does a fantastic job of converting
color IFF images to a postscript file. Much better than CLAZ.
(exactly) 4 times better than LaserJet output @ 75 dpi.
It takes about 4-5 minutes to convert a 640x480x4 image from
IFF to postscript, but since the whole thing is a bit image,
the postscript printer doesnt spend much time churning on the file.
It does a pretty remarkable job of converting full color to
black and white.
Couple of minor complaints though. One is the printers fault
in that large expanses of black dont come out well. They tend
to not look solid black and have raster induced artifacts
which manifest themselves as faint lines. As I said, this
is the laser engine. Xeroxing the output on a copier that
makes good blacks cures this problem.
The other minor point is that two colors that are *close*
such as (10, 1, 3) and (10, 2, 5) look different on the
Amiga monitor, but look identical when printed. This is
probably reasonable given the limitations of the
technology.
Of course this isn't the only device that has this problem.
The Polaroid Palette setup from Liquid Light has a
similar problem. I have some images with several
differnt, but similar, blues, and they appear to be
1 shade of blue. Its a problem in their film exposure
tables; a screen shot of the same image reveals
all those different shades of blue. Oh well.
These minor annoyences can be easily circumvented
however, and this really is a fantastic program.
Its nice to be able to be use that postscript
printer over there in the corner without having to
write the software for it first. :-)
IFF2PS is a $15 shareware program, cheap at 4 times the price.
It supports high res, interlace, and HAM.
Coming to a BBS near you soon.
--
Richard Sexton
INTERNET: richard@gryphon.CTS.COM
UUCP: {hplabs!hp-sdd, sdcsvax, ihnp4, nosc}!crash!gryphon!richard
"It's too dark to put the key in my ignition..."