leue@galen.crd.ge.com (Bill Leue) (10/23/89)
I've got a problem with Aldus Freehand that I can't work around. It's the latest version of Freehand (2.0?), just bought recently. I'm running it on a IIcx with 5 mbytes of memory, using system 6.0.3. The behavior of the program is the same under MF or Unifinder. Briefly, there seems to be some arbitrary (and low) limit on the size of a bitmap that I can import. I scanned some material at various resolutions from 75dpi to 300dpi using an Apple scanner and one-bit-per-pixel, and saved them as PICT II. MacDraw II cheerfully imports any and all of these large bitmaps, but Freehand always complains about too little memory. Even a quite modestly-sized bitmap, only about 3"x4" at 75 dpi, wouldn't load. Whasamatta dis program??!?? I had heard various reports about problems with Applescan's PICT format, so I imported it into MacDraw II and tried resaving it as PICT (I), and then reimporting the result into Freehand. Still no luck. I also tried Superpaint as the intermediary, alas with the same result. Sigh. As of now I've given up and am using MacDraw II to trace over the scanned image. It works fine, except for the one VERY annoying detail that MacDraw II doesn't know how to convolve a 50% grey mask over the scanned bitmap, so it's hard to distinguish the original art from the lines that are traced over it. (If anyone from Claris is listening, this is one of the few features that is really lacking in MacDraw II -- along with editable bezier or spline curves -- that keeps it from being even more competitive with the Illustrator/Freehand drawing programs, IMHO.) Has anyone else encountered this kind of problem, and if so, has anyone found a workaround or fix? (Yes, I know that I can ask Aldus, but I'm reluctant to start the clock running on my free support period. Just cheap, I guess. :-$ -Bill Leue leue@crd.ge.com
chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (10/23/89)
>Briefly, there seems to be some arbitrary (and low) limit on the size of >a bitmap that I can import. I scanned some material at various resolutions >from 75dpi to 300dpi using an Apple scanner and one-bit-per-pixel, and saved >them as PICT II. What I do is save them in TIFF format and import them into Freehand that way. Never had a problem. -- Chuq Von Rospach <+> Editor,OtherRealms <+> Member SFWA/ASFA chuq@apple.com <+> CI$: 73317,635 <+> [This is myself speaking] Trust Mama Nature to remind us just how important things like sci.aquaria's name really is in the scheme of things.
baumgart@esquire.dpw.com (Steve Baumgarten) (10/25/89)
In article <3490@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> leue@galen.crd.ge.com (Bill Leue) writes: >Briefly, there seems to be some arbitrary (and low) limit on the size of >a bitmap that I can import. I scanned some material at various resolutions >from 75dpi to 300dpi using an Apple scanner and one-bit-per-pixel, and saved >them as PICT II. MacDraw II cheerfully imports any and all of these large >bitmaps, but Freehand always complains about too little memory. Even >a quite modestly-sized bitmap, only about 3"x4" at 75 dpi, wouldn't load. > >Whasamatta dis program??!?? I had heard various reports about problems >with Applescan's PICT format, so I imported it into MacDraw II and One problem I've had with AppleScan is that if you ask it to save the document, it saves *the whole page*, including any blank areas around the part of the page you're really interested in. I had a small 2x2" logo that I scanned at 300dpi; when I selected "Save", the resulting file was almost 300K. "Save selection", however, with just the logo selected, created a much smaller file that I then had no trouble working with. -- Steve Baumgarten | "New York... when civilization falls apart, Davis Polk & Wardwell | remember, we were way ahead of you." baumgart@esquire.dpw.com | cmcl2!esquire!baumgart | - David Letterman