suitti@haddock.ima.isc.com (Stephen Uitti) (06/11/89)
[I tried replying directly via mail, but it bounced, and my original note was posted to news, and...] > From: Paulo L de Geus <paulo%unix.computer-science.manchester.ac.uk@NSFNET-RELAY.AC.UK> > Date: Thu, 8 Jun 89 11:44:23 > To: suitti%haddock.ima.isc.com@NSFNET-RELAY.AC.UK > Subject: Re: Laser Printers: Apple or GCC ??? > > Is the PLP able to print Digital darkroom's gray scale graphics (by some > sort of halftoning) at 300 dpi? Yes. Though Digital Darkroom can use a Postscript machine's halftoning capabilities, it has something called "Advanced Halftoning", which is actully slightly better. For the non-postscript PLP, there is no reason not to do this, since the Mac (not the printer) is doing the rasterization, and the printer lives on the SCSI bus, and thus the data gets to the printer at high speed. For postscript machines, they suggest that the postscript halftoning is good enough. I did take the "final froggy" demo picture from PixelPaint, and produced an absolutely gorgeous nearly-full-page halftone image on my PLP with Digital Darkroom. I was reading the Canvas 2.0 manual this morning, and it turns out that it also has halftoning capabilities. You can take a PICT2 or TIFF multi-bit-per-pixel image, paste it into Canvas, and tell Canvas to halftone it with 15 options: 4x4, 4x4 diagonal, 4x4 random, 4x4 random 830, 4x4 spiral, 4x4 spiral 25%, 4x4 spiral 830, 8x8, 8x8 Bayer, 8x8 Magic square, 8x8 mod spirals, large diagonal 830, medium diagonal 830, small diagonal 830. The documentation on what these things do is sketchy (i've nearly duplicated it above), but if you print them out (for example, take a scanned 8 bit 72 dpi image, paste it into Canvas, then convert it to 300 dpi, you get these options), you get an array of options, showing resolution vs. gray scale tradeoffs, lightness & darkness, etc. Sure, Digital Darkroom does better, but that's expected. > I'm asking because using a deskjet with either grappler LS or JetLink > Express, printing gray scales from Imagestudio only gives me, with > grappler, a same size printing with only 2 levels (b/w) at 72 dpi, or with > jetlink, nothing at all. Imagestudio is Adobe, right? I don't think it supports quickdraw. This is real stupid, in that Apple sells a quickdraw laser printer. When i looked at imagestudio, it looked full featured, but not more so than (as good as?) Digital Darkroom. It certainly looked more expensive (numbers being pretty easy to compare). > It would be really nice to get a PICT or GIF gray scale picture, have it > MacPaint dithered but not being constrained by the size of a MacPaint page, > and have it printed at 300 dpi. Canvas can deal with images up to 9 feet by 9 feet. In practice, since it can deal with 300 dpi bitmap objects (bitmap resolutions are 73, 144, 216, 300, 635, 1270, and 2540), and each bitmap object can have its own resolution, and draw objects can be interspersed also, i generally use 1:1 scale. I don't have any documents that take more than 4 pages to print (yet). Digital Darkroom (DD) can import numerous file formats (I don't believe Gif is one of them. I have some Gif files, but haven't yet attempted to play with them in DD. I have played with them in Pixel Paint, so i know it can be done). At worst, an image can be copied into the clipboard (or scrapbook) and pasted into DD. In practice, my Mac II only has 2 MB of RAM. Digital Darkroom knows that this isn't infinity (as it ought to be). I actually had to read the manual to figure out how to paste in the new image. The problem is that DD does not want to dynamically change the size of a document. The solution is that the "new" window command dialoge has a "size of clipboard" option. If you want to crop a DD image, select the part you want, choose "save as", and check the box that says to only save selection(s). Similar actions are required if you want DD to scale the entire image. > Thanks for any info, > > -- > Paulo L de Geus JANET: paulo@uk.ac.man.cs.ux > Dept of Computer Science Internet: paulo%ux.cs.man.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk > Univ of Manchester USENET:...!uunet!mcvax!ukc!man.cs.ux!paulo > Manchester M13 9PL U.K. BITNET: paulo@ux.cs.man.ac.uk I mentioned reading the manuals. You never had to read the manual to use SuperPaint 1.1 or MacPaint 1.?. Canvas 2.0, Digital Darkroom, MS Word 3.0 (and newer) are all exceptionally powerful. Though you can play with them right away, reading the manuals is the only way to get at their really powerful features. I haven't used Pixel Paint for anything real (which is why i haven't purchased it). Its main problems (which may have been fixed since the release i have) are that 1) it only deals with 72 dpi images, 2) it has a fixed page size (which is big, but isn't absolutely huge), 3) it REQUIRES a color printer - the ImageWriter II with color ribbon isn't good enough (and it doesn't try - though i've heard that there is something that will allow it to try in the public domain) , 4) The only printer i've seen it talk to costs $15K (a Tektronix color laser printer, which is 300 dpi - see issue #2. The output i saw was printed at 72 dpi on the printer - what a waste). Unfortunately, Canvas 2.0 doesn't quite give me the color painting abilities that i'd like: so I'm still looking. In my article, i don't think i mentioned ThunderScan or MacRecorder, or Crystal Quest. These are also indispensible. My Mac's error sound is Curly saying "I'm trying to think, but nothing happens". Coming soon: Bones saying "Are you out of your Vulcan mind?". This is piped directly into my stereo, 45 Watts per channel, overlaying George Winston's "Autumn" (or whatever is playing). Stephen.