[comp.sys.mac] Printing Scaled Bitmaps

peter@aucs.UUCP (Peter Steele) (03/18/88)

I frequently prepare documentation for using Macintosh applications
and make heavy use of screen dumps (or portions of them). I find
a full screen dump too large at its normal size and use SuperPaint to
scale it down. I do the scaling in the "draw" plane so resolution is
maintained when it it printed. My complaint is that certain types of
patterns in bitmaps (e.g., the gray desktop) reproduce as a sort
of plaid. Its great if you want that effect, but I don't. It does
this if I print directly from SuperPaint or after I've pasted it
in Word. Curiously, when I tried FullWrite, it prints out a near
perfect scaled reproduction (the plaid effect is almost nonexistent).
I'd use FullWrite but it is far too buggy and slow as it is now.
Does anyone know of a way to improve the results of printed scaled
bitmaps on a LaserWriter. I'm using various reductions (85, 75, 60,
and others). The best results are 96 and 48, but those are not always
satisfactory (either too little or too much reduction). Any advice
would be greatly appreciated.


-- 
Peter Steele, Microcomputer Applications Analyst
Acadia University, Wolfville, NS, Canada B0P1X0 (902)542-2201x121
UUCP: {uunet|watmath|utai|garfield}dalcs!aucs!Peter
BITNET: Peter@Acadia  Internet: Peter%Acadia.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU

singer@endor.harvard.edu (Darrell LeBlanc) (03/18/88)

I think the effects you're getting are caused by the smoothing algorithm.
Assuming you're not using any bitmapped fonts that you want smoothed, you'll
get cleaner results if you turn smoothing off.

   Jon Hueras