[comp.sys.amiga.misc] Laser Priner Jaggies

Ed_Meyer@mindlink.UUCP (Ed Meyer) (03/29/91)

Recently I've acquired an NEC Silentwriter 2 laser printer (8ppm unit). Nice
printer, but I'm having one tiny problem: it seems that no matter what I do to
adjust the Horizontal (width) and Vertical (height) ratios for DPaint-III
output to the printer, I cannot seem to get non-jaggy diagonals.  I'm using a
"Union-Jack" type of pattern where the diagonals are 1 pixel wide as seen in
DPaint but the reproduction on the laser printer always has columns, rows and
diagonals with either fattened-up section or missing sections.  I had the same
kind of problem when I had my Raven/Panasonic 24-pin, but I could select the
width-height ratio to make the printout perfect.  But, I don't seem to be able
to get this result with my printer.  Help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
        Ed Meyer

peterk@cbmger.UUCP (Peter Kittel GERMANY) (04/03/91)

In article <5316@mindlink.UUCP> Ed_Meyer@mindlink.UUCP (Ed Meyer) writes:
>Recently I've acquired an NEC Silentwriter 2 laser printer (8ppm unit). Nice
>printer, but I'm having one tiny problem: it seems that no matter what I do to
>adjust the Horizontal (width) and Vertical (height) ratios for DPaint-III
>output to the printer, I cannot seem to get non-jaggy diagonals.  I'm using a
>"Union-Jack" type of pattern where the diagonals are 1 pixel wide as seen in
>DPaint but the reproduction on the laser printer always has columns, rows and
>diagonals with either fattened-up section or missing sections.  I had the same
>kind of problem when I had my Raven/Panasonic 24-pin, but I could select the
>width-height ratio to make the printout perfect.  But, I don't seem to be able
>to get this result with my printer.  Help would be appreciated.

Did you try to switch on "Anti-aliasing" in Preferences? You see, when you
have a picture with 640 or even only 320 points horizontal, every point
becomes a relatively big blot on your laser printer output. And as the
software doesn't "know" that one pixel is a part of a thin line, it can't
help by drwaing real fine lines in the maximum printer resolution. The
antialiasing feature tries to intelligently guess for such lines and round
corners and jaggies, but it can't be perfect principally. I don't see how
your old solution of setting the width-height ratio could have helped
here?

If your pictures are more made of lines than areas you should consider to
purchase a line-oriented drawing program. Some of them are able to output
postscript code which produces maximum quality output on a laser (don't
ask me for product names).

-- 
Best regards, Dr. Peter Kittel  // E-Mail to  \\  Only my personal opinions... 
Commodore Frankfurt, Germany  \X/ {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!cbmger!peterk