Re: [NetEpic ML] Re: Army cards: graphics help

From: Peter Ramos <primarch_at_...>
Date: Tue, 09 Jan 2001 11:39:15 -0500

Hi!

Thanks for the tips!

I have done the following:

1. The original software is Campaign Cartographer. Its pretty nifty and
has let me do quite a few things I could not do with other programs.
2. The PNG format seems to be the only format that gives me little of no
grain. The images are pretty sharp and print out good.The problem with
JPEG is that Campaign cartographer does not seem to have the ability to
vary the compression level of its created jpegs since this is not the
format they usually use (bitmaps and PNG's prefered). Also Jpegs aren't
the best way to save these "line" type drawings.
3. I will include a text file with these army cards to point out to
people that they MUST print these out at a decent resolution on their
inkjets with the settings on 360dpi- fine. Anything less you get too
much noticable grain.
4. I noticed that the colors didn't print out exactly as the original. I
resolved this by setting the inkjet printers "color management" settings
to "ICM". This acheived the best print out for these files.
5. I can put these PNG's in pdf format, but the pdf files are around
150k zipped compared to 64k for the PNG's, you dont even need to sip
PNG's since it doesn't save you much space (62k zipped).

Of course the question is can anyone use PNG's without fancy software? I
know MS paint doesn't open them. If this was a problem then PDF's it
would be.

By the way you can print them out in black and white and they come out
pretty darn good.

Let me know.

Peter

jeremygurney_at_... <mailto:jeremygurney_at_...> wrote:

> --- In netepic_at_egroups.com <mailto:netepic_at_egroups.com>, Peter Ramos <primarch_at_b...> <mailto:primarch_at_b...> wrote:
>
>> My question to all those computer gurus out there, is there a way
>
> around
>
>> this problem? Is there a format I can save them in that is small and
>
> has
>
>> no "graniness"? Up to now I have used MS paint (bleh!) and adobe
>> photoshop. Any tips?
>
>
> Peter,
>
> I mess with this kind of stuff for a living, here are a few tips.
>
> Jpeg's give pretty good compression, and fairly good image quality
> too. If the image is grainy then :-
> a) Make sure that the image you're creating in photoshop is as close
> to the size that it will be used on the card, otherwise Word, or
> whatever you're using to make the card, will then have to re-size the
> image before use ... and word is not very good at this.
> b) If this still doesn't give you an acceptable picture then check the
> image settings your using in photoshop, you can do all sorts of things
> like change the compression settings when creating a jpeg, you might
> have the compression cranked up too high (which gives a small file at
> the expense of quality).
>
> Png (portable network graphics) is another format you might try using.
> It has fairly good compression but gives slightly larger files than
> Jpegs. You shold be able to create these with any recent version of
> photoshop.
>
> Bmps will work but as you know - they're huge.
>
> I'd use them in that order of preference (jpeg,png,bmp), the key is
> often exporting the image in the right size for use. But as the others
> have also asked, can we have them as PDFs as well as DOCs.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Jez (computer guru/geek)
>
>
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Received on Tue Jan 09 2001 - 16:39:15 UTC