J
Jon O'Brien
My, my! History certainly is accelerating! I blame that new-fangled
Internet thing. ;-)
Jon Cro-Magnon.
Cheap fashion substitute: T-Shirt reading "I am shallow".
My, my! History certainly is accelerating! I blame that new-fangled
Internet thing. ;-)
Jon Cro-Magnon.
Cheap fashion substitute: T-Shirt reading "I am shallow".
J
Jon O'Brien
[/QUOTE]
Just be aware that anything posted to the group that might vaguely be
construed as negative criticism of Qimage or its author (hi Mike!) will
unleash a pack of baying hounds intent on ripping you to shreds. Apart
from that, it's very useful.
Jon.
J
John Beardmore
Jon O'Brien said:
Yes, though I'm really not sure how useful it would be do me. We don't
print many stand alone images.
Nearly every picture we print is incorporated into documents, so unless
there is a way of making these algorithms accessible to DTP software,
they will probably remain inaccessible to us.
'Old' pyramid didn't last long. It was his first attempt at the algorithm
and was fairly quickly replaced by the current version.
I wouldn't dream of saying 'I told you so'.
And I wouldn't dream of not looking into better alternatives. Question
is, how to get them into the layout software that we want to use.
Cheers, J/.
J
Jon O'Brien
In that case, the only way I can see the upscaling being useful to you is
if you have lowish res images that will need upscaling for final printing.
You can then print to file from Qimage before importing into
Pagemaker/InDesign. Otherwise, Qimage is a chocolate teapot as far as your
requirements are concerned.
Jon.
J
John Beardmore
Jon O'Brien said:
Are these scaling algorithms better in general though ? Might it also
do a better job of down scaling ?
That's what I fear, though it may be handy for making 1 to 5 mega pixel
images into posters.
Cheers, J/.
J
John Beardmore
Jon O'Brien said:
J
Jon O'Brien
Can't comment on that, I'm afraid, as I've never needed to shrink images.
I regularly use it to print 3MP images to 11"x17" and occasionally to
13"x19" and it does the job admirably. How large you could go I don't know
but it will depend on the intended viewing distance, of course.
Jon.
H
Hecate
Thanks
--
Hecate - The Real One
(e-mail address removed)
Fashion: Buying things you don't need, with money
you don't have, to impress people you don't like...
H
Hecate
Oh, you see exactly the same thing in the scanner newsgroup if you
decide to criticise the rolling beta that is Vuescan ;-0
--
Hecate - The Real One
(e-mail address removed)
Fashion: Buying things you don't need, with money
you don't have, to impress people you don't like...
E
Ed Ruf
Thanks
You're welcome, also there is the Learning By Example section of the help
file.
J
Jon O'Brien
Funny you should say that! That's a pretty good way of describing Qimage.
I usually wait for the flurry of fixes for newly introduced bugs to grind
to a halt before updating. Most of the bugs seem to be fairly minor,
though and aren't usually in any of the features I use.
Vuescan is another must-have, in my opinion, but I rarely use it since
going digital.
Jon.
H
Hecate
No wonder so many Vuescan users like QImage ;-)
Personally, I prefer my software to do the job it's supposed to
do/that I want it to do, without having to wait till the programmer
gets it right. However, you say the bugs are minor, so I'll still
give it a try. The same isn't true of VS.
--
Hecate - The Real One
(e-mail address removed)
Fashion: Buying things you don't need, with money
you don't have, to impress people you don't like....
J
Jon O'Brien
Yes. They often relate to odd things that happen when a particular
series of actions is carried out. The last couple of release notices:
v2005.326 corrects the "Apply to all copies of this print" checkbox on the
page editor cropping tool so that it works properly after using the high
precision cropping tool. In addition, a minor anomaly was eliminated that
was causing the thumbnails to jump up/down by one row if a key was
pressed while at the bottom of the thumbnail grid.
v2005.327 eliminates "extra" file names visible at the bottom of the
thumbnail grid when moving to a folder with fewer images.
They're rarely life-threatening and a single, repeatable bug report gets
them fixed pretty sharpish, often the same day. It would be nice to see a
beta test group being recruited, though. I don't think there'd be a
shortage of volunteers.
Apart from one release that used to crash occasionally for no apparent
reason, I've been pretty lucky with Vuescan [touches wood]. But then, I
only update it once every six months or so.
Jon.
S
Shannon
(e-mail address removed) (Jon O'Brien) wrote in
Apologies for not getting back sooner. I've been away. Thanks a lot for
explaining to me. So it sounds like just enlarging the print gives you
larger dots, and you can see them since there's no "data" between them,
but Qimage, from what I've read in this thread, uses a 'triangular' dot
pattern when upscaling, which fills in the area much better. (Filling in
any area with circles of equal diameter leaves the most unfilled area.)
Thank you.
Apologies for not getting back sooner. I've been away. Thanks a lot for
explaining to me. So it sounds like just enlarging the print gives you
larger dots, and you can see them since there's no "data" between them,
but Qimage, from what I've read in this thread, uses a 'triangular' dot
pattern when upscaling, which fills in the area much better. (Filling in
any area with circles of equal diameter leaves the most unfilled area.)
Thank you.
J
Jon O'Brien
Almost. The most basic method of enlargement, pixel doubling, replaces
each pixel with four (or nine, or 16) identical ones. That will only work
when you double (treble, quadruple, etc.) the image width and height, of
course. That's not a problem if all your image consists of is vertical and
horizontal lines but leads to jagged edges in all other cases.
To see the effect, create a new image in your editor. Make it a bitmap
(two colour) image with a white background and set the foreground colour
to black. Draw some straight, single-pixel lines at, say, 45 degrees and
about 60 degrees. Zoom in on the lines and see how they become very blocky
and jagged.
To get round the 'jaggies', as this effect is sometimes known, you could
fill part of each 'step' in the jagged line with pixels that are the same
colour as the line. If it's a 45 degree black line on a white background,
you could fill a triangular area of the step with black pixels, reducing
the step size and making the line appear smoother. If the line's not at 45
degrees it gets more complicated and some of the pixels have to be a shade
of grey to fool the eye into thinking there's a smooth edge. That's called
'anti-aliasing' and it's one of the most basic processes used in image
enlargement.
To see this effect, convert your bitmap image to greyscale, double or
treble its size and zoom in. If you include a vertical or horizontal line
in your bitmap image and increase the image size by a non-whole number,
you'll see that anti-aliasing is used on these lines as well.
If you're not increasing the image size by a whole number, it gets a lot
more complicated. You have to calculate new values for most of the pixels
in the image. When there are more than two colours in the image, and
especially when not all transitions between colours are hard-edged, it
gets even more complicated, because you have to calculate what colours to
use to make the colour transitions in all directions reflect the original
transitions as faithfully as possible.
I'm don't know how pyramid interpolation works but I'm pretty sure that it
doesn't refer to triangular patterns of pixels. It's probably more likely
to refer to the steps used in working out what colour each pixel has to be
and represents the 'tree' of decisions to be made, which either spread out
from the original calculation, getting closer and closer to the final
colour, or close in on it from a series of initial approximations. However
it's done, it's pretty smart stuff (well worth $45!) and produces very
good results.
Jon.
H
Hecate
My guess is you don't have a Minolta 5400 scanner or any of the other
new Minoltas. Despite having it as a supported model on his web site,
it's been two years and the only fixes he's produced for the problems
that have occurred have led to more problems. <shrug> It seems the
guy who produces QImage doesn't make unsubstantiated claims for his
software (from what I've seen on the web site) and then be abusive to
people who don't like it when he's proved wrong.
--
Hecate - The Real One
(e-mail address removed)
Fashion: Buying things you don't need, with money
you don't have, to impress people you don't like...
J
Jon O'Brien
You're right.
Right again.
I've known him to be a bit short with people on occasions but usually only
when they're being particularly idiotic. He can be very stubborn in the
face of suggestions he disagrees with but I've never known him to be
abusive.
Jon.
H
Hecate
Hi again
That's because you've never tried to get your money back when his
software won't work on your scanner despite him claiming it does (the
trial is no use because you can't use the IR cleaning - not that that
even works properly in the current version from reports in the scanner
group).
I'm sure his software works for some people, it just doesn't with
Minolta or to the standard I would expect for something I paid for.
--
Hecate - The Real One
(e-mail address removed)
Fashion: Buying things you don't need, with money
you don't have, to impress people you don't like...
J
John Beardmore
Hecate said:
So what is IR cleaning ?
Cheers, J/.
T
TOYOTA
I also use Qimage, but only for the page formatting abilities. In my
opinion, this often heard remark that printing is superior is a bunch of crap.
Those users, don't know how to use Photoshop, which is hands down better at
printing, as well as almost all other tasks, but not at page formatting.
I format my images in Qimage and print them to a file and print the file from
Photoshop.
toy....
=====
opinion, this often heard remark that printing is superior is a bunch of crap.
Those users, don't know how to use Photoshop, which is hands down better at
printing, as well as almost all other tasks, but not at page formatting.
I format my images in Qimage and print them to a file and print the file from
Photoshop.
toy....
=====