Schematics Archive (II)

[Tony Clark]

> >In my experience, the best scans of schematics have been 1 bit b/w, minimum
> >300 dpi, preferrably 600 dpi.  This makes for a compact file, and if you're
> >reproducing black line drawings on a white background, typical of most
> >schematics, you shouldn't need anything else.
> 
> Exactly, only a lot of the stuff I've seen is just as I described (24 bit
> RGB). JPEG doesn't get rid of everything. Not only a longer download, but
> the first thing I have to do is massage the image so it won't waste all
> that space on my hard drive when it's uncompressed.

   Personally I like 2-bit at 300dpi.  Not all stuff looks great in 
1-bit, especially badly written text.  Heck there's scans which I've had 
to leave at 4-bit because of images and what-not.  And not all of us have 
access to 600 dpi printers anyway (go figure).

> Another thing I've seen is stuff scanned at 72 DPI! I guess they figured it
> would be too big otherwise. Looks like poorly anti-aliased smudgy text with
> crappy drawings. Poor contrast, too. Lots of gray along the edges. Again,
> they must not have much in the way of software, or no one's ever shown them
> the right way.

   Funny you should mention the dreaded 72 dpi... it seems like I should 
corner Adobe products for this one, but it seems like ANY image you open 
in Photoshop it defaults to 72 dpi, no matter how big your image is.  
Maybe it is some odd Windows thing, I don't know, but it sure is a drag 
to have to manually set it to 300 dpi.  :/
   Obviously anyone who diliberately _scans_ in 72 dpi is just plain 
wonkers.  ;)

> I don't know everything, just what I don't like.

   Heh, well said.

   Tony

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I can't drive (my Moog) 55!         |     The E-Music DIY Archive
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Tony Clark -- clark at andrews.edu     | aupe.phys.andrews.edu/diy_archive
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