#Printing Quality Images
6 messages in this thread
Hi everyone,
I just finished with getting some DESIGNER parts over into 3DS and
getting everything set up for printing. I printed to a .TIF file format for
importing into PageMaker 5.0. The bottom line is this. I didn't exactly get
WSIWYG.
The colors were off pretty bad and the shading and reflective surfaces
suffered greatly, as well as some parts that should have been opaque were
translucent and you could see some of the parts on the back side of the
assembly by looking through the part.
What is the best recommended way to output a rendering to get a quality
hardcopy for proof or client approval of an idea.
How do I make sure that what looks like a Pantone Color prints as the
same pantone color. How do I ensure that I get the best output possible from
3DS.
After showing the client the (in my opinion "really crappy") images,
they were excited and I feel that they will want more. Only I need to figure
out what is not going right here so I can keep everybody happy.
Thanks,
Zack Lyon
P.S. why would a part appear to be see through? I did a UNIFY NORMALS on it
and it went away. Was this the right thing to do? Should I do this on all
parts that I don't want to be see-through?
If "Unify Normals" did the trick for you, your problem may lie in a
couple possible places. First, when you imported the DXF into 3DS,
you should PROBABLY make sure that unify normals is OFF in the DXF
Import dialog. Why, when this is what you used to fix it? Well,
basically, (I'm supposing, as this is the way it works with AME, and
I would assume that Designer would have the same kind of smarts)
Designer already knows which way all the ssufrace normals should
face, and orients them properly. But, when you bring them into 3DS
with unify normals on, the normals get scrambled cause they didn't
NEED unifying.
If the above is not the cause, then you'll just need to accept that
this is a fact of life when bringing in meshes from AutoCAD — until
ACAD is "normal aware", you'll always have to hand tweak your faces.
If you don't own the Yost Boutique IPAS disk #7 (with Optimize), then
download the demo of it (Optimize) from the libraries. It will allow
you to view your object with little arrows indicating the normals of
each face. The full version will allow you to flip a face's normals
by merely clicking on the arrow. It's a very handy utility (it also
allows you to reduce/increase the vertice/face counts in an object —
and comes with 5 other wonderful IPAS routines).
As far as printing goes, render with a gamma of 1.8 or so. Then,
using PhotoStyler, PhotoShop (or your image processor of choice),
clip out a portion of the image which represents a good range of
colors, intensities, etc from your rendering. Now, paste mulitple
copies of this into a new image. Select each section seperately, and
try variations on each (keeping good records of what you do) like
adjusting the tonal range, adjusting the brightness, contrast, etc.
Then, print this page to your (or the service bureau's printer.
Evaluate the result. Try it again, using what you've learned.
Eventually, you should discover a couple settings that do a pretty
good job. Now, try applying these settings to a couple other
renderings. How did it do? Repeat. You might want to talk to your
printer/service bureau or dealer to see if they have any "expert"
suggestions for adjusting your output. There are also a number of
good books about color correcting. I'd recommend a book for PhotoShop
by Dan Margulis called "Professional PhotoShop". He writes a column
on color correcting for Computer Artist magazine.
You might also want to track down Ana (Krazy Images) here on the
forum. She's crazy-for-cocoa-pops over Kodak's color management
system (built in to Windows 95, and available under both PhotoStyler
and PhotoShop).
It looks like I will need to go and buy a good low cost
quality printer like the EPSON SYTLUS. I need something like that to
do test runs on. A service bureau will eat my shorts if I don't. I
also need to get PhotoShop. Any ideas of the best place to get it?
You'll want to check out RenderPrint from Insight 800-825-4115.
It lets you do tiled test prints using adustments for gamma/brightness,
gamma/contrast, brightness/contrast for as many as 25 tiles on a sheet. Plus
other features.
TedB
-Ted Boardman
!^NavFont01F0007MGHHGCD2E7C
I've heard great raves about the Epson Color Stylus. As far as
PhotoShop, my fave mail-order house (no Egghead, CompUSA or other
"super-store" around here) is MicroWarehouse (they're even on CIS),
followed by PC Connection. Their numbers (respectively) are
800-367-7080 and 800-800-1111. Warehouse has an Adobe bundle of
Pshop, Illustrator, Streamline, 200 typefaces and the Kudo Image
browser for just $60 more than PShop by itself. (item #BN3407 in my
catalog coded P53A90).
zack,
Study the sections in the manuals on gamma correction.