ProDrawPerplexities
5 messages in this thread
Dear Betty,
Boy do I have a puzzle for you???? I have been using ProDraw2.0 for
about a week with good results, although the printing speed leaves a lot to
be desired. Anyway, the other day I digitized some images with DigiView,
touched them up with DPIV, adjusted the palatte with PIXMATE and then
Traced them with Pro Draw. Then after I loaded the clips and saw them on
the screen they looked great. However when they started printing something
peculiar happened.
Strip #1 printed exactly as it appeared on screen, but 2 and 3
pinted without one of the colors; (mostly black). To make matters worse
about 30% of the strip came out perfect but the other 70% had a missing
color. I tried everything but all to no avail.
To make matters ugly the correct image printed out only once. After
I moved the image to the bottom of the screen page. OK I thought I can deal
with that, but that too was short-lived, as the next image had the same
problem, no matter where on the page I put it. To end this lengthy
perplexion, today Sunday I loaded some of the clips that came with the
original package and they printed perfectly. So I loaded up my ProPage
original, loaded my own clips and the problem reappeared, leading me to
think that the problem lies with the TRACE UTILITY on my original disk.
You know for three years I have been telling people to let me
handle their GRaphic work and now when I'm finally getting calls I can't
deliver.
Can you or ANYONE help me with this dilemma???? I anxiously await
your reply.
Sincerely,
Dennis Martelli
What kind of a printer are you using? When you say one of the colors
disappears, what do you mean? Does an entire path disappear? One typical
problem of autotracers is that they make paths that are too complex for the
software that turns them into bitmaps for final output. Even a PostScript
printer has to reduce a curve-based path into bits eventually. If the path
has too many curves in it, it can overflow the printer's ability to print,
and this sometimes leads to disappearing images.
John:
Dennis explained this problem to me on the phone last night and quite
frankly, I too was left perplexed. My only thought was that he is running
ProDraw, ProPage and PageStream on a 68000 based 2000 with 2 meg chip and 4
meg fast ram (I think), and that there may be a problem with not having
enough ram available (all these programs seem to get quirky when ram gets
tight). I hadn't even considered printer limititations.
Would it make any difference if Dennis scaled his image to a smaller size,
either in AdPro, or matbe by importing into PageStream, and then printing
out at, say, 70%?
– Whapp!ng from the North Coast Michael
You didn't tell me the printer type. That's an important part of the
puzzle. Yes, running out of Amiga memory might surface as dropping paths
from a printed image if the Amiga is doing the rasterizing (converting to
bits) instead of the printer. A PostScript printer does its own
rasterizing, but it's not immune from the problem, either, it just surfaces
in different ways. Yes, I'd try printing at 50 percent, that would reduce
the memory requirements in either case.
Dennis,
I sure hope someone else in this forum can help you, because I don't have
the tiniest clue as to what might be happening. But you have aroused my
curiosity!
Betty