[thelist] Image Problem

aardvark roselli at earthlink.net
Mon Oct 1 14:17:28 CDT 2001


> From: "Burhan Khalid" <burhankh at hotmail.com>
> 
>   So, I sat on my trusty computer and hit Print Scrn -- saved the
>   file, but 
> when I try to scale it (ie. thumbnail) -- it comes out distorted.
> Also, the size of the file is astronomical. Any ideas? Perhaps there
> is a program suited for this task.

first off, try alt-prt-scrn... just prt-scrn grabs the whole view, but the 
alt gets the current window...

as for file size, don't forget that it's saving it as an *uncompressed* 
.bmp... if you convert that to a TIFF (using LZW, lossless 
compression), you'll find the file size should drop dramatically... 
.bmp has no inherent compression, which is why all .bmps of the 
same pixel size are the same file size...

so, cap the window, paste into Photoshop and save as a .tif...

now, depending what you want to do, choose your scaling wisely...

if your output is print, *don't* scale it all in Photoshop, do that in 
your page layout tool (Quark, PageMaker, FreeHand, Illustrator, 
CorelDraw, etc.)... that way all the pixels are retained and the 
image doesn't lose clarity... if you want more info on the print part, 
let me know...

if your output is screen, try to scale in even halves, that way the 
pixel breakdown is more even...

you can use some sort of sharpening, too...





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