Re: Processing large screen captures (from Unix/xv)

[David Demyan <dbdemyan -at- WORLDNET -dot- ATT -dot- NET>]

Michael asked about the best method to capture and scale down large
bitmaps from a UNIX terminal. He is using xv to capture.

Michael, I assume you are editing the graphics on a Windows PC.
I would recommend selecting the .BMP output option from xv, then
use a smooth scaling program to render the final image before importing
into the document. I use SnagIt/32 for this. The program also does
Windows captures, but as long as your image is in one of the supported
file formats, you can scale it using the SnagIt catalog feature. The
program uses a smoothing algorithm to help reduce the jaggedness
that can appear when the pixels are rearranged in a reduction. The
example I like to use is, if you have a black line in the original that is
three pixels wide and you reduce by 50 percent, does the end result
have a 1 pixel or a 2 pixel line (since it cannot make a 1 and 1/2 pixel
line). The answer is the create a line with some black and some gray
so that it *looks* between 1 and 2. Of course, the formula gets real
complex with 256 colors at 8-bits per pixel and millions of pixels to
deal with.

You can try the feature using the eval. copy available at:

http://www.techsmith.com

[Note: I do occasional work for this company, so I am biased, but
many other listmembers feel SnagIt is a good, versatile program for
technical communications.]

Dave.

 From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000=