> Well, Photoshop is *way* too expensive for my blood... I like to use Paint
Well I found a copy of 3.51 on Usenet for $100 a couple years ago and I intend
to keep using it as long as possible since 4.0's UI got a bit harder to use.
It's just one of the most intuitive, well-coded (actual efficient code, not
bloatware; imagine that for a modern Windows app!) apps I've ever seen. Since
it's multithreaded, it will also take advantage of multiple processors if you
have them.
> Shop Pro. One thing I do (for a small number of documents) is scan it in
> with 256color B&W, then use the color exchanger with a threshold of 20 or
Well grayscale is usually 8-bit, thus what you call "256 color B&W" is really
grayscale. Strictly speaking, B&W means just black and just white, no
in-betweens.
> so, and make all the "near-whites" in the background to white, and all the
> "near-blacks" to black. I could show this easier than speak it...
This is what I was talking about, in Photoshop terms.
> >B&W images also compress astonishingly well with GIF, which is lossless and
> >thus preserves sharp details well. The good compression is due to the large
> >amount of white space in typical schematics and drawings.
>
> Have you actually checked this? GIF's do compress well, and you are correct
> on loseless... but if you are just GIFfing the scans, they do *not*
That is why I said "B&W images" rather than "grayscale images". And further
down the email there was an URL at which you can see some of my cleaned-up
scans that compressed rather well.
> Oh, and at least with Photoshop 4.0, it's stock JPEG encoding sux rox.
Hmmm, 3.51's is decent and offers multiple compression levels.
> Badly. (I was too scared to try the GIF encoding... especially with
It can export transparent gifs. However I've noticed sometimes wierd things
happen with the colors, like black and white get reversed, and I'm not sure if
it's Photoshop's bug, something wrong with the standard or a browser bug.
Anyhow for non-transparent gifs I've never had any problems.
--
_______ KB7PWD _at_ KC7Y.AZ.US.NOAM ecloud_at_bigfoot.com
(_ | |_) Shawn T. Rutledge http://www.bigfoot.com/~ecloud
__) | | \_____________________________________________________________
Received on Wed Apr 01 1998 - 12:39:25 BST