Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Re: Software for technical illustrations

On 7/10/04 4:35 PM, Fred Smith wrote:

>The reason that jpeg is used is because the picture are not limited
>to 256 color palette images as in GIF. Rendered/shaded surfaces are
>displayed (in Gif) with wide bands of "close" colors from those
>available in the current color palette. Gradient fills are humorous.

I'm afraid you missed my entire point. The idea is not that jpegs and other
photographic formats are bad, but that they are bad for lines and text. I fail
to see why lines and text need more than 256 colors or gradient anything.

I am NOT trying to start a flame war. I'm just stating what I believe to be
facts and expressing a little frustration about what I've encountered over the
years. Like receiving drawings from clients exported from AutoCad as JPGs that I
couldn't read. Only because no amount of zooming or squinting made the
dimensions legible.

>PDF is Adobe's proprietary format.

This is true. But you can read and write them on nearly any OS without paying a
nickel to Abode.

>The image files embedded are Tiffs

Huh? I'm no expert, but I can't believe this is true. My 6.3 K png turned into a
tif that is 876 K. Only a few bits bigger than the bmp format. Converted to a
pdf, the png is still just 6.3 K. From what I've found, pdf is remarkably
similar in size to postscript (ps) format, but it's packaged it so that you can
print it with any printer, and read it on any OS.

Since I mentioned bitmaps before, here's one clarification. Once again, I'm no
expert, but it's my understanding that postscript can be a combination of vector
and bitmap, compressed and uncompressed. This relates to file sizes accordingly.
A png converted to a ps will be about the same size as the png. But a png
converted to a tif converted to a ps will be nearly twice the size of the tif.
My teeny 6.3 K png turned into 1.3 Meg by this method. Only about 200 times
bigger.

Once again, I'm not picking on anybody (besides MS). I'm just trying to be
helpful to someone (like I once was) who wants to make compact and legible files
that most people can read.

And of course I'm also not claiming to be anything besides an opinioned old
f*rt, so take this all for what that's worth.

Hal Eckhart - Casa Forge - Minneapolis MN - <http://www.casaforge.com>