Tech Note: Printing Bitmap Files in .GIF or .JPG Format

Products: PrintOMatic Lite MX, PrintOMatic Lite Xtra 1.6.5, PrintOMatic MX, PrintOMatic Xtra 1.6.5
Platforms: all

PrintOMatic offers limited support for printing bitmap file formats from disk. The reason for this limitation is simple: Director offers a rich wealth of import filters that PrintOMatic can already utilize.

The basic strategy is to create a "dummy" bitmap cast member, whose contents are imported as "linked to file" (when you import the cast member graphic). It doesn�t really matter what file you link to initially.

Then, when you want to print an image from disk, you load the image into your dummy cast-member using Lingo:

set the fileName of member X = "myimage.jpg"

Once the member is loaded utilizing Director�s import plugins, then you can append the member to your PrintOMatic document, or simply print it directly:

print member X