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MegaDisc 36 (1993-11)(MegaDisc Digital Publishing)(AU)(Disk 1 of 2)[WB].zip
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Tutes_&_CLI
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Art_Of_Printing_2
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Art_Of_Printing_2
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1993-10-22
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259 lines
THIS PART TWO OF MY TUTORIAL IN LEARNING TO USE YOUR PRINTER
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PART TWO
BY MICHAEL BUENAVENTURA FOR MEGA DISK DIGITAL PUBLISHING 1993
USING THE PREFS PROGRAM 'PRINTERGFX' IN WORKBENCH 2.0
GEARED TOWARDS THOSE READERS OUT
THERE WHO OWN DOT-MATRIX PRINTERS
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Back to work!
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In the first part of this tutorial we looked at what printer
drivers are and how we customize it using the 'Printer' program on
the workbench disk. Now we can move onto the next printer setup
program in the prefs drawer called 'PrinterGFX'. This program
customizes your printer driver to enable it to print graphics from
your computer. By the end of this tutorial you should be able to
print dazzling graphic pictures using your Amiga.
Printing pixels
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The quality of graphics printing depends on the type of
dot-matrix printer that you have. 24-pin printers can reach
higher resolutions (ie. print more dots per inch) where as 9-pin
printers have a lower resolution. When printing low-resolution
pictures from your Amiga the quality difference is not as
noticable but when high-resolution pictures are printed the
quality difference can be seen. Most 24-pin printers are also
able to print much faster than 9-pin printers. Pictures are
printed the same way letters are printed, using combinations of
dots to create shades and tones. The Amiga program to define the
settings of these shades and tones is called 'PrinterGFX'.
Defining the canvas
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The 'PrinterGFX' program in the prefs drawer of your workbench
disk is used to define such things as colour or black'n'white
printing, the darkness of the printout and the type of shading
technique to use for building a picture.
1- Colour Correcting
The first setting that we can change is the 'Colour Correct'. There are
three boxes under this heading one for R(red), G(green), and B(blue).
This determines how close you want the colours on-screen to be with the
actual printed picture. You will notice that when you choose to colour
correct either R, G, or B that the amount of colours that can be printed
is decreased. The decrease in colours isn't very noticable so you can
use colour correction without sacrificing quality.
2- Smoothing
The smoothing option enables you to smooth out jagged lines when
printing graphics. One example of this is when printing lines that
are on a 20 degree angle, with this option off you will notice a very
jagged line that seems to be broken up into little straight lines.
If you use smoothing, this jagged effect is reduced to a certain
degree. I would advise that you use this option only if you are
printing pictures that have a lot of lines (such as diagrams). If
you use it while printing pictures (digitised pictures) the printed
picture won't be as sharp as it could be.
3- Left Offset
This option enables you to define how big a margin will be on the page
that will be printed out. It is similar to the Left Margin option on
the 'Printer' program (see tutorial part one). If you select the
Centre Picture option, the picture is automatically printed in the
middle of the page. The only times when you are likely to use left
offset is when you only want to print in a certain section of the paper.
Printing small insignias on the top right hand side of a letter is one
example.
4- Dithering
The dithering option lets you specify how the actual picture will be
drawn, that is how the printer will achieve the shading necessary to
build a picture on paper (the way dots are printed to form the picture).
There are three types of dithering; ordered (this is the one that gives
the best results), halftone, and Floyed-Steinberg. I prefer ordered
because the placing of dots appear to be more random giving you greater
colour mixing within the printed page. Halftone uses the same technique
to build a picture as newspaper printing, it uses varying sizes of dots
in order to get the desired shade. The Floyed-Steinberg method of
printing is somewhat a little less useful for low-resolution printers
since the distribution of dots is more inform and less 'natural'. It
is also a noticably SLOWER to print using this dithering method. For
examples of these three dithering methods see your Workbench 2.0 user
manual page 3-62 (I told you that great big book was useful! :) ).
5- Scaling
The scaling option lets you modify the size of the printed picture.
Two options are available here Fraction and Integer scaling. When
printing digitized graphics or pictures which have a lot of shades
fraction scaling gives best results. This is because fraction scaling
randomizes the shirking process (randomly picks which dots to print
and not to print). Integer scaling gives more accurate results when
printing graphs, text or pictures which contain a lot of lines.
6- Image
This option allows you to choose if you want to print the picture as
positive (as it is on screen) or as a negative (like a film negative).
However, it only works when the Shade option is on Black & White or
Grey Scale 1 or 2. Under colour printing positive image is used.
7- Shade
This option enables you to choose the way your picture is to be printed
colour wise. There are four options available, they are described below:
Black & White- This option is best suited to printing pictures which
contain no other colours besides black and white since it
will print your picture the fastest out of the four options
available.
Grey Scale 1- This option is the one you use if you have a printer that
only prints BLACK & WHITE (not colour). It represents
colours through varying shades of grey. Owners of colour
printers who wish to print without colour can also choose
this option.
Grey Scale 2- This option is virtually the same as Grey Scale 1 expect
that it only prints in FOUR shades of grey. It doesn't
give you much depth when printing pictures which have
a lot of colours.
Colour- This option prints your picture in full colour. If you
have a COLOUR printer then this option is the one to
choose. Owners of black & white printers must NOT use
this option, it will merely print everything black except
for white areas.
8- Threshold
The threshold option is very important especially when printing on
black & white printers. The value of threshold ranges from 1 to 15.
The lowest threshold value (which is one) will only print the darkest
colours (which would most likely be black). The higher the threshold
the more colours will be included in the final picture. When printing
in colour (using colour shade) the higher the threshold the darker
the printed picture will be.
9- Limits
The limits option lets you decide the size or dimensions of your printed
picture. The sub-options available under limits are:
Type- The type sub-option has five settings, the first is Ignore. This
setting as its name suggests, ignores the values contained in the
width and height boxes. When type is chosen the picture dimensions
can be set from within software programs (such as DTP applications).
The next sub-option is Bounded, if you choose this sub-option the
printed picture will be bounded by the values contained in the
width and height boxes. The Absolute sub-option is virtually the
same as Bounded except for the fact that the printed picture's
dimensions are measured as an absolute value. This sub-option is
used when you require a picture to be SHRUNK, using bounded will
not shrink a picture it will merely define the printing borders.
Pixels sub-option will use pixels as the basis for measurement
instead of inches. Apart from this Pixels is virtually identical
to the Absolute sub-option. Multiply, this sub-option is used
when you need to enlarge the printed picture. When Multiply is
used, the values contained in the width and height boxes
determine how many times the picture is to be enlarged. If you
want your picture to be twice the original size you would enter
2 into the width and height boxes.
Width-The value entered into this box varies depending on the limit Type
that you you use as well as the custom dimensions you wish to use.
Height-The value entered into this box has the same use as the Width box
except that the value entered here affects the pictures height.
10-Density
The density option is the last option available on the 'PrinterGFX'
prefs program. The density value ranges from 1 to 7 and it determines how
many times the a complete picture is printed. If you choose a print
density of one for example, your picture will be printed once. But if
you choose a print density of 2, the printer will print a complete
picture twice (it won't print the picture in one whole go then go back
and print it again, it will print the picture twice one line at a time).
The higher the density setting the darker the picture will be, it is
best to leave the density value to 1 if you have a new printer ribbon
and more if your ribbon is starting running out. Remember that the
higher the value the MORE ink is used and it will take LONGER to print!
If you are printing black & white pictures or text, using a print density
of four will yield excellent results (almost laser quality on 24pin
printers) but will take longer to print.
11-By now you should have the right graphic settings to print reasonably
good pictures. All that is left now is to choose one of the following:
SAVE- By far the best and safest option to choose. Choose this option
if you are sure you have done everything correctly, you should
also choose this options even if you are not sure. If you print
out a picture and find that it isn't printing properly all you
have to do is load the 'PrinterGFX' program again and all the
options you have chosen will be recalled enabling you to make
minor modifications to fix the problem.
USE- This option should be used less, it may work at times and it
might not on others. This option will not save you settings. When
you choose this option it will leave your changes in memory. The
main draw back to this some programs specifically load the printer
settings from the saved 'printer.prefs' file. If you use one of
these programs to print, you may change the settings but the
program will load the old settings from the file saved on disk.
Cancel- This option is used if you don't want to make any changes to
the settings.
An artist is born!
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By now you should be able to print virtually anything with
your printer. Remember again that practice and experience go hand
in hand, if your new at owning a printer USE it! It's the only
way you'll learn how to get the most out of it. Anyway we've come
to the end of tutorial number two, if you have any specific topic
you wish to be covered in future tutorials (printer wise) just
give MegaDisk a call or pop me a some mail (or email) and I'll see
what I can do.
This tutorial was written as a companion to the first printer
tutorial. The options described within aren't much use unless
you've got your printer up and working, in this case see the first
tutorial on using Printer Drivers. If any of you people out there
have any questions relating to any aspects of the Amiga, send me a
letter describing the help and/or information you require and I
will get a reply to you as soon as possible. Or if you have
access to internet (through Unix) then I can be e-mailed instead.
(I will most probably be able to give you a faster response
through email)
Name: Michael Buenaventura
Address: 19 Lyall Ave, Dean Park, 2761. NSW, AUSTRALIA.
EMail: mbuena@st.nepean.uws.edu.au
Date: 31st August 1993
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