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#111
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Make 12x18" signs at home on 8.5x11" B&W laser printer
- Susan Bugher wrote:
I don't like guessing either and there's no help file. Hi Susan, Thanks for providing these two free Windows tiler suggestions. The Posterazor tiler is so much better that it's not worth spending much (if any) more time on Posterizia, I think. One of the web pages does note "Use any photograph as background. Supported formats are BMP, JPEG, PNG, EMF and GIF. Uou can even use just part of a photo!" I think all three handle pretty much any image (I didn't test thoroughly): 1) Posterazor (best, easiest, fastest, most intuitive) 2) Rasterbator (it works & has alignment marks but use #1 above instead) 3) Posterizia (I'm sure it works but I didn't get it to work in 10 minutes) I've played around a some more with Posteriza, When I selected a photo and then clicked "more" the app showed me how the image fit on the paper for the printer's current page selections and gave me options to rotate or crop it. I gave up on Posterizia after about 10 minutes, which is all I give a free ware program when I already have one that works. If I didn't have one that works, I wouldn't stop at just 10 minutes. Testing freeware, when you already have one that works, is sort of like looking at plucking an apple off the tree when you already have a bag full of them in your arms. It has to be really juicy to beat out what you've already picked. Posterazor is juicier than Rasterbator, but not Posterizia, IMHO. It looks to me as if the easiest way to print exact widths or lengths could be by changing the margin. Lessee, the default is 10 mm and there are 25.4 mm to an inch - I input a 50 mm "page margin" and, yes indeed (smile), got the 2" margin I was trying for on the (single) printed page. (A little work will be needed to calc the right margin setting for a grid of pages) I see where you're going with this, which is sort of to cut off the bad parts of the apple and then it's just as good as the apple in the bag. There are some differences between what you saw on your machine and what I'm seeing here - dunno if it's because our Windows versions are different or because the printers are different. My installation logs are really like tape recordings of my interactions in real time, so a lot could be dependent on the order I did things, and the buttons I pressed. I should just find a good voice-recorder program and then convert that to text, and that would be my installation log. It aso seems to get stuck on some things when it should be changing the display, something you also noted. Yes. I could change things, and it didn't trigger the display. So I had to go back and forth. I could live with that if it worked but I never did get it to change the symmetry (which you did with borders). So - not totally glitch-free but easy to use and a think most of the glitches are from things I'd normally not be doing. I'd spend more time on this apple if I didn't already have two of them in the bag, where Posterazor is far better (IMHO) than Posterizia and Rasterbator. Rastergator & Posterazor have the same five-step use model, but the switches on Posterrazor are far better, mainly in that you can just tell it the final output size (which is the most important thing) and it figures out the rest, but also because it can handle inches and because it's much faster, and because it has more intuitive settings. The main difference between Rasterbator and Posterazor is that Rasterbator asks for this cryptic "dot size" which I don't know what it's supposed to mean since a 1mm dot never shows up anywhere when I tell it to be 1mm and since it's far slower, I have to wonder what all the crunching is about. Thank you very much for your suggestions. 1) Posterrazor is a keeper 2) Rasterbator is second fiddle to Posterazor 3) Posterizia might work for some people |
#112
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Make 12x18" signs at home on 8.5x11" B&W laser printer
- Jonathan N. Little wrote:
Plethora of like companies out there. Hi Jonathan, Thanks for all your advice, which is greatly appreciated. We will be sinking these poles in the ground deeply to withstand ferocious winds out here, and they must last for years outdoors. Up to now, this has been a purely pragmatic question but I'd like to ask a theoretical question of you since you brought up the topic vectoring, which I know little about. I fully *agree* with you that if people print *directly* to the final medium, then vectoring is probably critical for smooth edges on the borders and lines, but what about the fonts? Q: Aren't true-type fonts supposed to fix that ragged-edge problem? In a similar theoretical vein, how do I know if the "tiling" program Posterazor (which works fast & doesn't ask for a dot size) is doing vectoring or rasterizing? |
#113
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Make 12x18" signs at home on 8.5x11" B&W laser printer
- Eco Clean wrote:
Thank you very much for your suggestions. 1) Posterrazor is a keeper 2) Rasterbator is second fiddle to Posterazor 3) Posterizia might work for some people Here's the current plan because we decided recently to stick with metal signs for the longevity in high wind conditions. The pragmatic approach we'll take is the following, since we have strong winds, rain, and they need to last a long time. 1) We will design with PowerPoint because we don't see (yet) how the complexity of a vector-graphics program such as Inkscape adds any value when it can't tile so the tiler is what's rendering the images, and even then, the X-acto knife is the final vector-graphics renderer. 2) PowerPoint will save to an image which we will tile using Susan's suggested Posterazor which easily creates a 4-page PDF so that we don't have to worry about guessing how to print all four corners of the desired size as we would have to do with Irfanview or LibreOffice tiling procedures. 3) Those four tiles will be printed to laser-hardened transparencies, and taped together to make a stencil after cutting out with an X-acto knife and then spray painting red on white and maybe adding a clear coat of some sort on the outside. (Vinyl letters would be nice but at 50 cents each letter, the cost is astronomical compared to spray paint.) The hardest part likely will be the spray painting to get crisp edges. |
#114
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Make 12x18" signs at home on 8.5x11" B&W laser printer
"Eco Clean" wrote in message
news | - Jonathan N. Little wrote: | | Plethora of like companies out there. | Thanks for all your advice, which is greatly appreciated. We will be | sinking these poles in the ground deeply to withstand ferocious winds out | here, and they must last for years outdoors. Here's an informative link: https://www.signs.com/price-calculator/ 6 sheets custom vinyl lettering at 12x18, $135. Are you familiar with commercial vinyl lettering? It's created on a vinyl plotter, from a sheet of adhesive vinyl. The letters are cut and then you apply them from the sheet, so that spacing is perfect. Not exactly cheap, but you need to compare it to the cost of printer ink, spray cans, etc. I'm guessing that you're already looking at sinking at least $50 into the project with that method. Another way to go about it would be to visit a local sign shop and see if they'll give you a deal on it. (I once did that, trading a 6-pack of homebrew beer for a custom bumper sticker.) | Up to now, this has been a purely pragmatic question but I'd like to ask a | theoretical question of you since you brought up the topic vectoring, which | I know little about. | | I fully *agree* with you that if people print *directly* to the final | medium, then vectoring is probably critical for smooth edges on the borders | and lines, but what about the fonts? | | Q: Aren't true-type fonts supposed to fix that ragged-edge problem? | It's an issue you have to take in context. There's a difference between a bitmap enlarged and fonts printed big in the first place. Remember the link to software I posted early on? I tried that to make sure it worked OK. I hadn't looked at it for years. That uses the most basic Windows API function, DrawText, to paint text to a DIB or device-independent bitmap. I created a 600pt A in verdana, then saved it as a BMP. All raster. The A printed out about 6" high with perfectly straight edges. Vector has advantages for flexible sizing of simple shapes because it uses mathematical formulae to define the image rather than a grid of color points. But that doesn't necessarily mean vector is better in a given usage. And there's also thefactor of getting used to the software. If that works for you then do it. If it doesn't, it really dosn't matter. If you print a typical A of maybe 14 pixels and blow it up you'll probably get something like an ink smudge. Or if it's not anti-aliased you'll get a squiggly A. But with reasonable resizing that's not an issue. You're also not concerned about slightly fuzzy edges here. So don't worry about raster vs vector. Do what works for the task. Maybe you're enjoying all this exploring, but it seems to me that you're just wasting time by going around in circles, looking at each option over and over rather than systematically narrowing down the best approach. Maybe it makes sense for you to do all your exploring and then come back if there are *specific* questions. |
#115
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Make 12x18" signs at home on 8.5x11" B&W laser printer
On 01/15/2018 10:41 AM, Eco Clean wrote:
TheÂ*hardestÂ*partÂ*likelyÂ*willÂ*beÂ*theÂ*sprayÂ* paintingÂ*toÂ*getÂ*crispÂ*edges. Probably. I bought # stencils from the office supply store that were 4x6 size card stock weight. But taping them to my trash can or mailbox etc then spraying, it's amazing how much air leaks under the edges! I don't care how much you think you're pushing down on them. I finally bought the darn large reflector style numbers for the mailbox, but the trash can can look bad for all it matters. |
#116
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Make 12x18" signs at home on 8.5x11" B&W laser printer
- Big Al wrote:
The+AKA-hardest+AKA-part+AKA-likely+AKA-will+AKA-be+AKA-the+AKA-spray+AKA-painting+AKA-to+AKA-get+AKA-crisp+AKA-edges. Probably. I bought # stencils from the office supply store that were 4x6 size card stock weight. But taping them to my trash can or mailbox etc then spraying, it's amazing how much air leaks under the edges! I don't care how much you think you're pushing down on them. I finally bought the darn large reflector style numbers for the mailbox, but the trash can can look bad for all it matters. Agree with you that the stenciling will be the hardest part because the stencil has to be held very tightly against the metal painted steel. Cutting out the letters evenly will also be tedious. If vinyl letters weren't 50 cents each, they'd be the way to go. |
#117
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Make 12x18" signs at home on 8.5x11" B&W laser printer
- Mayayana wrote:
Here's an informative link: https://www.signs.com/price-calculator/ 6 sheets custom vinyl lettering at 12x18, $135. Are you familiar with commercial vinyl lettering? It's created on a vinyl plotter, from a sheet of adhesive vinyl. The letters are cut and then you apply them from the sheet, so that spacing is perfect. Not exactly cheap, but you need to compare it to the cost of printer ink, spray cans, etc. I'm guessing that you're already looking at sinking at least $50 into the project with that method. Thanks again for your advice. We are set on steel or aluminum blanks, mostly because we already have them drilled and painted and because they will last forever, or as long as we can make them last in a very windy environment. We did have one sign where they applied vinyl letters. There were some minor bubbles (about 1mm or less) in the letters but other than that, they're fine in terms of quality. Even the small 7/8" letters came out fine as did the punctuation. Vinyl letters, in fact, on our own steel and aluminum blanks would be perfect, if the price wasn't prohibitive, so, pricing is the *only* thing stopping us from ordering vinyl letters for our custom signs. The pricing at that web site is great for multiple quantities: https://www.signs.com/price-calculator/ But for a single 12"x18" aluminum sign with no other options, it's $27 for just one sign before tax and shipping. What we really only want are the letters since we already have the blanks. The letters, really, should be a few cents each, and not fifty cents each. |
#118
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Make 12x18" signs at home on 8.5x11" B&W laser printer
- Jonathan N. Little wrote:
Okay, yes TTFs are vector... Thanks for the clarifications as this vectoring thing, from a philosophical perspective, is important if we print *directly* to the final medium. Does that mean that TT fonts in PowerPoint should print directly to media the same as those same TT fonts in Inkscape would print directly to media? What about the borders though? I would think that the borders and lines in PowerPoint would NOT be vectored, so I would think that the borders and lines would print better directly to media with Inkscape. Is that correct? but if you output to raster which is what to do when you create a bitmap JPG or BMP. You will get a ragged-edge pixelated image ... I see. So in the case of PowerPoint, if we're not printing directly to media, then we are rasterizing the image when we save as an image format that the tiler can read. But isn't that the same situation with Inkscape since Inkscape doesn't do tiling either so Inkscape has to output the file to an image format that the tiler would accept. ...Posterazor or any other image tiler app uses which will not remove the pixelation in the final output. Yes. Once pixelated, always pixelated. I agree. So the goal is not to save to an image format, and just tile out of the creation program, right? Yes you can mitigate the issue but a the cost of increasingly large file sizes. And still the output will not be as sharp as vector. I'm all for vectors. That's not the issue. What I seek is a vector program that can easily tile. Maybe LibreOffice was it, but if that's the case, there are huge gradients in this term "easy" as I couldn't get LibreOffice to tile as easily as the tilers do it (e.g., Posterazor). A vector graphic can be scaled without changing the file. You can scale from postage stamp to tractor-trailer size and remain clear and sharp. Note, what I am talking about is *graphic* designs, (curves, fills, gradients), not photographs. Yes. We all agree on the scaling. The problem is theory and practice don't always meet at the home. At home, the printer is 8.5x11 so when we want 12x18, we have to tile. So vectors go to hell once we tile. What we need is a free vector graphics program that easily tiles. I tried two of them, neither of which tiled easily. In order to move vector graphics from the realm of theory to the realm of the real home, we'd need a free vector graphics program that easily tiled. Which one do people recommend? |
#119
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Make 12x18" signs at home on 8.5x11" B&W laser printer
On 01/15/2018 04:42 PM, Eco Clean wrote:
- Big Al wrote: The+AKA-hardest+AKA-part+AKA-likely+AKA-will+AKA-be+AKA-the+AKA-spray+AKA-painting+AKA-to+AKA-get+AKA-crisp+AKA-edges. Probably.Â* I bought # stencils from the office supply store that were 4x6 size card stock weight.Â* But taping them to my trash can or mailbox etc then spraying, it's amazing how much air leaks under the edges!Â* I don't care how much you think you're pushing down on them. I finally bought the darn large reflector style numbers for the mailbox, but the trash can can look bad for all it matters. Agree with you that the stenciling will be the hardest part because the stencil has to be held very tightly against the metal painted steel. Cutting out the letters evenly will also be tedious. If vinyl letters weren't 50 cents each, they'd be the way to go. Yes, "712" on the mailbox was oh so much easier. And made the curb appeal of the house much nicer of course. |
#120
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Make 12x18" signs at home on 8.5x11" B&W laser printer
On 01/15/2018 10:45 AM, Jonathan N. Little wrote:
but if you output to raster which is what to do when you create a bitmap JPG or BMP. You will get a ragged-edge pixelated image But can't you lessen that by changing the dpi to something like 600 instead of the 72dpi most images are for screen resolution? |
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