[xcrysden] quality of the images

[Tone Kokalj]

On Wed, 2009-05-20 at 09:35 +0200, Lorenzo Paulatto wrote:
> In data 20 maggio 2009 alle ore 05:45:13, sara yazdani  
> <sarayazdani at yahoo.com> ha scritto:
> > 1. I need the images to be in high resolution, but although I followed  
> > the tricks you have mentioned for the quality still the saved files are  
> > not in high resolution. Please let me know how to solve this problem.
> 
> Images saved by xcrysden are technically screenshots, unless you try and  
> use the direct postscript rendering (which can produce very heavy images,  
> but may help). The only additional trick, which is not noticed in Tone's  
> FAQ is to increase the size of the X screen beyond the size of the monitor  
> (so that you can maximize xcd up to a huge size). It can be done in every  
> version of linux, but may require a bit of config file editing.

In addition to what Lorenzo already described, I would like to say this:

Unless you would like to produce a huge poster with images of dimension
on the order of a meter, the ~1500 pixels of nowadays monitors is always
sufficient, even for a high quality graphics such as cover arts of the
magazines. 

You man enhance a bit the quality of images by switching on the
anti-aliasing (menu: Display->Antialias).


I believe that your problem is caused by the combination of EPS graphics
format and Word-like programs. Here are few items to consider:

1. EPS is a print and not a screen format. This means that on the screen
it will look much uglier than on the print.

2. According to my experience not every software handles EPS well. For
example, Office-like products (I use OpenOffice, but I assume the MS
Office is not much different) handles EPS very bad or not at all.

Taking this into consideration, I suggest that you save your images in
e.g. PNG format. This is a screen format and when in sufficient high
resolution also good for printing.


> > 2. Also, another problem is how to insert these files in MS Word. I have  
> > produced my images in linux, but when i insert them in MS Word, they  
> > lose their quality drastically.

As described above (PNG format is your friend).

Regards, Tone

-- 
Anton Kokalj
J. Stefan Institute, Jamova 39, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia 
(tel: +386-1-477-3523 // fax:+386-1-477-3822)

Please, if possible, avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
See:  http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html