Re: Digital Images

[rowe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Mickey Rowe)]

 Andrew Dalby advises with reference to producing hardcopies of
digital images:

> The last step is to take your electronic plate to a linotronic
> outputting device, which is a very high res publication quality
> printer.

In my work I frequently deal with image data, and for publications we
used to use lino outputs.  However, we now have ready access to a 600
dpi laser printer and find that for the most part the image quality it
generates is acceptable (e.g. we've published papers with images
printed on that laser printer).  It has to dither in order to produce
gray scale but it does a decent job even on our eight bit (typically
512x480) images.  A local Kinko's also has a 1200 dpi laser printer,
so I suspect you may not have any difficulty finding one of those
either (keep in mind that since you're dealing with area in images, a
1200 dpi output will look four times as sharp as a 600 dpi output).

Bottom line, I recommend you try a few different output devices and
find an optimum tradeoff between output quality and difficulty of
output generation.

-- 
Mickey Rowe     (rowe@lepomis.psych.upenn.edu)