Hi All, Sorry to post this topic here, but I guess this Blueprint donation section is the most read here, so at least I can have Your attention then. ( You moderators can transfer it to another area of course ) Let me answer some questions that were posted here before and also give some guidelines for Blueprint donators. - SCANNING If You SCAN Your prints Yourself, always use GRAYSCALE ( instead of BLACK AND WHITE or LINE ART ), if Your images are in so called Black and White ( meaning NON- colored images ) Scanning them as Black and White ( 1bit ) destroys a lot of fine detail and will give You blocky lines. So, scan them using grayscale and at 300ppi, what will mostly be more than adequate. Color images should - of course - be scanned in color, unless color isn' t needed. DON' t save as JPEG right now, use TIFF instead ( or PSD or BMP if nothing else available ) If You scanned directly into Your image manipulating app, You can tweak it now. If scanned outside, import the TIFF file You saved from the scanner. - IMAGE MANIPULATION First, crop all unwanted borders out. Then use the tools You have at hand to optimize the image, like " Brightness " or " Levels " settings. See image below. Then, if working on a grayscale image, You can lower the amount of colors. Mostly, 16 colors ( 4bit ) will do for grayscale line- drawings. If You' re satisfied with the result, change the resolution to 72ppi. Normally, this will not change Your image' s quality. However, depending on Your app, it can look a lot bigger on screen - or it may appear as nothing happens at all... Some applications WILL scale Your image smaller, so if that happens, just leave it at 300ppi. Check different apps if You like ( export as a jpeg or gif and open it in Your browser - like IE or Mozilla or something to check ) Line drawings - like most images posted here - can be saved as 16 color GIF files. Saving as JPEG will mostly end up with a file that is much bigger, unless You used a low quality setting, resulting in blurry lines. As an example, I used an image that was posted here before - excellent picture BTW - but it was just too enormous: 1.6MB ... As can be seen in the picture below, using the steps as explained above, it became ... errr .... slightly smaller: 96Kb ... The third image shows that there isn' t a trace of quality loss, if done properly. BTW, the image used was probably created from a vector- line drawing. When exported as a bitmap - what requires rendering the drawing - I guess Antialiasing was set to " off " - resulting in some pretty ugly pixelation of the lines. Pity, because this could have been the " Blueprint of the Year " if done right... :cry: Peter Made it an announcement NightEye
pete goes and makes a tutorial...lol pete goes and makes a tutorial...lol thanks...this is very good for scanners to see..the only thing i can add is try to scan the image straight...theres a lot of prints were the car is sitting on a slope so bad that the suspension is getting dammaged lol!..........also some scanned prints aren't fully flat...what i mean is that the paper when scanned is folded upward a bit wich causes the car to change shape and bp's dont line up correctly and finally if you can put a piece of card board to stop the scanner from reading the reverse side of the page...reason it sometimes adds lines to the image that can be confusing...
Blueprint Donation: Read this! I'd also like to add that most of the people here dont seem to know about Photoshop's "Save For Web" option
Blueprint Donation: Read this! Maybe a lot of people only use PAINT or any other application that was included with their operating system. I know these can' t do wonders, so why not have a look around ? There' s some pretty good alternatives - some even FREE ! Have a look at http://www.tucows.com/imgedit95_default.html for a start. As I am using Macs for all my work, I am not too familiar with Windows apps, though we do have a PC here, that I sometimes use to test my models in PC- only applications. Maybe some of You PC- artist know more about that, so why not add Your favourites here ? A very capable Mac-only app ( for those few Mac- users here ) is Graphic Converter, that I used to create the images above. It is shareware ( only $35 ) but worth a lot more than that. For my Illustration work and serious image manipulation, I use CANVAS, that I mentioned before. It is a Professional Vector drawing and Image manipulation app that is perfect for the creation of blueprints. Try to lay hands on it by ordering a back- issue from British Mags http://www.computerarts.co.uk/ or http://www.digitmag.co.uk/ that had it on their Cover Disk last month and the month before. It will only cost You about €12 or less than $15 to get a magnificent piece of software ... Have fun, Peter
... ...btw..that austindb9 i did was in good old paint i gueuss only bad thing is jpeg....next1 i'll try and save as gif 4 56k'rs
Blueprint Donation: Read this! OK, here' s another one: Some pretty large pictures were posted here. Maybe most of you don' t care, but I am only trying... As an ADSL- user, I' m not complaining, but for those 56k users ( and maybe even some slower ?? ) it can be very timeconsuming to load all pages. The images also gobble up HD space ( ans SMcars webspace of course ) Please do not take this personal if I use a picture that was posted by you. All donations are appreciated by me too. Honest. The image below ( one of many gorgeous ones posted by Alex_haba lately ), was so big that I couldn' t resist checking it out on http://www.1-hit.com/all-in-one/tool.loading-time-checker.htm Though the optimized image is still fairly large - normal when posting good quality pics of course - the difference is huge... btw, the picture ( compare.gif ) is big ( 160kb ) because the gray background of the original image is left intact. Peter
VEEEEERY large blueprint donations !!!!! ( but not in here ) Just once more to get Your attention people... When posting blueprints, please keep in mind that some members of this fine community are still using 56k modems. I am pretty sure they don' t like having to wait - and pay the phonebill - for a 7,2Mb download. Even on ADSL it takes ages, while You can easily alter the images - without loss of quality - to make it much smaller in file size. Read my post above about doing that. http://www.smcars.net/forums/blueprints-donation/4972-blueprint-donation-read.html Anyway, I downloaded the Mini Cooper S Cabrio blueprint, posted by ZXR-7 today and changed it to make it smaller - not the actual size, but the filesize - and made this post. Saved as a 16 color GIF, it is only 1,4Mb instead of the 7,2Mb JPG and NO loss of quality... Maybe this can be an alternative for people who don' t know how to post large files, or for people who don' t have broadband access, so they can see what is in the attached zip- file. A small preview image of the attached zip + the downloadable zip itself. BTW, JPEG is NOT the best format for saving blueprints. It blurrs the lines, uses milions of colors and is much bigger than GIF or in some cases PNG ( though some people cannot open PNG files, so GIF is the best option ) Peter
VEEEEERY large blueprint donations !!!!! ( but not in here ) I thank you for doing that. Couldn't open the page myself.. :evil: have you do that for the audis??
VEEEEERY large blueprint donations !!!!! ( but not in here ) Sorry Xolberga, those posts were removed by the admins here. I hope people will post smaller pictures in the future ( smaller file-sizes I mean - NOT smaller images ) so nobody will have problems browsing this great forum :wink: Peter
