Aliasing type problem...

[Gazzz]

Hi there...

Got a bit of a problem with a EPS print that i'm absolutely bamboozled with...

The artwork is 100% vectored. It is ripped by "Poster Print" to a 2.2m Mutoh Rockhopper IIk.

Please pay attention to the clean lines in the pink, and the rough bitmappy looking lines in the blue. I assure you stroke widths are exactly the same and all are ungrouped, uncompounded and unmasked.

It truely is a thinker!

Please have a look at the attached image scanned from the output print and tell me your thoughts!

 

[Fred Weiss]

If you have an application that will convert strokes to outlines, that would be my first suggestion. I'm not sure if Corel does it but Illustrator, Flexi and Omega do. My experience has been that different applications seem to misinterpret stroke assignments from other applications more often than not. Outlining the strokes eliminates this as an issue.

Or, if you have Photoshop, open the file there at a size sufficient to equal 100 ppi (39.37 ppcm) at the size you plan to print it and see what it looks like as a raster image.

 

[flexiezine]

Excellent suggestions Fred. I agree with the possibility of strokes being applied. It would pay off to import the file into Illustrator and remove the strokes, then export as PDF or EPS. Unfortunately, I would not recommend using FlexiSign to edit this particular file... Most EPS files, if created from an established and professional ad firm or the like, will have been designed using the latest version of Illustrator, Quark, etc... Flexi has issues with importing EPS from relatively new versions of poplar software such as Illustrator.

I would also recommend converting the text to curves or outlines after removing the strokes.

This is a prime example of why sign shops truly need more than one design program. There is not one software that can do it all, or at least do it the best. I utilize FlexiSign, Corel, Illustrator, Photoshop, Fireworks, Freehand and Acrobat Pro. Never been a SignLab or Gerber fan but I am sure they have their strengths and weaknesses as well.

 

[Fred Weiss]

Just to be clear Bobby .... my suggestion was not to remove the strokes. It was to convert them to outlines. By doing this you end up with a vectored version of the stroke at the size it was created and with the fill that was previously assigned as a stroke.

I agree that having Illustrator is handy for reading the latest version files sent to you in AI or EPS. Being a native PostScript application, the accuracy is superb. I've always had excellent results with Flexi as well, which to me is like Illustrator on steroids.

The two pics attached show what I'm describing. #1 shows two identical boxes with gray fill and black stroked border. The lower box is selected and is about to have the Outline Stroke command applied to it. The #2 pic shows the difference in the actual vectors after the command is applied and the preview turned off.

 

[flexiezine]

Gotcha Fred... Must have misread your original post. Removing would thin the letter more than likely so your suggestion of converting to outlines is correct.

Flexi is quite powerful and joined with other, more efficient raster based software packages such as Photoshop is ideal.

Have you had any experience with Genuine Fractal for Photoshop?

 

[Fred Weiss]

Not a lot. I tried out their trial version and didn't see where the results exceeded S-Spline's results. S-Spline is considerably less money and doesn't require all the business of saving to another format and then opening that to resize it.

I felt the claims were frankly over the top especially in claiming that by doing what they do the bitmap became scaleable with no loss of quality. What I found in testing about half a dozen images with both applications was that pixelation starting becoming noticeable at between a 400% and a 500% increase in size.

 

[flexiezine]

Link for S-Spline ?

Thanks for the heads up.

 

[Fred Weiss]

PhotoZoom Pro (formerly S-Spline)

 

[flexiezine]

Thanks...

 

[Gazzz]

Thanks for the help guys. Converting to outline (AI CS) made two extremely thin strokes (yet they were outlines), but they had a black fill!

Wierd indeed, but I have failed to mention that the origional stroke was 0.014mm thick. Mabye i'm just asking too much.