Very Computer

We are capturing color images off of a standard VHS video camera. We are
using a Sun Sparc with a videoPIX capture card.  We need to be able to
print these images on a thermal wax or dysub color printer.  So far, our
attempts have produced very poor results.  Part of the problem is that
we are blowing up the image from 640x480 to 3000x2400. The other problem
is the dithering necessary to produce good color output -- we don't want
to dither any more than absolutly required.

Are there any packages which do a better job of blowing up and smoothing
images than the PBMPLUS package?

Is there any way to figure out what colors the printer produces the best,
so that we can restrict our colormap to conform to those color as much
as possible?

The dysub printers are suppose to be much better than just thermal wax
printers.  They supposedly can do more colors.  This means that there
should be more colors available to us with a minimum of dithering.

We are trying to use a Seiko 300x300 dpi thermal wax printer, and the
new Fargo Premera 200x200 dpi dysub printer.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

John

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Analog Digital Services
Albuquerque, N.M. 87111

Let's see, you are blowing up the image *23, the original dpi was 72.
Take into account that you are probably only getting one field off of the
VHS, you are changing the size slightly, and you tend to get distortion at the
edges.

I would be surprised that you got results, let alone good ones.

Quote:>Are there any packages which do a better job of blowing up and smoothing
>images than the PBMPLUS package?

Here's what I would do - Restrict the pixels to nearest neighbor, blow them up,
then smooth them out with a graphics tablet by hand.  The problem which is
occuring, is that in general, when blowing something up, the computer blurs
things when it can't decide.  This will make the image look amazingly fuzzy.
If you do it by hand, the colors will stay accurate, and you can then decide
on a case by case basis what is good and what is not.  It will take a while,
but...

If you can get your hands on the 1" or 3/4" or beta version, hire a company
to output them to slides, then hire another company to transfer them to disk,
you would probably get better results.

Quote:>The dysub printers are suppose to be much better than just thermal wax
>printers.  They supposedly can do more colors.  This means that there
>should be more colors available to us with a minimum of dithering.

>We are trying to use a Seiko 300x300 dpi thermal wax printer, and the
>new Fargo Premera 200x200 dpi dysub printer.

The Primera lacks black, so any values relying on darks(which given VHS, is
probably a lot), it won't do very well with.  The Seiko is probably the
better printer for this.  The Primera also relies on dithering, which will
fuzz the image even worse in this case.

Andy Pearlman