[NTLK] Press, bookmaker, and making AVI backdrops

From: Dan (dan_at_dbdigitalweb.com)
Date: Thu Apr 28 2005 - 14:29:27 PDT


Hi all,
Well I have been looking into making backdrop images for the AVI
backdrop. And I know that some people have had trouble with Press
giving poor quality pictures. I have ran into the same problem.
Apparently I never tried 16 shades of gray bitmaps before (although I
seem to remember trying it and it worked before....odd). Even with
preconverting the image into grayscale and saving it as a 4bit BMP,
Press would dramatically alter the image when it was imported making it
look like garbage (and yes even when using the MP2x00 platform setting).

Upon further research I did find a way around this problem. If you
reduce your computers color resolution to 256 colors, you should see a
dramatic difference in the quality of images after importing into press
(preconverting still gives better quality though). Then you can make a
book as normal for the AVI backdrop. However it is still not the best
quality that is possible on the Newton.

The current method I am using is to convert the image to grayscale, then
save it as a 4bit in BMP format. Then import it into my Newt using
X-Port, and save it to the notepad. I then copy the image to the
clipboard, and drag it into the AVI preferences. This works well and
gives me a better quality image than using a book via Press. The only
downside is that I am unable to open the AVI preferences after I install
the image. I only get a error when I try. To fix this I have to delete
the preferences file either with Soupkitchen or a Preferences cleaner
(such as Stand Alone's free cleaner). But as I don't change the
backdrop too often, it is a minor point (at least for me).

As a side note Bookmaker does not work at all for doing 16 shades of
gray images (at least the PC version). Even if you use a direct link
rather than importing the image into a RTF file, it still will convert
and store the image in the bookmaker source (.f) file. It does work
fine for black and white bitmaps though (as does press).

-Dan

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