problem with image/screen resolution in E-Prime 1.2 / soft & unreadable type in image file

[Martin Smith-Rodden]

Hello --

We're stuck with an older version of E-Prime (1.2) in our lab. I'm using it for a lengthy reading comprehension procedure where participants view emulated webpages. Rather than use a mixture of elements and objects to construct the page in a slide (the use of large sections of type kept kicking the script size into being too large), my workaround was to construct the page as a Photoshop file with all the elements (including type) in the image.




I smugly thought my workaround was a rather clever way to get around the script-size-problem, until we saw how the type rendered. Which is to say: HORRIBLY.
It came out looking very low in resolution, with some shadowing or "ghosting" in the letters. Clearly, that's problematic in a reading comprehension procedure.



So, I "upped" the resolution of the .bmp image (1200 pixels wide) and it still looks low-rez. The images you're seeing here are actually the high-resolution version of my image. Adjustments and changes in the display device properties create other problems: the screen image goes way too small and the elements of certain slides show up having been moved in random directions.

Is there any solution to this (rather frustrating) issue within E-Prime 1.2?


Martin Smith-Rodden
Graduate student,
Applied Experimental Psychology Program
Old Dominion University,
Norfolk, VA

[Alphonse Stickle]

perhaps to look closely more at photoshop construction for of the bitmap?

At 12:56 PM 16/09/2012, you wrote:

Hello --

We're stuck with an older version of E-Prime (1.2) in our lab. I'm using it for a lengthy reading comprehension procedure where participants view emulated webpages. Rather than use a mixture of elements and objects to construct the page in a slide (the use of large sections of type kept kicking the script size into being too large), my workaround was to construct the page as a Photoshop file with all the elements (including type) in the image.

I smugly thought my workaround was a rather clever way to get around the script-size-problem, until we saw how the type rendered. Which is to say: HORRIBLY.
It came out looking very low in resolution, with some shadowing or "ghosting" in the letters. Clearly, that's problematic in a reading comprehension procedure.

So, I "upped" the resolution of the .bmp image (1200 pixels wide) and it still looks low-rez. The images you're seeing here are actually the high-resolution version of my image. Adjustments and changes in the display device properties create other problems: the screen image goes way too small and the elements of certain slides show up having been moved in random directions.

Is there any solution to this (rather frustrating) issue within E-Prime 1.2?


Martin Smith-Rodden
Graduate student,
Applied Experimental Psychology Program
Old Dominion University,
Norfolk, VA

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[Martin Smith-Rodden]

Thanks to all who posted or emailed... 

EPILOGUE: 

The problem seems to stem from my old version of E-Prime defaulting to a lower-resolution output (640x480 @ 16 bits Color). 

The solution is kind of a good-news/bad-news thing...

The good news: When I edited the display device feature and upped the resolution to match the nice monitors in our computer lab (1280x1024), those high rez .bmp images looked absolutely AWESOME!

The bad news: Changing the screen resolution meant that just about all the my slides and screens, which were built to the old display paradigm, needed to have their images resized, and in some cases, have the objects in the slides re-positioned or rebuilt. Basically, it's a total rebuild now, of a pretty complex procedure - containing text entry, object rotations, and custom built slider scales (a slide that has roughly 100+ objects within it), all of which had to be redone.  

The moral of this story: if the screen resolution is important to the procedure, take that into account as the very first thing, make the appropriate adjustments on the display device settings with careful consideration of what machines you'll be using, then build the rest of the program from there.