Screen Resolution
Joe Barreca
I have a new monitor with great resolution and I print my maps to Adobe Acrobat. I notice that the Adobe format maps have much better resolution than what I am getting on my mapper and layout windows at the same scale. I have version 9.0 build 36 and have fooled with the halftone and dithering options without any better results. Is this an issue that is solved in more recent versions or am I missing some tweak somewhere?
Joe
Joseph Barreca
Map Metrics
2109 Hwy 25 South
Kettle Falls, WA 99141
509 738 6155
Joe.B...@gmail.com
http://www.mapmet.com
Nash
something beeing better in print than on the screen... :)) Are the
Acrobat files you're making intended to be viewed on screen or
actually printed? Did you mean that the resolution in print is *worse*
than on the screen? Does the printed map look blurry or the lines seem
"unsmoothed"? Adobe downsamples images in print by default, so you
should first check Acrobat's settings. (When I say print, I also mean
*.pdf files, since Acrobat presents itself as a printer). And when it
comes to hardcopy, there is no way your monitor is ever going to beat
a printer when it comes to resolution...
Cheers,
Nash
Joe Barreca
Thanks for replying but you have it exactly wrong. The SCREEN version of the Adobe file is much sharper than the MapInfo Windows at the same scale. Most of my lines are set to a particular pixel width and that does not seem to show well in the MapInfo version. But the text and raster images are not nearly as good either. Am I the only one noticing this?
Joe
Mike Osbourn
Joe,
It might be that you don’t have enhanced rendering enabled for your map windows. I think under options – preferences there is a section to turn on anti aliasing etc that makes the map window much cleaner. It might not actually increase the resolution but in essence appears to by smoothing vector data.
Might want to give that a try to see if it helps.
Mike
Cinda Graubard
If so, this degrades the on-screen appearance of the image. I know it sounds crazy, but I just realized this when I cloned a map window with a super high resolution image in it (the original window was opened via a workspace made on a different computer) and found a terrible rendering in the cloned window vs. a great one in the original window...the difference was related to the Image Processing default on my machine.
Like you, I have have always wondered the same, esp. because an image open in something as simple as Paint Shop Pro where it looked fantastic, looked horrible in MapInfo (to the extent I couldn't work with it for geological interpretations).
Cinda Graubard
GeoMax
Cinda Graubard
Joe Barreca
That is an interesting phenomena, but it does not seem to change the action of MI.
I can clarify the situation with this screen image:
![[]](https://groups.google.com/group/mapinfo-l/attach/e92010c80d00e048/MIScreen.png?part=0.1&view=1)
Notice how the lines are thicker and the text is more readable. Most of these lines are set to 1.5 points rather than a numbered line width. I think MI is sampling whatever it wants to display and placing the exact color on the exact screen cell. Adobe has translated to a dithered presentation that often takes up more cells with a more approximate color. On the halo text, it is really interesting close up. There are multiple copies of the word in the background, all slightly off center. My guess is that it would take more time to regenerate the screen if all this was going on in MI. You could argue that the MI window is sharper and faster.
Enough of being persnickety.
Joe
Bill Thoen
doesn't use that and it makes our MapInfo-rendered maps look
cartoon-ish. But MapInfo ought to include it now; we're not using 286
processors with only 512K RAM anymore.
Graphic presentation is an area where MapInfo has fallen way behind the
curve. Sure, you can say that MapInfo is a desktop MAPPING program and
worrying about graphic quality is a job for Illustrator or some other
grown-up graphics presentation program, but in today's world, MapInfo at
least ought to be able to do the basics on screen, like draw smooth
lines, render small labels clearly and do color gradient fills.
The technology is not all that exotic anymore and techniques for coding
and implementing it are available in open source now too (AGG
(www.antigrain.com/) and SVG (http://www.carto.net/) come immediately to
mind). So I don't see why we can't have it as part of our favorite $2200
software package.
I imagine that this is on MapInfo's to-do list somewhere, but for now
the best solution I've found is to output my maps to PDF with enough
extra resolution to look good when printed on paper, and then advise my
clients to view them with the free Adobe Reader (if they don't already
have the Acrobat package). The extra resolution seems to be used by
Adobe's print driver to produce a really nice looking, anti-aliased map
on screen, which can also be printed at its intended scale if desired.
- Bill Thoen
Joe Barreca wrote:
> Nash:
>
> Thanks for replying but you have it exactly wrong. The _SCREEN_
Warren Vick
Regards,
Warren Vick
Europa Technologies Ltd.
http://www.europa.uk.com
-----Original Message-----
From: mapi...@googlegroups.com [mailto:mapi...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Bill Thoen
Sent: 04 July 2009 15:55
To: mapi...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [MI-L] Re: Screen Resolution
Bill Thoen
>> MapInfo doesn't use that and it makes our MapInfo-rendered maps look cartoon-ish.
>>
>
> Anti-aliasing was introduced in v9.5.1 and makes an excellent rendering enhancement *some* of the time.
>
> Regards,
> Warren Vick
> Europa Technologies Ltd.
> http://www.europa.uk.com
>
Thanks for cluing me in!
Amazing service at MapInfo...You crab in public about something not
being available, and presto! it's ready and in the next upgrade. I just
have to check the maintenance releases via the Help menu once in a
while... doh!
- Bill
Eric Blasenheim
you, of all people, Bill, did not know about anti-aliasing in 9.51!
A recap of 9.51 rendering enhancements.
In map options, there is a choice of "Enhanced Rendering". This choice
switches your map drawing from traditional GDI to GDI+.
Once that is enabled, you can choose to enable anti-alias text, line
drawing and/or raster separately. As a note, "enhanced rendering"
without "anti-alias text" is not a good combination in my experience.
It can look worse than traditional GDI. So turn on text anti-alias
whenever you enable enhanced rendering.
Layer Translucency which we have had for many years for rasters is now
available for vector layers as well. This requires enhanced rendering.
However, we did not want to disable translucency just because you had
not turned Enhanced on in Map Options. So, when you give at least one
layer a translucency value other than zero, Enhanced Rendering will be
turned on. You can see this happening n the MapBasic Window. Note that
you may want to make sure your text anti-alias is on.
Enhanced options are for each map. Translucency is controlled by the
layer.
There are preferences for this in Options, Preferences, styles. These
control the properties for new map windows that you create. I make my
default anti-alias text which you can default to without enabling
Enhanced by detault. Turn on enhanced, set anti-alias text and then
turn off enhanced. That way if and when you decide to use enhanced,
anti-alias text will be on.
Also note that when Enhanced Rendering is turned on, your selection
styles will look different. The biggest thing is that XOR cannot be
used so the issues of selections disappearing because you had an even
number of objects selected go away. I know I have heard that complaint
for many years.
The caveat to that is that some highlighting operations will be slower
but most are not noticeable. The worst case is when you have many
objects selected and you deselect one of them by using the Shift
Click. In non-enhanced mode, that operation is simply to draw the
unselected object one more time. The highlight visually disappears. In
enhanced mode we have to draw all the visible selected objects
(without drawing the one that is now unselected). Your performance
will vary with how many objects, of what type and node density they
are.
The other thing to note about selections is that you may want to alter
your selection style because not using XOR makes things look
differentl and you may want to give your selection style a
translucency value to see through. Try it and see what you like.
Eric Blasenheim
PBBI (MapInfo)