TIFF and LibTiff Mail List Archive




I've been working the past few weeks on printing TIFF images as fast as possible...I have had a few constraints that I've been working under, however I could change them if I had or needed to. I'm trying to print to Post Script under Windows....both present challenges....

I also wanted to scale (reduce) the image so that the black would fit within a set of margins. (ex. A 8.5" x 11" image that had printing completely out to the edge of the page would be reduced so that a 1" margin existed all the way around the image.) I also was adding a header and footer on the printed page.

(I'd like the reduction to be automatic so that the margins look exact no matter how much a page might vary.(within reason...and with no enlargements))

I first worked with a vendor who would never admit that their software created extremely bad Post Script. They would send eight bits for every one bit of the image and then the printer would have to scale the image. Not good! (It was taking ten(10) minutes per page to print....)

I finally got to the point where I can get the image scaled prior to sending... and then I only send 1 bit....(Now printing can get down to 1 minute per page this still isn't good enough {aside: Ever notice how important printer memory is? It can radically change how fast a printer can interpret a file!})

Both solutions included the reduction and headers and footers.

Here's an idea I've been thinking about....

Why not analyze the image and send only black? In other words why not determine that only a few areas exist with black and just send them? Ever seen this done...Or seen tools that could help do it?

To take this further the analyzer could determine the image had 1 inch margins and simply remove that? To make sure the post script conformed a white rectangle could be sent prior to the black areas so that any stuff under the image would be hidden as it was suppose to be?

Then I was wondering if it might be possible to remove margins from images and then save it. This would then require being able to locate an image and to know what the original size was.....

To help clarify this message I'm restating (and adding) the questions here:

  1. How is the fastest way to print TIFF to post script? I'm looking for the best procedure that produces the easiest to interpret doesn't have to exist in a product.
  2. What is the faster way to print images, in general...remember, I'd like margins and headers and footers.
  3. Are XIP Print boards a good printing solution? Any other vendor boards? I also know that some QMS & XEROX printers can accept TIFFs directly.
  4. Ever seen any printing solutions that only send the black part of images to the printer?
  5. Do any tools exist that could be used to analyze an image and determine where objects (groups of pixels) exist within images? Or a tool that could simply determine the amount of margins that already exist around an image?
  6. Is it possible to remove margins from an image and then save the image with the original image size and then have a TIFF compliant reader reconstruct the orginal image? Would it be possible to do this with tiles? A more general case would be to specify where any number of small object should be placed onto a larger space. The objects could even have different types of data. Does this start to get into compound images?

Thanks for reading...and any ideas you might add to this discussion!

Clark Brady - Eli Lilly & Co