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Post by luckyjoe on Mar 26, 2009 16:38:29 GMT -9
Hi, everyone. I'm having a little trouble with resizing some of the minis. I want to make a 15mm board and terrain for SOBH and I want make use Jim's minis for some 15mm warbands.
I was having a little trouble last night with resizing. I was taking the pdf into Paint Shop Pro 7 and setting the dpi to 300. Then I reduced the size to 50%. (I had tried what seems to be the eays way to print 4 pages to the sheet but I couldn't get that to work. ) I was able to reduce the size of the elf basic infantry to 15mm without trouble, and they came out great. But when I resized the Dungeon Adventurers using the same method, they came out too small, about 12-13 mm eye height (using the elf and the wizard for reference). I ended up having to resize them at 75% to achieve a 15mm height at eyeline. And I couldn't get the orc fighter warband or skeleton fighter warband to size out at all. They seemed to come out too small no matter what I tried. Finally I gave up and went to bed. I'll have to try again this Sunday. Anyone have any suggestions? Is there one surefire method that will work for all of the diferent warband pdfs? Thanks in advance for any help.
Luckyjoe
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Post by onemonkeybeau on Mar 26, 2009 20:40:30 GMT -9
Hmmm...
I'm in the process of converting all my PDF's to 15mm but have not tried any of the ones you've mentioned...
I'll let you know if I have the same issues.
onemonkeybeau
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Post by silentsquirrel on Mar 27, 2009 13:53:22 GMT -9
Interesting problem. I do notice that, in 30mm anyway, the elves are slightly taller than the skeletons anyway, though that still wouldn't explain them being only 12-13mm eye level.
I recently gave up on Paint Shop Pro and switched to GIMP. I've been re-scaling some sets down to 15mm with no problems at all.
I'll have to start playing around with this stuff and see what I can come up with.
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Post by Slick on Mar 27, 2009 17:06:38 GMT -9
I agree with silentsquirl in that paint shop pro might be the cause of the problem. I think the issue lies in how your program translates the PDF into a workable format. There are some of Jim's PDFs that when I converted them into Tiffs there was some size issues when I tried to copy and paste them to create a mixed war-band. Again I found that the issue was with the program I was using and not the PDFs. I have changed over to photoshop and This issue does not rear its ugly head anymore. I did notice when putting together February's hoard that some files were not to scale but still had the correct base tabs and dpi. Again I think this is just a program difference rather then something actually wrong with the figure. Give Gimp a try see if that works if not we can rack our brains here and see what we can come up with.
Nate
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Post by Aestelon on Mar 28, 2009 3:38:54 GMT -9
I did notice when putting together February's hoard that some files were not to scale but still had the correct base tabs and dpi. Again I think this is just a program difference rather then something actually wrong with the figure. Give Gimp a try see if that works if not we can rack our brains here and see what we can come up with. Wouldn't that be a case of the figure being slightly out of scale in the first place, if the tabs are correct? Or am I missing something? And yeah, I'm finding GIMP to do a fine job of scaling PDFs so far. When you open it up, it gives you the option of what resolution you want it opening in, which obviously also determines the pixel dimensions you get, so it's pretty easy to make sure your scale's on.
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Post by luckyjoe on Mar 28, 2009 4:39:49 GMT -9
Thanks, folks. I am downloading GIMP now.
Luckyjoe
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Post by luckyjoe on Apr 6, 2009 13:37:20 GMT -9
I got that resizing problem figured out. GIMP seems like a cool program and has a rather intuitive so I'm pleased with it, but I ended going back to PaintShop Pro to fix this problem (mainly because I'm stubborn). I'll have to do more with GIMP in the future, but right now I'd rather concentrate on minis and terrain. It bugged me that I couldn't make Paintshop Pro do what I wanted, so I worked at it in PSP and figured it out. It turns out that when I was importing the pdf of the minis into paintshop pro, it changed not only the dpi when I went from 200 dpi to 300 dpi, it also reduced the document size, making the minis smaller. All I had to do was note the page size in inches while it was in 200 dpi and after resizing to 300 dpi, use the same page size in inches. Now I've got several pages of 15mm minis waiting for assembly and three 15mm warbands done. Thanks for your help, everyone. Luckyjoe
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Post by Aestelon on Apr 6, 2009 15:02:59 GMT -9
So basically the image was sized to print correctly at 200 dpi instead of 300?
GIMP actually has a good way round that - you can open a PDF up directly into the program and choose the size and print resolution from the start.
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Post by luckyjoe on Apr 6, 2009 16:32:02 GMT -9
Yes, Aestelon. That's correct. And I noticed that feature of GIMP when I was importing pdfs into it for resizing. It was much easier to do that in GIMP than PaintShop Pro. That's what I meant when I said GIMP was more intuitive. PSP seems almost purposely counter-intuitive. Luckyjoe
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Post by onemonkeybeau on Apr 6, 2009 18:15:12 GMT -9
That's strange... because I use PSP to resize my PDF's with no problems... I just open up the PDF, it asks me what DPI I want, I say 300... a few seconds later I can manipulate the file... I resize at 50% (or 60% if it's a 28mm model) then save it as a no compression JPG. I then go into Print Layout, drag the resized JPG's I want onto the page, position them, then save that layout as a PDF. Then print. I'm downloading GIMP right now though, because I'm interested in the SPEED of the process... maybe GIMP will be faster and not such a memory hog... One can only hope In any case, I'm glad you got it working Luckyjoe! onemonkeybeau
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Post by Aestelon on Apr 6, 2009 18:41:12 GMT -9
It's been ages since I used PSP (version 5, actually), so I can't remember what kind of lag it has on it, but I know I have the same kind of problem when I run Artweaver, which I love to bits, but can really chug at times. GIMP, on the whole, does seem to be a lot faster. I certainly find it runs much more smoothly when I'm sketching than when I use Artweaver.
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Post by luckyjoe on Apr 7, 2009 3:50:06 GMT -9
Paint Shop Pro 7 is what I'm using now. It's always been kind of problematic for me. Even though I have the dpi set to 200 for imports in both Acrobat and PSP, whenever I get a file into PSP, it changes it to 72 dpi and makes it huge, 18 to twenty inches across. So then I increase the dpi to 200 and that makes the image the original size. But if I increase the dpi further, it reduces the overall size, so my 11x8.5 inch page becomes 7x5 or something. I can't figure out how to make it stop changing the dpi and size, so now I just work around it. It's kind of like being married. I can eventually get to where I want to be, it just takes work. Luckyjoe
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Post by Aestelon on Apr 7, 2009 7:28:00 GMT -9
Well, if you've got the DPI set for 200 in PSP, can't you just reset to automatically open at 300 instead? You pretty much need 300 for anything you want to print anyway...
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Post by luckyjoe on Apr 7, 2009 8:12:52 GMT -9
I have used the default of 200dpi because most of the pdfs I was importing from WorldWorks were 200dpi. I could reset it to 300 dpi in both programs and I have actually done so. It still doesn't seem to make a difference, though. Regardless of what the dpi is set to in the preference settings of either and both program, whenever I import from Acrobat into PSP, it still defaults to the 72dpi. I'm stuck now kind of having to go to 200 dpi when I bring it into PSP just so I know what size the file should be. But really, it's only a minor annoyance, a few extra clicks of the mouse is all it entails. I'm afraid that if I actually fix that problem something really bad will happen. Luckyjoe
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Post by Aestelon on Apr 7, 2009 8:56:59 GMT -9
Sod it, just use GIMP and pick the res you need when you open it. That also means if you're resizing something (like when I'm upscaling the Hybrid Slashers to 150% for my Tyrant Hunters) you can alter the resolution to suit as and when.
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Post by silentsquirrel on Apr 19, 2009 6:23:06 GMT -9
You know, since I've been messing around with 15mm scaling, I decided to try scaling Jim's figures two ways in GIMP. First, I did the standard PDF import at 150 dpi, dropping the figs to 15mm. The second time around, I imported at 300 dpi and then reduced the image 50% using the Scale function.
Looking at them side-by-side, I don't see a whole heck of a lot of difference with either method. However, the straight import at 150 dpi is definitely the easier way to go.
Does anybody know if there is a true difference in quality between these methods? Is one actually better than the other?
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Post by luckyjoe on Apr 19, 2009 9:35:05 GMT -9
That's interesting. I might try that. What type of paper did you print them on, and what setting for print quality? I've been printing my 15mm on matte photo paper on "fine" print quality.
Luckyjoe
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Post by silentsquirrel on Apr 19, 2009 16:10:44 GMT -9
That's interesting. I might try that. What type of paper did you print them on, and what setting for print quality? I've been printing my 15mm on matte photo paper on "fine" print quality. Luckyjoe I used matte photo paper on normal print quality, which is my usual setting.
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