Resizing Graphics in RoboHelp

[Alexander Von_obert <avobert -at- TWH -dot- MSN -dot- SUB -dot- ORG>]

Hello Tammy,


* Antwort auf eine Nachricht von Tammy Sudol  an All am 28.08.96

TS> From: Tammy Sudol <tammy -at- ZEUS -dot- ATS -dot- QC -dot- CA>

TS> I'm wondering if anyone is having success resizing graphics in
TS> RoboHelp.  We're trying to resize screen captures and find that
TS> they become distorted.

This is a general problem and not especially related to Robohelp:

- Screen captures often contain structures one or two pixels wide.
- If you do conventional resizing the program has to do some kind
  of guess which of the zwo colors to use when combining two pixels -
  simple resize has no alternative to that.
- You cannot see this problem in photos or other half-tone pictures
  because you have much less contrast from one pixel to the next.

I quite successfully used the following work-around:

- Soften the screenshot, perhaps use a higher color resolution
- Resize the softened picture
- Sharpen the resized picture, reduce color count if needed

This delivers surprisingly good results if you do perhaps 20% reduction. The
 principle of this conversion is something like this:

- By softening you distribute the information a bit.
- During resize the program does some kind of majority decision
  for every single pixel.
- The sharpening works quite well because "synthetic" pictures
  like screen shots contain very little "noise".


Greetings from Germany,
Alexander

--
Alexander von Obert, Urbanstr. 2, 90480 Nuernberg, Germany
Free-lance Technical Writer (electronics, software)
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