Acdsee shows whitespace as gray

In article ,
Franklin wrote:

I scanned some text documents and created JPG files.

Issues with ACDSee aside, is there a reason you chose to save the files as JPEG instead of some other format? You may have made a mistake by saving them as JPEG.

JPEG is a "lossy" format. That means the quality of any scan you save as a JPEG is degraded in order to make the file smaller on disk. JPEG is especially bad on text, making it (or anything else with hard, straight lines) "blurry."

JPEG was invented for situations where file size is very important and image quality is not important. You should never save any scan as a JPEG unless there is some clear, specific reason why it *has* to be JPEG and no other format will work.

—
Art, photography, shareware, polyamory, literature, kink: all at http://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html

On Sun, 13 Nov 2005 02:19:32 GMT, Franklin wrote:

I scanned some text documents and created JPG files.

(a) If I open the jpegs in Irfanview and print then the documents come out normally as black text on a white background.

(b) If I open the same jpegs in my old ACDSee 3.1 then the documents come out as black print on a *LIGHT GRAY* background.
launching ACDSee and then calling TWAIN from there.

GIFs print as black on white. JPEGS are visibly black on GRAY.

What tacit said. Plus:

I think your problem is the scans, not ACDSee 3.1 (which btw is now in version 8.0). Your scanner shines a light on the page, then measures the colors that shine back at it. Typically, the light shining off a piece of paper will reflect back as various shades of grayish color. Jpeg will save these colors, and ACDSee 3.1 will show you what Jpeg saved.

Gif works differently from Jpeg. Gif uses a table of colors, and forces every color the scanner reads into one of the colors in this table. If there are only two colors in the color table — black and white — every color reading will be forced into either black or white.

If the scans are important, redo them. Otherwise, you can correct them quickly and easily in Photoshop. Set your zoom to show the lightest, skinniest letters in your scan, as these will be your problem children. Now open up Levels, then choose the white eyedropper and click on the white paper until it goes white, but the light, skinny letters remain dark. Finally, apply desaturate and save as a gif.

HTH

—
Jim Hargan
Freelance Photographer and Writer
www.harganonline.com

Jim Hargan wrote:

Gif works differently from Jpeg. Gif uses a table of colors, and forces every color the scanner reads into one of the colors in this table.

Close but…

What you wrote may be misinterpreted such that the source colors are forced into an existing color table. While there might be some poor software around that does it this way, the more usual and much better approach is that the color table is built and optimized for each image to suit its colors.

If the source contains, say, a lot of green and red hues, but little blue, then the color table will contain more green and red hues on the expense of the varitety of blue. If the source contains no blue at all, the color table won’t have blue in it either.

So, back to scanning a document. If this is a document on white paper, and if the scanner works right, the resulting color table of that GIF should certainly contain clean white.

—
Gregor’s Motorradreisen:
http://hothaus.de/greg-tour/

tacit wrote:

JPEG is a "lossy" format. That means the quality of any scan you save as a JPEG is degraded in order to make the file smaller on disk. JPEG is especially bad on text, making it (or anything else with hard, straight lines) "blurry."

It’s all a function of the compression level you choose. If you use mild compression, your text will be just fine, while the resulting JPG is still only a fraction of the size of the corresponding TIFF.

JPEG was invented for situations where file size is very important and image quality is not important.

If you’re dealing with a collection of a few thousand scanned text documents, size may matter a lot.

You should never save any scan as a JPEG
unless there is some clear, specific reason why it *has* to be JPEG and no other format will work.

More often than not, scanning is for document archival, where image quality is not really important. For text documents, my take is, as long as it’s well readable and printable, it’s OK to store it as JPG.

—
Gregor’s Motorradreisen:
http://hothaus.de/greg-tour/

Why twain them through Acdsee when you can do an infinitely better job through
PhotoShop.
And if you don’t have photoshop, why are you posting here?

"Franklin" wrote in message

I scanned some text documents and created JPG files.

(a) If I open the jpegs in Irfanview and print then the documents come out normally as black text on a white background.

(b) If I open the same jpegs in my old ACDSee 3.1 then the documents come out as black print on a *LIGHT GRAY* background.

In the past ACDSee 3.1 was fine to print jpegs of a text document. What is happening? The main system changes have been installing XP SP2 and reinstalling ACDsee 3.1

SOME MORE DETAILS

There are not many settings for ACDSee 3.1 and almost none have anything to do with picture quality. The scans were done by launching ACDSee and then calling TWAIN from there.

GIFs print as black on white. JPEGS are visibly black on GRAY.

In article <dl7mhj$qta$>, "Greg N."
wrote:

More often than not, scanning is for document archival, where image quality is not really important. For text documents, my take is, as long as it’s well readable and printable, it’s OK to store it as JPG.

Actually, if you want the highest possible quality AND small files, the best approach is to scan text as a one-bit bitmap, rather than as grayscale, then save the bitmap as a TIFF.

If the original source is bilevel–no shades of gray–then it will print better if it is scanned as a high-resolution bitmap. What’s more, the file will be smaller than a JPEG grayscale file, and it will print more cleanly. If it’s saved as an LZW-compressed TIFF, the file size will be very small indeed, yet it will have absolutely none of the degradation of JPEG.

Scan color originals in color. Scan grayscale originals in grayscale. Scan black and white originals as bitmap.

—
Art, photography, shareware, polyamory, literature, kink: all at http://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html

tacit wrote:

Actually, if you want the highest possible quality AND small files, the best approach is to scan text as a one-bit bitmap, rather than as grayscale, then save the bitmap as a TIFF.

1-bit images are a remnant of the past, from the times 20 years ago when efficient jpeg compression was not the the de-facto norm yet.

If the original source is bilevel–no shades of gray–then it will print better if it is scanned as a high-resolution bitmap. What’s more, the file will be smaller than a JPEG grayscale file, and it will print more cleanly. If it’s saved as an LZW-compressed TIFF, the file size will be very small indeed, yet it will have absolutely none of the degradation of JPEG.

These days, not many people find bi-level images very useful any more, because because the notion of "bilevel – no shades of gray" does not really exist in practice. You’ll have no anti-aliasing effect without an appropriate range of grey levels. Characters will become jagged. Images of text may become hard to read or plain unusable if the type is small or if character edges are not well defined.

The only way around this would be to use very high resolution, which defeats the purpose of bi-evel representation, namely image file compactness. My take is, forget about bi-level representation, it stinks for most practical applications.

Scan color originals in color. Scan grayscale originals in grayscale. Scan black and white originals as bitmap.

Bitmap versus color or grayscale? What do you mean by that? Bitmap is a file format that can represent any color depth you chose, from bi-level to RGB.

—
Gregor’s Motorradreisen:
http://hothaus.de/greg-tour/

In article <dl8lfu$e2h$>, "Greg N."
wrote:

These days, not many people find bi-level images very useful any more, because because the notion of "bilevel – no shades of gray" does not really exist in practice. You’ll have no anti-aliasing effect without an appropriate range of grey levels. Characters will become jagged. Images of text may become hard to read or plain unusable if the type is small or if character edges are not well defined.

With low-res images, sure.

But you’re making a big, big mistake if you believe that 1-bit bitmaps are a thing of the past. All laser printers print 1-bit bitmaps. All imagesetters print 1-bit bitmaps. They are incapable of printing shades of gray.

Ironically, 1-bit images print far better to a laser printer or an imagesetter than grayscale images do, because such devices produce shades of gray by halftoning–printing patterns of dots to simulate levels of gray–and a 1-bit image prints with no halftoning, whereas a grayscale image prints with little halftone dots all around the edges of the characters.

A bitmap looks jaggy on a computer screen, but prints far better than a grayscale image for this reason.

It seems to me that you are likely inexperienced with prepress and with digital output, else you would not be saying things like "1-bit images are a remnant of the past."

—
Art, photography, shareware, polyamory, literature, kink: all at http://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html

And if you don’t have photoshop, why are you posting here?

Huh? This is comp.compression. I don’t have photoshop and I like reading and posting here. Why would I need to have photoshop when posting here? Does owning photoshop make me magically more educated on compression techniques?

Nils

Nils wrote:
)> And if you don’t have photoshop, why are you posting here? )
) Huh? This is comp.compression. I don’t have photoshop and I like reading and ) posting here. Why would I need to have photoshop when posting here? Does ) owning photoshop make me magically more educated on compression techniques?

Welcome to the wonderful world of crossposting.

quote from the header:

) Newsgroups: comp.periphs.scanners,alt.graphics.photoshop,comp.compressio n

SaSW, Willem
—
Disclaimer: I am in no way responsible for any of the statements made in the above text. For all I know I might be
drugged or something..
No I’m not paranoid. You all think I’m paranoid, don’t you ! #EOT

"Franklin" wrote in message

I scanned some text documents and created JPG files.

(a) If I open the jpegs in Irfanview and print then the documents come out normally as black text on a white
background.

(b) If I open the same jpegs in my old ACDSee 3.1 then the documents come out as black print on a *LIGHT GRAY* background.
In the past ACDSee 3.1 was fine to print jpegs of a text document. What is happening? The main system changes have been installing XP SP2 and reinstalling ACDsee 3.1

SOME MORE DETAILS

There are not many settings for ACDSee 3.1 and almost none have anything to do with picture quality. The scans were done by launching ACDSee and then calling TWAIN from there.

GIFs print as black on white. JPEGS are visibly black on GRAY.

On Sun 13 Nov 2005 16:31:23, Scruff wrote:
<news:684c6$437769e8$422ab0ab$>

Why twain them through Acdsee when you can do an infinitely better job through PhotoShop.
And if you don’t have photoshop, why are you posting here?

Yes I run Photoshop 8 as well as ACDSee 3.

But isn’t it the same Twain driver which gets called (the Epson
5.71) irrespective of which application calls it? In Photoshop if
I go to File > Import then I am given a choice of drivers including Epson Twain.

How would Photshop do an infinitely better job for me?

"Nils" wrote in message

And if you don’t have photoshop, why are you posting here?

Huh? This is comp.compression. I don’t have photoshop and I like reading

and

posting here. Why would I need to have photoshop when posting here?

Because you’re crossposting, you utter moron.

Does owning photoshop make me magically more educated on compression

techniques?
Yes, If you were using Photoshop, it would prove that you at least had half a clue, which you don’t.

"Franklin" wrote in message

"Franklin" wrote in message

I scanned some text documents and created JPG files.

(a) If I open the jpegs in Irfanview and print then the documents come out normally as black text on a white
background.

(b) If I open the same jpegs in my old ACDSee 3.1 then the documents come out as black print on a *LIGHT GRAY* background.
In the past ACDSee 3.1 was fine to print jpegs of a text document. What is happening? The main system changes have been installing XP SP2 and reinstalling ACDsee 3.1

SOME MORE DETAILS

There are not many settings for ACDSee 3.1 and almost none have anything to do with picture quality. The scans were done by launching ACDSee and then calling TWAIN from there.

GIFs print as black on white. JPEGS are visibly black on GRAY.

On Sun 13 Nov 2005 16:31:23, Scruff wrote:
<news:684c6$437769e8$422ab0ab$>

Why twain them through Acdsee when you can do an infinitely better job through PhotoShop.
And if you don’t have photoshop, why are you posting here?

Yes I run Photoshop 8 as well as ACDSee 3.

But isn’t it the same Twain driver which gets called (the Epson
5.71) irrespective of which application calls it? In Photoshop if
I go to File > Import then I am given a choice of drivers including Epson Twain.

How would Photshop do an infinitely better job for me?

Because it is an infinitely better program for what you are doing. Acdsee 3.1 is obsolete.

tacit wrote:

But you’re making a big, big mistake if you believe that 1-bit bitmaps are a thing of the past. All laser printers print 1-bit bitmaps.

Whoa, that’s a terminology stretch as well as a topic mixup.

We’re talking about the appropriate image _storage_ format which has nothing to do with the representation of that image in the print queue of a laser printer.

Sure, the printer does black dots only, but you should not conclude from this that bi-level is an effective modern storage format or even that it is frequently used in other than legacy applications.

I suggest a a little math:

In order to store a letter size page in bi-level format we’d need to use at _least_ the same resolution as the printer, othewise we’d get shitty prints. At 600 dpi, we’d need a 5100×6600 image, which is some 33 megabits raw.

With LZW compression applied, a page that contains type only may result in a 200k image file, while a page with some imagery may easily result in a 500k image file.

The same thing stored as jpeg would need hardly more than 25% of that resolution (1275×1650). Moderately compressed, it would end up as a 100k JPG file, still print the same and look infinitely better on screen.

You may be experienced more with typesetting than with mass document archival. These days, nobody would design a _new_ document image archival system using bi-level images.

—
Gregor’s Motorradreisen:
http://hothaus.de/greg-tour/

On Mon, 14 Nov 2005 11:28:29 GMT, Franklin wrote:

Yes I run Photoshop 8 as well as ACDSee 3.

But isn’t it the same Twain driver which gets called (the Epson
5.71) irrespective of which application calls it? In Photoshop if
I go to File > Import then I am given a choice of drivers including Epson Twain.

How would Photshop do an infinitely better job for me?

ACDSee 3.1 through 7.0 has no color management. The color profile established by your scanner will simply be thrown away. Also, Photoshop supports 16 bit color and uses an ultra-wide gamut color model internally; this means that PS will preserve more of the color sent to it by the scanner than ACDSee 3.1.

ACDSee 8.0 is probably as good a Twain platform as your PS.

Oh, and you might want to rethink cross-posting. Send separate messages to each group. Cross-posting attracts rude replies, and discourages polite ones. Polite posters will have to edit your header — yet another barrier to response.

—
Jim Hargan
Freelance Photographer and Writer
www.harganonline.com

Franklin wrote:

I scanned some text documents and created JPG files.

(a) If I open the jpegs in Irfanview and print then the documents come out normally as black text on a white background.

(b) If I open the same jpegs in my old ACDSee 3.1 then the documents come out as black print on a *LIGHT GRAY* background.

In the past ACDSee 3.1 was fine to print jpegs of a text document. What is happening? The main system changes have been installing XP SP2 and reinstalling ACDsee 3.1

SOME MORE DETAILS

There are not many settings for ACDSee 3.1 and almost none have anything to do with picture quality. The scans were done by launching ACDSee and then calling TWAIN from there.

GIFs print as black on white. JPEGS are visibly black on GRAY.

As far a as I can think, its probably because of incorrect ICC profiles being used, or profiles being applied incorrectly.

ICC profiles try match the capture-device and display-device characteristics to ensure that you see the same shades on each type of device

(eg to make sure white has same whiteness on all mointors, and black has same blackness on all printers/papers)

Sachin Garg [India]
http://www.sachingarg.com

tacit wrote:

In article <dl8lfu$e2h$>, "Greg N."
wrote:

These days, not many people find bi-level images very useful any more, because because the notion of "bilevel – no shades of gray" does not really exist in practice. You’ll have no anti-aliasing effect without an appropriate range of grey levels. Characters will become jagged. Images of text may become hard to read or plain unusable if the type is small or if character edges are not well defined.

With low-res images, sure.

But you’re making a big, big mistake if you believe that 1-bit bitmaps are a thing of the past. All laser printers print 1-bit bitmaps. All imagesetters print 1-bit bitmaps. They are incapable of printing shades of gray.

Ironically, 1-bit images print far better to a laser printer or an imagesetter than grayscale images do, because such devices produce shades of gray by halftoning–printing patterns of dots to simulate levels of gray–and a 1-bit image prints with no halftoning,

I think the correct word here is "dithering", not halftoning.

whereas a
grayscale image prints with little halftone dots all around the edges of the characters.

A bitmap looks jaggy on a computer screen, but prints far better than a grayscale image for this reason.

This probably explains why some PDFs are too jaggy to be read on screen but come out just fine on paper. Thanks for the info.

Sachin Garg [India]
http://www.sachingarg.com

)> A bitmap looks jaggy on a computer screen, but prints far better than a )> grayscale image for this reason.

Sachin wrote:

) This probably explains why some PDFs are too jaggy to be read on screen ) but come out just fine on paper. Thanks for the info.

Get yourself a decent PDF viewer; one that antialiases well.

SaSW, Willem
—
Disclaimer: I am in no way responsible for any of the statements made in the above text. For all I know I might be
drugged or something..
No I’m not paranoid. You all think I’m paranoid, don’t you ! #EOT

In article <dla14b$dj$>, "Greg N."
wrote:

In order to store a letter size page in bi-level format we’d need to use at _least_ the same resolution as the printer, othewise we’d get shitty prints. At 600 dpi, we’d need a 5100×6600 image, which is some 33 megabits raw.

With LZW compression applied, a page that contains type only may result in a 200k image file, while a page with some imagery may easily result in a 500k image file.

The same thing stored as jpeg would need hardly more than 25% of that resolution (1275×1650). Moderately compressed, it would end up as a 100k JPG file, still print the same and look infinitely better on screen.

Actually, it would not "print the same." The JPEG in your example would be lower resolution and would not print as cleanly.

Given that a high-resolution, flawless, undegraded representation of a page can be stored in 500K of space, I hardly think you’re making a compelling argument here. What do you do, archive your data on 800K floppies?

—
Art, photography, shareware, polyamory, literature, kink: all at http://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html

Because you’re crossposting, you utter moron.

Seems there’s only one moron here, and it’s not me.. who started the crossposting to
begin with?

tacit wrote:

The same thing stored as jpeg would need hardly more than 25% of that resolution (1275×1650). Moderately compressed, it would end up as a 100k JPG file, still print the same and look infinitely better on screen.

Actually, it would not "print the same." The JPEG in your example would be lower resolution and would not print as cleanly.

Given that a high-resolution, flawless, undegraded representation of a page can be stored in 500K of space, I hardly think you’re making a compelling argument here. What do you do, archive your data on 800K floppies?

I think we’re starting to argue in circles.

A scan that has lost all grey hues is not "flawless, undegraded".

OK, you don’t care about file size? Well, in this case I happily take the 500k for a letter size scan in greylevel or even RBG, and I’ll give you a jpg that is crisper, sharper, better defined than any old bi-level scan you’ve ever seen in your life 🙂

—
Gregor’s Motorradreisen:
http://hothaus.de/greg-tour/