Archived Data Techniques Forums

Hi,

We have had recent questions from customers regarding the output from the FaxMan4 printer driver from large JPG files.  We received the source JPG files from the customer and used the 'Imaging for Windows' application included with Windows 2000 to obtain the following information and to reproduce the issue. 

FILE: IMAGE38173.JPG

Imaging for Windows (Included with Windows 2000): [Color Depth=True Color (24 bit); Compression=JPEG (Resolution=High, Quality=Medium); Resolution=300x300 dpi)

Microsoft Office Picture Manager: [Dimensions=2552x3296; Size=692KB]

The image (a high-resolution scan of a fax image) is fairly high quality and very legible when viewed or printed to a physical printer.  We took the sample locally and used a the Imaging for Windows application to print to the FaxMan4 printer using advanced settings High Resolution fax settings (204x196) combined with all available Halftoning options with all resulting images (from the driver) appearing with extremely reduced readability from the original image.  

To verify this was a dithering issue with the driver, I used Microsoft Office Picture Manager to re-save the image with brightness, contrast, and midtone contrast adjustments:

Brightness -33, Contrast +78, Midtone +78 (which actually resulted in a smaller JPG file 487KB), but when printed from the same Imaging for Windows application to the FaxMan driver, the image was much more readable.  

Can you provide any insight, or additional information on this issue?  I can provide the above file (along with the contrast adjusted adjusted one) if desired. 

Thank you,

Randy Hunsaker

Forward Advantage, Inc. 

Hi Randy,

The Faxman printer driver actually uses the Microsoft Unidriv code to generate the bitmap. Recall that the fax image will be 1 bit and your JPG file is either 8 or 24 bits so it may not dither well to 1 bits without some tweaking of the image.

Pls email the images to  us at support@data-tech.com and we'll be glad to see what we can figure out.

 Any solutions made to this issue?  I'm having this issue, a high quality TIF file being printed/converted thru Faxman Printer but the result FMF file being created is barely readable from dithering.  What else can I do to make the fax file to have more quality.