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print quality

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print quality

Postby composerwithnotion3 » Tue Dec 06, 2011 3:31 pm

is there a way to print with the quality seen in the Notion interface? when I print ,the quality is lower, more 'standard'...do you know what I mean?
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Re: print quality

Postby robsogge » Tue Dec 06, 2011 4:03 pm

For some reason I have to print at 2400 dpi to get a really nice print... I print to pdf though, so if need be I can use the pdf to actually print physical copies
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Re: print quality

Postby composerwithnotion3 » Wed Dec 07, 2011 10:59 am

yes but it has nothing to do with printer settings....at least I don't think so. Even if I print to pdf, the quality is lower, different than how it appears in Notion interface. In the latter is more 'engraved'
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Re: print quality

Postby robsogge » Fri Dec 09, 2011 12:08 pm

composerwithnotion3 wrote:yes but it has nothing to do with printer settings....at least I don't think so. Even if I print to pdf, the quality is lower, different than how it appears in Notion interface. In the latter is more 'engraved'


it makes a lot of a difference to me... please take a look at these two pdfs

http://www.robertosoggetti.com/Scene1-300dpi.pdf
http://www.robertosoggetti.com/Scene1-4800dpi.pdf
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Re: print quality

Postby Surfwhammy » Fri Dec 09, 2011 6:56 pm

composerwithnotion3 wrote:yes but it has nothing to do with printer settings....at least I don't think so. Even if I print to pdf, the quality is lower, different than how it appears in Notion interface. In the latter is more 'engraved'


As a general rule, printing has a few major dependencies . . .

(1) Operating System: Mac OS X, Windows

(2) Application: NOTION 3

(3) Printer: ?

If the application--which in this instance is NOTION 3--has the ability to generate high-quality print, then this satisfies the primary requirement, and based on the high-quality PDF file that robsogge posted, NOTION 3 certainly has the ability to generate high-quality print . . .

[NOTE: I do everything on a 2.8-GHz 8-core Mac Pro running Mac OS X 10.6.8, and the "Scene1-4800dpi.pdf" is excellent when viewed on the Mac. When I do a "Get Info" on the PDF file, Mac OS X lists the encoding softwware used to generate the PDF as "eDocPrinter PDF Pro (WinXP) Ver 6.56 Build 5568-5558", which tends strongly to suggest (a) that NOTION 3 running on Windows XP generates high-quality print and (b) that when the PDF file is viewed on a Mac running Mac OS X 10.6.8 the high-quality is there, as well . . . ]

"Scene1-4800dpi.pdf" (robsogge) -- PDF (131KB, 1 page)

I did a quick experiment, where I printed the first few bars of "Sparkles" (The Surf Whammys) using the "No Printer Selected" at "Standard" quality options, which is an easy way on the Mac to determine the print capabilities of an application, and this is the PDF file that was generated automatically by doing "Save As PDF" in the "Print" dialogue that NOTION 3 displays when running on an Apple computer, where the encoding software is listed as "Mac OS X 10.6.8 Quartz PDFContext" . . .

Image

[NOTE: This has a non-standard page size, which is set so that the PDF file does not have a lot of unnecessary white space (borders and so forth) . . . ]

"Sparkles-Mac-Standard-PDF.pdf" -- PDF (37KB, 1 page)

[NOTE: This is done with music notation and IK Multimedia virtual instruments in NOTION 3 on the Mac, and the Psaltery Harp is "sparkled", which is the name I use for the technique where the notes for an instrument are put into motion across the "rainbow panning arc", which is done by (a) creating seven (7) additional staves for the instrument, each of which is panned to a precise location, as is the original staff; (b) copying the original notes and then pasting them to the other seven (7) staves; and (c) followed by replacing notes with equal-valued rests to spread the notes across the "rainbow panning arc" in various patterns. It takes a few hours of mind-bogglingly boring mousing to do the "sparkling", but I like the way it sounds, and after you do it a few times, it becomes faster, but no matter how you do it, the fact is that it takes a while. For reference, this is a headphone mix, and it is easier to hear the "sparkled" notes if you listen with headphones. Another key bit of information is that even though it takes a few hours to "sparkle" an instrument this way, it is precise, which is very important, because there are rules for panning, and overall they are logarithmic, since the perceived locations along the "rainbow panning arc" are determined both by the setting of the panning control in the NOTION 3 Mixer and the volume level, where for example notes at top-center are heard with both ears, hence will be louder than notes heard only at far-left or far-right, so as the notes move from the edges to the center, the volume level needs to decrease, which is the logarithmic aspect, but there also is a logarithmic aspect to the panning locations, since as the location of a note moves inward, you begin managing sounds coming from both sides, which itself is logarithmic, and so forth and so on . . . ]

Image

"Sparkles" (The Surf Whammys) -- MP3 (4.2MB, 298-kbps [VBR], approximately 1 minute and 55 seconds)

One of the more interesting things about Steve Jobs is that he enjoyed calligraphy, which mapped to a keen focus on printing on the Mac, so as a general rule a Mac essentially is "born knowing" how to do high-quality print without requiring the user to do anything other than to get a high-quality printer, which can be a bit of work, but so what . . .

So what!

In the operating system universe, it is useful to know that Mac computers come from the factory with full support for PDF, so doing high-quality PDF print generation is very easy to do. For Windows computers it is more a matter of the specific vendor, but the last time I checked the general rule was that if you want to do high-quality PDF print generation on a Windows computer, then you need to get a PDF converter or something . . .

[NOTE: As a bit of background, I have done software engineering in Windows since the first version, but I only do it when someone pays me and provides a Windows machine and all the software, which has the real world consequence that my most recent paying customer was focused on Windows XP and Windows Server but did not like Windows Vista (to the point of giving me a high-end HP machine with Windows Vista installed, because it disturbed him so greatly that he did not want it in the building, which was fine with me, except that it disturbed me so much that I put it back in the box, where it continues to be parked, but he also provided two more computers running Windows XP Professional and Windows Server, which is what I used), so my recent expertise is somewhat limited to Windows XP and Windows Server, and I had to get a PDF converter to generate high-quality PDF files for Microsoft Word documents, which as I recall cost less than $100, and it worked very nicely. And for reference, the only time I work on Windows machines is when (a) someone has a truly unusual problem or requirement that nobody else can solve or satisfy and (b) they are willing to pay me handsomely to delve into the problem in vast detail, which is what I do with everything. And it is not so much a matter of my being a rocket scientist as is it a matter of being able to devise experiments to discover what the computer is doing, which in some scenarios is more cost effective than getting a $100,000 instruction-stepper and trying to make sense of low-level machine code, which basically involves reverse engineering and can be illegal unless you have the required developer licenses, which in some instances makes doing experiments a better strategy, really . . . ]

However, there is more to high-quality printing than the operating system, application, and any PDF conversion software, because physically printing also is dependent on the specific printer and its driver, where "driver" is the colloquial name used in the Windows universe for the software that translates the print instructions into whatever the physical printer requires, which is a simple way of explaining what a "driver" does, where in Windows a "driver" is a special type of Dynamic Link Library (DLL), except that it usually has a ".drv" extension, although it varies . . .

I have no idea how it works on the Mac, but what happens is that when you connect a physical printer to a Mac the operating system recognizes that there is a new physical device and embarks on a dialogue with the user toward the goal of determining which software "thingy" to use for the new physical device, where after a while you eventually find the software "thingy" that matches the name of the physical printer, and there you are . . .

And on the Mac, all software "thingys" are not equal, so while a PDF file on the Mac might be stellar quality, if the physical printer and its vendor-supplied software "thingy" is a piece of junk, then you are not going to get stellar physical print output . . .

As an example, I needed to print a legal document this week, and as often is the case with legal documents some of the fonts were vastly small (perhaps 6pt at best), and my Epson inkjet printer was not able to print it correctly, so I edited the Microsoft Word document in Pages (Apple) and set the point size to "13" for the entire document, which doubled the number of printed pages but resulted in a very nice high-quality printout . . .

The inability to print 6pt type correctly could be a matter of several things, including the specific type family, and so forth and so on, but rather than mess with it, I just increased the point size . . .

Summarizing, you can do high-quality printing on a Mac and on a Windows machine, but the specific physical printer and its "driver" or "thingy" is very important, because the operating system, application, and PDF software can be working wonderfully, but if the physical printer and its controlling software are not so wonderful, then you are not going to get wonderful printouts . . .

So long as the application can generate high-quality print--which certainly is the case with NOTION 3--then the weak link in the chain will be the physical printer and its "driver" or "thingy", which is the case for both for Mac and Windows computers . . .

If you are running Windows XP, then you probably need to get a PDF converter or whatever to create PDF files, but these are readily available, and they typically cost less than $100. There are free versions, but you need to be very careful, because some of them install adware and a vastly annoying browser toolbar, so the best strategy usually is to buy a professional quality PDF converter application . . .

However, being able to view, save, and print PDF files is not a prerequisite for doing high-quality print on a Mac or Windows machine, although the Mac does this from the factory. If you have a Windows machine, then to the best of my knowledge you only need a high-quality printer with a good "driver" to be able to print . . .

The advantage of the PDF stuff is that you can send people PDF files for viewing, and they can print stuff on their printers, which maps to you not having to pay for the paper and ink . . .

Lots of FUN! :)
Last edited by Surfwhammy on Fri Dec 09, 2011 8:44 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: print quality

Postby Surfwhammy » Fri Dec 09, 2011 8:39 pm

composerwithnotion3 wrote:yes but it has nothing to do with printer settings....at least I don't think so. Even if I print to pdf, the quality is lower, different than how it appears in Notion interface. In the latter is more 'engraved'


As a bit of follow-up, if you can provide more specific information about your computer, operating system, display settings, and printer, it will be helpful . . .

There is a virtual festival of rules involved in typography, and the way fonts are displayed is different from the way fonts are printed, as are the respective resolutions (display vs. printer) . . .

Yet another key bit of information is that printers tend to be higher resolution than displays, where for example the Apple 20" Cinema Display here in the sound isolation studio has a resolution of 1680 by 1050 pixels (width, height), which curiously is lower than the resolution of the display of an iPod touch (2nd generation) . . .

Consider a printer where the resolution or quality is set to 400 dots per inch (DPI) . . .

The Apple 20" Cinema Display screen is approximately 15.25" wide and 10.75" high, which at 400 DPI maps to 6,100 pixels by 4,300 pixels (width, height), except that the highest resolution of the display is 1680 pixels by 1050 pixels (width, height), with the result that what is displayed on the screen is computed and adjusted according to a set of algorithms that do various things to compensate for the lower resolution of the display, which can involve blurring, shadowing, line smoothing, and lots of other stuff . . .

[NOTE: The "engraved" effect that you perceive on the computer screen when using NOTION 3 actually is the result of some combination of shading, outlining, shadowing, blurring, edge smoothing, and so forth and so on, which essentially sculpts the notes and other music notation . . . ]

When I refer to a "high-quality printer", for all practical purposes this maps to a reasonably good quality consumer printer that can print photographs, but the key to the specific printer actually being "good quality" is the driver or software that translates the print generated by NOTION 3 into instructions that tell the physical printer what to do . . .

The quality of physical printing also depends on the typeface or type family, as well as the specific fonts, where for reference a "font" is a specific instance of a typeface or type family, where for example "Times Roman" is a typeface or type family but "Times Roman 12-point Italic" is a font, as is "Times Roman 12-point Bold", where the point size and style(s) are what make it specific, and "Times Roman 10-point Bold Italic" is another font, but it has two styles ("Bold" and "Italic") rather than a single style, and the point size also is different. And the other major aspect involves the way the edges are done, where one way is "Serif" and the other way is "Sans Serif". As a general rule, "Serif" typefaces are easier to read when printed, since their edges taper to thin points, but "Sans Serif" typefaces work better for headlines, titles, and so forth, as well as for computer displays, where for reference the "NOTION Music FORUMS" headline or banner at the top of the screen has two typefaces and both of them are "Sans Serif". "NOTION Music" is one typeface, and "FORUMS" is another typeface. One the Mac in Firefox, all the text in the various Notion Music FORUM screen areas is "Sans Serif", and it generally is easier for the operating system and web browser to display "Sans Serif" typefaces and fonts, because pixels and everything else are based on rectangles. In contrast, the new Google logo is "Serif", and it uses a custom-designed typeface and set of fonts, and a graphic designer probably worked on the new Google logo, typeface, and set of fonts for hundreds of hours, since there is a lot more stuff happening than is visible in an immediately conscious way, unless you know how everything works behind the scenes and so forth, which is the way it works with music, recording, producing, mixing, and mastering . . .

Image

For reference, both Mac OS X and the various versions of Windows have utility applications that you can use as a magnifying glass to examine small sections of the computer display, and when you do this what you discover is that fonts on the display have blurred edges, shadows, and lots of other graphic treatments or enhancements that are designed to improve the legibility and visibility of text as it is displayed on the screen, which in the graphic design arena maps to fonts being different when they are intended to be used for websites and computer graphics from the way fonts are designed when they are intended to be printed on paper, and what usually happens is that there are two sets of fonts, one for display use and one for print, and on the print side there are additional considerations, because for example the kerning and leading that works nicely for 12 point might not work for the text printed for a highway billboard, so the entire thing is vastly complex, at minimum . . .

Summarizing, if you can provide more information about your computer, display, operating system, and specific model of printer, this can be helpful in determining the best advice regarding resolving the problem you are having with printing . . .

Lots of FUN! :)
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Re: print quality

Postby robsogge » Sat Dec 10, 2011 5:36 am

thank you, Surfwhammy, for your detailed reply! Yes it's true that Mac supports pdf creation natively, but I must say that the pdf printers for Windows systems are pretty inexpensive, and work absolutely fine... btw, I use both in my studio, though my mac is still running OS 9.2.
The "engraved" look I think depends on some sort of anti-aliasing that affects the screen and not the print.
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Re: print quality

Postby Surfwhammy » Sat Dec 10, 2011 4:51 pm

robsogge wrote:thank you, Surfwhammy, for your detailed reply! Yes it's true that Mac supports pdf creation natively, but I must say that the pdf printers for Windows systems are pretty inexpensive, and work absolutely fine... btw, I use both in my studio, though my mac is still running OS 9.2.


Glad to help! :)

At some point when one does Graphic User Interface (GUI) software engineering for a while, learning about the way displays and printers work is inevitable, and this also is the case when one does music and needs album covers . . .

One of the ways I explain the basic concept of GUI software engineering is that the computer display screen is like the screen of a movie theater, and the GUI software engineer is the director of the actors, actresses, and scenery of the movie, where the user sees and interacts with whatever is displayed on the screen, but the GUI software engineer controls everything and makes it happen, which for the most part is what a composer, arranger, conductor, and producer do for an orchestra or musical group, where with the help of music notation and virtual instruments, along with a lot of additional software, one person can do everything, as is the case with GUI software engineering, and from this perspective the only significant differences in GUI software engineering and digital music production are the actors, actresses, scenery, and tools, where for digital music production (a) instruments and voices are the "actors" and "actresses", (b) the score is the "script", (c) effects like reverberation and echo are the "scenery", and (d) NOTION 3, the Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) application, and the various VST effects plug-ins for additional effects, mixing, and mastering, and so forth are the "tools", which is one of the reasons that musicians tend to be excellent GUI software engineers, where to be precise I include (a) architecture, (b) application, database, system, and graphic design, (c) information storage and retrieval algorithms, (d) computational algorithms, (e) archiving, building, and testing, (f) documenting, and so forth in the various roles of a "GUI software engineer" . . .

One of the things I learned very quickly is that designing and building icons and the other types of graphic stuff that travel with an GUI application usually counts the same as "GUI programming" or "GUI software engineering"--at least for a few days every once in a while--and if you have artistic tendencies this is an easy way to get paid essentially for having a bit of FUN with digital crayons and fingerpaints, and during the initial design phase of an application when it was time to volunteer for tasks, if the two choices were (a) design an algorithm to compute the trajectory for a spaceship traveling from Earth to the nearest Lagrange point or (b) design an icon of a spaceship, I made a diligent effort to get the spaceship icon assignment, in part because this provided a bit of time to do research on Lagrange points, since sooner or later I would be asked to help with the trajectory algorithm, regardless of what anyone else was doing . . .

However, there are limits to my graphic design skills, and it tends to be better to have the work done by a graphic designer, where I only need to provide a bit of general direction, which is what I do for Surf Whammys albums and songs, where a friend who does graphic design and photography takes care of the artwork . . .

robsogge wrote:The "engraved" look I think depends on some sort of anti-aliasing that affects the screen and not the print.


I forgot about the term "anti-aliasing", and it certainly is a key aspect of what happens on the computer display, for sure . . .

For sure!

Depending on the specific image viewing application, you can examine a small section of the computer display by doing a screen capture and then viewing the resulting image in an image viewer (for example, the Preview application on the Mac) where you zoom-in and see how the pixels are rendered, where the basic requirement is that the image viewing application does not do any enhancing to the image when you zoom-in, other than what is necessary to display the pixels accurately at a larger size, which is the case with the Preview application on the Mac, at least for practical purposes . . .

The best strategy is to get an image editor which is designed specifically for working with icons and other graphic user interface images, but for purposes of this discussion I think that the Preview application works nicely . . .

[NOTE: On a Windows machine, I used Paintbrush or whatever the basic drawing application is called, and it works very nicely, but it has been a few years since I did anything on a Windows machine, so I am not certain that this is the name of the application. It might be "Paint", but whatever it is called, it works very nicely for doing icons, and there also is an icon editor that comes with Microsoft Visual Studio, which is the case with the application development system for Apple computers and devices (Xcode, Icon Composer), although more recently the requirements for icons have become so strange and bizarre that using advanced icon editors makes more sense, because for example instead of having a single resolution for an icon, you need to have multiple resolutions, which also is the case with Mac OS X application icons, where I use the Mac version of IconBuilder (The Iconfactory), but there also is Windows version . . .

Regarding the complexity of icons and other graphic elements, just the basic specifications, guidelines, and so forth are hundreds of pages of highly detailed information and requirements, where for example the larger icons need to have shadows cast at a specific angle and a lot of other mind-boggling stuff . . .
]

IconBuilder (The Iconfactory)

As an example of some of the stuff I mentioned in my previous posts, the following screen capture shows the way the pixels of the "e" at the end of the new "Google" logo are displayed on the Mac at the aforementioned resolution (1680 by 1050), and it is easier to see how the "engraved" look is accomplished . . .

Image

[NOTE: For practical purposes, at the high-end of the range, the resolution of a computer display is approximately 100 pixels per inch, and if each pixel were a dot, then this is is approximately one-fourth of the typical 400 DPI resolution for a printer . . . ]

One of the realities in GUI software engineering is that if an application needs to be Mac or Windows logo certified, then it needs to have at least a minimal set of graphic stuff, and once you discover this and happen to have artistic tendencies, it usually maps to getting paid handsomely for "pushing pixels", at least for a few days . . .

Another aspect of graphic user interface design sometimes involves creating unique fonts when an application has special requirements for the way text is displayed, and my favorite development tool is Fontographer, which makes it possible to work with all the aspects of typefaces and fonts, where for reference there are so many parts to each individual character that it is a bit mind-boggling . . .

[NOTE: The glyph shown in the following image is only some of the stuff, because for example there also are kerning and leading, where "kerning" is the horizontal spacing and "leading" is the vertical spacing . . . ]

Image

Fontographer (Fontlab Ltd.)

Some folks have the vastly mistaken belief that graphic design is a waste of time and valuable resources but as an example of the importance of graphic design the fact of the matter is that sometime beginning circa 1910 it was difficult for motion picture studios to find filming locations anywhere in the US that did not have a Coca-Cola® sign somewhere in the background, and while Coca-Cola made with pure cane sugar is the real thing, everyone on this planet knows about it because of the branding, logo, and other graphic design and marketing stuff . . .

And as you noted, the PDF conversion stuff for Windows machines tends to be inexpensive . . .

But even when there are special requirements like being able to do a full PDF conversion of a Microsoft Word document based on using various Microsoft Word styles and formatting for advanced PDF functionality, a license for a single developer version typically costs less than $100, although newer versions of Microsoft Word have native PDF capabilities . . .

Lots of FUN! :)
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Monument Sign

Postby whpkalu » Sat Dec 17, 2011 8:02 pm

You may need to clean the print head nozzles. These can be cleaned by employing the 'Head Cleaning' utility from within the printer software interface you get when you want to print or by going via the 'Control Panel' (found via 'My Computer') and selecting the printers section. After the cleaning operations are carried out by the printer, a check pattern will be printed to show that the ink cartridge nozzles are clean. in this article the author work is very remarkable and i really appriciate of this work.
Monument Sign
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Re: print quality

Postby composerwithnotion3 » Mon Jan 02, 2012 8:23 am

robsogge wrote:
composerwithnotion3 wrote:yes but it has nothing to do with printer settings....at least I don't think so. Even if I print to pdf, the quality is lower, different than how it appears in Notion interface. In the latter is more 'engraved'


it makes a lot of a difference to me... please take a look at these two pdfs

http://www.robertosoggetti.com/Scene1-300dpi.pdf
http://www.robertosoggetti.com/Scene1-4800dpi.pdf


I still notice no difference. Maybe with a glass magnifier....?

The print quality I get is lower than even your 300 dpi pdf, though....really weird
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