Help with sharpening of lines on a upsized image?

A
Posted By
adykes
Aug 23, 2006
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802
Replies
4
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Closed
I’m cutting sections out of a large PDF map. The original map is for our county and we’ve got one copy purchased from the official source that covers a big wall.

When I cut and paste a section of the map and print it, the lettering and lines are grainier than the original map when compared at roughly the same scale or look at the PDF at the same scale on a CRT.

This is a line map, it has no gradiation of tone or density. Is there a tip for how to use sharpening to smooth the fuzziness on the edges of the lines and text?

FWIW; I’ve got CS2.

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a d y k e s @ p a n i x . c o m
Harrison for Congress in NY 13CD www.harrison06.com
Don’t blame me. I voted for Gore. A Proud signature since 2001
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GP
Gene Palmiter
Aug 23, 2006
Oh…so many questions left unanswered. Like…is it copyrighted and do you have rights or permissions to use it as you are doing? If not you are asking us to help you commit a crime. Since many of us are in business we don’t like the idea of ripping someone off as next it will be someone ripping us off.

Assuming that you have permission but that you can’t have the original artist crop out just what you need….and that seems unlikely….

Photoshop is not the best tool…bring it into Illustrator and do an auto trace. Then you have vector art that can be resized.
A
adykes
Aug 24, 2006
In article <Bz2Hg.19718$>,
Gene Palmiter wrote:
Oh…so many questions left unanswered. Like…is it copyrighted and do you have rights or permissions to use it as you are doing? If not you are asking us to help you commit a crime. Since many of us are in business we don’t like the idea of ripping someone off as next it will be someone ripping us off.

I wasn’t asking for a legal opinion 🙂 and your points are legit from what I gave you, but I think I’m in the clear.

I’m looking at maps from New York City/New York State. Pick "Richmond 13" from the NYC Board of Elections website;

http://www.vote.nyc.ny.us/maps.html

There are over 100 "Election Districts" on that map, in very odd and arbitrary shapes. The hardcopy version we paid $$ bucks for is 8 ft high and 12 ft wide. Our campaign operations need pages, one ED per page, reproduced as necessary for all sorts of stuff. Campaigns buy a copy and cut it up and and make copies as necessary. I want to do it in PS.

The PDF is authored in layers, and the ED number has it’s own layer. We’ve been able to print the PDF to postscript and then hand-hack the PS to make the ED # much larger than on the wall map.

It’s our tax money at work. It’s downloaded from the NYC server with no EULA restrictions.

Assuming that you have permission but that you can’t have the original artist crop out just what you need….and that seems unlikely….
Photoshop is not the best tool…bring it into Illustrator and do an auto trace. Then you have vector art that can be resized.

I’ve never played with Illustrator and I’m not sure we have the horsepower to do an autotrace on an object as complex as what amounts to a huge road map.

—
a d y k e s @ p a n i x . c o m
Harrison for Congress in NY 13CD www.harrison06.com
Don’t blame me. I voted for Gore. A Proud signature since 2001
MR
Mike Russell
Aug 24, 2006
"Al Dykes" wrote in message
I’m cutting sections out of a large PDF map. The original map is for our county and we’ve got one copy purchased from the official source that covers a big wall.

When I cut and paste a section of the map and print it, the lettering and lines are grainier than the original map when compared at roughly the same scale or look at the PDF at the same scale on a CRT.

The online maps are PDF files, and the maps are vector art. Instead of printing them from Photoshop, print them directly from Acrobat Reader and you’ll have no problems with "jaggies".

If you want the maps in Photoshop, import them rather than using cut and paste. Click File>Open, and paste in the URL of the map in question (I used http://www.vote.nyc.ny.us/pdf/maps/ad/ad46.pdf ) . 72ppi seems to retain all the detail.
—

Mike Russell
www.curvemeister.com/forum/
A
adykes
Aug 25, 2006
In article <K7nHg.10762$%>,
Mike Russell wrote:
"Al Dykes" wrote in message
I’m cutting sections out of a large PDF map. The original map is for our county and we’ve got one copy purchased from the official source that covers a big wall.

When I cut and paste a section of the map and print it, the lettering and lines are grainier than the original map when compared at roughly the same scale or look at the PDF at the same scale on a CRT.

The online maps are PDF files, and the maps are vector art. Instead of printing them from Photoshop, print them directly from Acrobat Reader and you’ll have no problems with "jaggies".

Doh! it’s been many, many Acrobat versions since I’ve looked at all the printing options in Acrobat but your post made me look. There is a "print current view" choice and the results are perfect. Thanks.

It’s even easy enough for me to assign as a task for a volunteer.

—
a d y k e s @ p a n i x . c o m
Harrison for Congress in NY 13CD www.harrison06.com
Don’t blame me. I voted for Gore. A Proud signature since 2001

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