Specter on 21/2/2008 at 16:39
Damn, so that is the Thief 1 box. My Gold versions are obviously different. Alright, so Beleg, if I understand you correctly, you are saying that your scanner has done everything that can be expected from a piece of hardware. Therefore, if we want to get a very high res picture, something that can be made poster size, and allow for better editing, we would need something better than the book or box. Is that correct? Essentially, our only hope would be getting out hands on the originals.
At this point, for myself, I'd like to clarify what we are trying to accomplish. What is it that we can try to do for the community? What is our objective?
Right now, whether realistic or not, I would like to at least try to see what would be involved in obtaining some original artworks. At the very least we can try.
Beleg, you mentioned a PM you sent to Krypt. I went (very quickly) through his messages and dont see much information about him. Do we know who he was exactly? Was he someone we already mentioned by name? Where is he now?
In the interest of pursuing the artwork, I think all we can do is throw out emails to the people most involved and then go from there. That said, we have Krpyt, Mark Lizotte, Dan Thron, Rust Monkey, and Eidos.
What are your thoughts?
Yandros on 21/2/2008 at 17:20
No, you can achieve great detail if you scan at much higher resolutions than 400dpi, but your PC has to be able to handle it. My current AIO is 4 years old now, and the scan driver doesn't support caching, so you have to be able to store the whole image in RAM or virtual memory. I tried scanning the cover of my T2 case last night at 2000dpi, which was a filesize of around 250MB (just under the limits of my physical memory, I didn't feel like tweaking my VM settings just to try it). The scan completed on the HW side, but the SW locked up and the image never came up. I have a 2007 model here at home, but haven't gotten around to installing it yet - but it can cache info to disk and scan at the higher resolutions more readily. However, it's all moot as I don't have any images worth scanning.
For what it's worth, scanning that 4.8"x4.1" area of the CD cover at 9600dpi was going to require over 5GB... not exactly a file we could easily distribute amongst ourselves anyway. And I believe resolutions higher than 1200 involve some interpolation (on this old model AIO anyway), so the quality of higher res scans would be questionable.
(If you're wondering, I work for a company which makes AIOs. I'm a software engineer but only ever worked on the print driver team, so my knowledge of the technical side of scanning is pretty limited.)
Specter on 21/2/2008 at 18:42
One problem in this case is that the surface we are scanning isnt that great. My understanding is fairly weak, but all the little distortions visible in Beleg's 400DPI scan are the little fibers from the paper, no? We would need a very clean source to achieve anything with a high res scan. Which, in reading your post again, Yandros, I think is what you are saying.
My technical knowledge is much more limited, so maybe Im going to ask a stupid question. Do we know roughly how much expansion you can get from an image given a certain level of dpi in the scan? Using your numbers, if one were to go and try to print that image you made of the CD cover at 2000dpi, roughly how big could it be made before being too distorted? Is there an applicability for other people should a really high def scan be made? Which is to say, is all of this going to achieve anything other than giving the means to print a large version of this image?
Yandros on 21/2/2008 at 18:47
No, I don't think so, to your last question. 200-300 dpi should be adequate for editing an image to use as a desktop background, but I could be wrong. Speaking of which, can someone open one of Digi's files (the PSP9 or PSD) and save it in PSP7 format? I'd like to play around with it. If not, I can create my own layers from the original JPG.
Specter on 21/2/2008 at 19:12
Well, being fairly useless at this stuff, here is my attempt to help. You said PSP7 format, well the only option I had was this. It didnt say a number, but its a psp format. Sorry if this doesn't work...
EDIT
Digital Nightfall is certainly better suited than I was. Link removed.
Digital Nightfall on 21/2/2008 at 19:39
Yandros; psp 7 compatibility edition.
(
http://208.49.149.120/Files/garrett_hammertower_psp.zip)
I have no way of testing to make sure if that will open in 7, but to be safer I saved it in 9 rather than X. PSPX is the Office2007 of Paint Shop Pro. ;)
Specter on 21/2/2008 at 19:57
What are your thoughts, Digital Nightfall, on the topic so far? I'm still interested in at least trying to get some original images from someone, do you think it likely?
Digital Nightfall on 21/2/2008 at 20:03
I think it's going to be very difficult to get an image of a quality you'll be happy with from the original without some very dedicated hours being put in to manually touch up the image. I've tried to do that before. I gave up after a few hours with very questionable results, but that image was in far worse shape than this one. If the german strat guide and a high quality scanner and a PC with a ton of ram somehow got into the same room as a taffer, then I am sure a very nice scan will result. However it's still going to be limited by the original print quality of the page in the guide itself, which, as it's been pointed out, is not as high quality as the version on the game box. So you'll always be stuck with something that doesn't look as good as you know it could.
But that shouldn't stop you from printing a poster of it! It's your walls. :) I have a very small apartment, so many of my posters are only 11x17. I think at that size it would look quite nice. I wouldn't mind having one myself.
Yandros on 21/2/2008 at 21:34
Quote Posted by Digital Nightfall
Yandros; psp 7 compatibility edition.
Thanks, that works a treat.
Quote Posted by Digital Nightfall
I have no way of testing to make sure if that will open in 7, but to be safer I saved it in 9 rather than X. PSPX is the Office2007 of Paint Shop Pro. ;)
You mean they removed much of the intuitiveness and convenience of the featureset and dumbed it down for less savvy users? :erg:
Personally, I've been afraid to upgrade past 7, I hear it's gone to hell since Jasc sold it to Corel.
