From: shafer@rigel.dfrf.nasa.gov (Mary Shafer)
Subject: Re: "Once upon a Weekend" demo tape
Organization: NASA Dryden, Edwards, Cal.
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1992 00:43:50 GMT

On 25 Jul 92 04:09:00 GMT, Suze.Hammond@f56.n105.z1.therose.pdx.com (Suze Hammond) said:

LE>  In a message to Nancy Lebovitz <07-24-92 13:17> Suze Hammond wrote:
LE>
LE>  SH>  NL>  From: nancy@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Nancy Lebovitz)
LE>  SH>  NL>  The Wall Street Journal always uses drawings rather than
LE>  photos

LE>  SH>  Why? Does anyone know?
LE>
LE>  Just a guess, but drawings do *not* have to be "screened" to create
LE>  "halftoned" images before printing. This saves both time *and* money.

Suze> Yes, I hadn't thought about that...

Suze> Which means that my suggestion that we submit photos of illuminations 
Suze> of our royalty and our sport should include half-toning, whenever we 
Suze> can afford it.

Suze> If you want somebody to use *your* stuff, instead of *their* stuff, it
Suze> helps to make your the easiest to use!  :-)

Just a quick note on how to do half-tones.  While the usual method for
making them uses some sort of photographic technique and is expensive,
recent advances in computer technology make it possible to produce
half-tones from a scanned-in photograph.  Furthermore, a variety of
screens are available and the publisher of whatever publication you're
submitting the article and photos to will tell you exactly what type
of screen to use, to match their printing process.

I wrote an AIAA conference paper last year that had 23 photographs (of
airplanes, of course) that I wanted incorporated into the body of the
paper.  Because I'd managed to get this to my reports group early,
they decided to take the risk of scanning the pictures in and putting
out half-tones (as TeX figures).  When I got the bound proceedings at
the conference, I was _astounded_ at how good they looked.  Definitely
as good as the old-fashioned photographic half-tones.  We saved days
of pasting up, too.

This same paper, slightly revised, is about to appear in the Journal
of the American Aviation Historical Society.  The Journal editors
want the photographic half-tones rather than the scanned ones, based
on their experience.  The difference seems to be that the Journal
is printed on glossy paper, with a lot of attention paid to photographs,
while the conference proceedings was printed on regular paper, without
the same care (the most common figures there are line drawings).

We'll see how much difference there is in the two approaches in a few
months.

I should mention that having so many photographs helped make the paper
unsuitable for an AIAA journal, since they're printed on soft matte
paper and reproduce photographs very poorly.  (Having a seventeen-page
paper with 61 references that could not be made shorter was the main
argument, but even waiving the nine-page limit didn't help the photo
problem.)  This was OK with me, since the Journal of the AAHS was a
much more appropriate place for this paper, and more prestigious, too.

I'll also confess that my reports group was just nervous enough about
all this that they did have the photographic half-tones made, just
in case.  We didn't need them for the AIAA, but it was nice to have
them for the AAHS.
--
Mary Shafer  DoD #0362 KotFR NASA Dryden Flight Research Facility, Edwards, CA
shafer@rigel.dfrf.nasa.gov                    Of course I don't speak for NASA
 "A MiG at your six is better than no MiG at all."  Unknown US fighter pilot