From: kathy@xn.ll.mit.edu
Newsgroups: fj.mail-lists.x-window
Subject: Need help adjusting X-window bitmaps to look good on screen & printer
Date: 9 Oct 92 10:13:42 GMT
Distribution: fj
Organization: MIT Lincoln Laboratory

Date: 8 Oct 92 20:23:29 GMT
Message-Id: <1992Oct8.202329.13669@xn.ll.mit.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript,comp.periphs.printers,comp.windows.x,comp.windows.open-look


I have a Tektronix Phaser II color printer which is connected alternately to 
a network of Sun Sparc2 systems, and a network of Macs.  (The connection is
changed manually when needed). In a nutshell, my problem is that when I 
capture a window on one of the Sun monitors, using some free software off the
net called XtoPS, then direct it to the Phaser II, which expects color post-
script, the colors on the resulting printout are much darker than on the 
screen.  

The printer came with several Postscript files which make small adjustments
to the color of the printout, if downloaded to the printer along with the 
data to be printed.  These have some effect on the output color, but no where
near enough.  The application involves windows with a black background, on
which are displayed patches of yellow, green and blue.  When printed, the
blues, which are quite visible on the screen, are so dark they disappear 
against the black, along with some of the darker greens.  

I've spent a good bit of time poking at what's going on, and I think that 
I've found the source of the problem.  A display of the basic pure colors
(in the CMYK scale), on the printer produces a good match with a set of 
Pantone swatches for everything but cyan, which is more purple than it 
should be.  Displaying the same file in a window under Openwindows shows 
only yellow and black as good matches.  This leads me to suspect that the
real source of the problem is that the sun display is not displaying the
image accurately.  Unfortunately, the colors selected for the application
were selected long before a hard copy device was available, and were 
chosen on the basis of what looked good on the screen.  There is now a 
sufficient body of image data produced using those color choices that 
changing them is not optional.  

Thus, the problem I need to solve is finding a workaround for this.  
Conceptually, the solution would seem to be to perform some kind of trans-
formation on the colors either before or during the creation of the post-
script output, but I don't know enough about either postscript or X to 
know if this is a reasonable option.  Surely other people have run into 
this problem before.  What kind of solutions are out there?  I'm open to
either PD software or commercial products, as long as it doesn't involve
spending as much as we spent on the printer.  I am most in need of a 
solution for the Sun, but the Mac output could use improvement too.  

Please respond via email, and I will summarize.  

					Thanks in advance,

						Kathy


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kathryn L. Smith	    System Administrator 		[The text above is
MIT Lincoln Laboratories    					my personal opinion,
Lexington, MA		    ARPANET: kathy@XN.LL.MIT.EDU        not MIT/LL policy]



-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kathryn L. Smith	    System Administrator 		[The text above is
MIT Lincoln Laboratories    					my personal opinion,
Lexington, MA		    ARPANET: kathy@XN.LL.MIT.EDU        not MIT/LL policy]