Printing Images

[Kem]

Ok, so im trying to print an Image that was originally created in a GIS program of a bunch of farms, the image is 2400 pixels 3000 pixels. I've tired a couple different things, first thing i tired was saving the image as a JPEG and just copy and pasting it into AutoCAD LT 2009, printed it and it looked really grainy, and the tree lines looked funky. So then i tried the raster image reference in autoCAD it looked a little better but still not so great. I'm printing it on a 24 x 36 plotter 130nr HP plotter. I've also tried saving the image at different pixel sizes but all that seams to do is make the autocad file load slower the image doesn't look any better on the size paper.

[rustysilo]

You won't likely be able to get a good output at 24x36. Could you print it smaller? It may look better at 11x17. You may even have to go smaller than that to get a suitable print out of it. If you need a full size print of it then there's really little else you can do to increase the quality as far as I know.

[rustysilo]

I've never tried it, but if you open the image in an image editing program (Photoshop, GIMP, etc.) you could try scaling it up and increasing the resolution.

This morning I was trying to get a good print of an aerial that was inserted into Word. What I ended up doing was referencing the image into Acad and create a custom size for "publish to web .png". I wanted to have a 600 dpi resolution and I wanted the image to be 5"x8" in the Word file so I multiplied 5"x600 and 8"x600 resulting in an image size of 3000x4800. This gave a crisp and clear image for the Word file.

Not sure this will work so well for your application, but you might try a similar method.

[Kem]

I tired printing it on a 11x17, the color of the drawing came out better, but the trees and brush were still grainy. i may have to high expectations of autoCAD. =/

[rustysilo]

Keep in mind AutoCAD is not a raster program. Autodesk does have a program called AutoCAD Raster Design (http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?id=2600114&siteID=123112), but I don't know that it would be able to improve the quality much either.

You might consider searching for other aerials of your site online at a gis site like the gis data depot (http://data.geocomm.com/), the seamless usgs (http://seamless.usgs.gov/) site, or even the USDA NAIP (http://165.221.201.14/NAIP.html) site. I don't know that you'll be able to find anything better, but it's worth checking.

[hellnback]

One thing I've noticed with Raster Images is that if they're inserted with a rotation then you get funny (blurry and pixelated (sp?)) results. I tend to insert mine then align them then create a vp matched to the orientation of the image.
It's got something to do with the pixels not being straight up and down.

[rustysilo]

Here in Jacksonville our city (award winning) gis site has high res aerials so we're a bit spoiled when it comes to doing presentations. The only drawback is that they are just high res aerial files so we can't bring them in via Map as there are no coordinate files. They still can be placed fairly well using the transform or rubbersheet commands.

[hellnback]

Here in Jacksonville our city (award winning) gis site has high res aerials so we're a bit spoiled when it comes to doing presentations. The only drawback is that they are just high res aerial files so we can't bring them in via Map as there are no coordinate files. They still can be placed fairly well using the transform or rubbersheet commands.

Can your GIS system not export the world files??