Tuff Time With Sizing...

[darita]

Being a non-computer type has made it difficult, but not impossible for me to use AP and AD for the purpose of restoring and creating clock dials.  One of the only things that I do have problems understanding, is sizing.

As you can imagine, it's imperative that I maintain the size of the original dial.  The difficulty arises when I add graphics to the dial that I download from online images, while trying to maintain that original dial size.  What I've learned to do is to open an erased dial, then place a graphic over it.  I then manipulate the image size, to the dial.  Once the image is the close to proper size, I then trash the erased dial, then place it back on the sized image.  By doing this over and over, I zero in on the proper size image that I can then place the erased dial on.

All this said, there must be an easier way to accomplish this, however I really don't understand the relationships between dpi, pixels, etc..  If you've understood anything I've tried to explain, then you know I need help.

[gdenby]

I don't quite understand your description of what you are doing.  Are you trying to replace actual dials with restorations made in AP and/or AD? Or making an image that fits inside an image found online? 

 

Perhaps you are moving images between documents that are in different resolutions, and are having trouble manually scaling them to.

 

I can clarify some of the terms.

 

Dpi, Dots Per Inch, refers to print reproduction density. 300 dpi is about the density of dots needed when printing letters so that the letters look smooth, which is the common resolution of laser printers. Higher end printers approach 2000 dpi. I don't recall exactly, but I believe some early dot matrix printers were only capable of 60 dpi.

 

Note, I do not have AP, but I'm assuming AD works in a similar fashion.

 

When you set up a document in AD, it will offer default resolutions. For print, it might be 300, no matter how many inches high or wide the document is. For a device such as an older iPad, it will be 72, the highest/densest resolution the display could make. It will go above 300 for the Nexus 7 tablet.

 

A pixel is the "dot" a computer display makes. It is a screen element, and can vary from screen to screen. The oldest display I ever had was an LED that was 36 pixels per inch. My current retinal display is over 200 pixels per inch.  The programs make approximations on screen to represent output in inches or centimeters at various print densities.

 

For better understanding, see wikipedia entries for pixel and raster graphics.

[darita]

I scan a clock dial that has damage of some sort, at 1200(?).  I then open that file in AP or AD and clean it up, to use as replacement for the damaged dial.  On occasion, I'll add and image of some sort that I get from online images.  I try to look for the highest resolution images, 1000 to 1600(?).

Now, how do I size that image in the highest resolution possible, to "Place" on or under the cleaned up dial, still maintaining the original dial size?  That's where pixels, dpi and whatever else, get all confusing to me.  When I first started trying to do this, I would "Place" the erased dial on the image.  When I went to print, the whole thing came out huge!  That's when the trial and error began, to try to scale the image to the dial.  That way, when printed, the dial size is the same size as the original.

[gdenby]

I think I may have figured out what is going on. I'm using a Mac. Usually I drag an image file from a directory window onto an AD document,and  it is resampled to the AD document resolution, say 300 dpi, and has many dots as pixels. That is, 900 x 600 pixels becomes 3 x 2 inches. 1200 x 900 = 4 x 3. Same happens using the AD media browser. This is independent of the images own resolution. 1200 x 900 x 72 px/in comes in the same as 1200 x 900 144 px/in

 

However, if I use the place menu command, the image comes in and is displayed initially at the images own dpi. So an image at 900 x 600 at 72 ix/in comes into the AD document at 12.5 x 8.25 inches.

 

I think part of your solution may be to add the images thru the media browser, and not "place," which will then need to be resized. 

 

If you have AP, I would expect it to have an image resizing/sampling feature so that the various files can be made the same reolution to start.

[catlover]

You could try this:

Open the file with the dial

Open the image that needs to go inside the clockdial, >select it, >edit>copy.

Go to the dial, select it, >edit>paste inside.

The size will be automatically adapted to fit within the dial.

Hope that works for you.