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Topic: Copy from Print Preview (Read 12388 times) previous topic - next topic

Copy from Print Preview

I was a little dismayed that the "copy as" .BMP option is unavailable in 32 bit. Why? WMF files are poorly supported in Win 9x, except as part of a clip file. Still, I found a great piece of freeware that views and converts these files effectively: http://softwarecenter.net/irfanview/

Re: Copy from Print Preview

Reply #1 –
Welcome to the party! Yes, the File>Print Preview>Copy to placeable WMF works with Irfan View (this topic arises every few months).

You should also know that the WMF can probably be opened and edited (visually, not musically) with a good drawing program, if you happen to have one. That's because the WMF is inherently more like a drawing file than like a paint (BMP) file.

If a BMP or GIF is what you want, you can do it via WMF/Irfan View, or Print-to-file via Ghostscript/Ghostview. See the Noteworthy archives for lots of discussion.

Re: Copy from Print Preview

Reply #2 –
Still waiting for our friendly sponsor to weigh in on this one. Why can't I have a Bitmap?

Re: Copy from Print Preview

Reply #4 –
I see I prefiously posted this in the wrong place... so I have copied it here:

For setting up another person to receive your WMF (metafiles), I find these utilities helpful:

I use Winzip to compress the files prior to attaching them to email. Winzip will also allow you to make a self extracting zip. So, the recipient merely double clicks on the file to open.

If the recipient does not have Winzip, he may get a freeware named Aladdin Expander 5.0 from www.tucows.com. The neat thing about Aladdin Expander... if there is only one file in the zip, when the recipient double clicks on it, it will open and place the unzipped file in the same folder with the zip. If there are a number of files in the zip, Aladdin will make and name a subfolder, and place the expanded files in there.

There are two ways to view and print the WMF files clearly enough for my standards. If you know more, please inform me. (1) Open the WMF files with ACDSee, a Viewer Utility (may also be found on tucows).
There are a number of versions there. I have an older 2.41. The recipient can download a shareware to use for 30 days, or buy for $35.

The WMF may be printed from ACDSee. It will be clear, sharp, no fuzzy, jagged edges on anything.

You may Insert a Picture in MicroSoft Word, and chose your WMF file. (Insert>Picture>From File, and chose your WMF). Once it is on the page, you will have to resize it to fit.

This is neat, because you can put one WMF of music on each page in a multi page Word file. Then, IF the recipient has the NWC font installed (I send them the font, as well as Boxmarks.ttf and Crescendo.ttf) they may then open the Word document, and simply hit the pinter button, and print the whole thing out, page by page.

In both of these methods of sending and printing sheet music will produce good, sharp pages. Other picture
viewers, such as MS Photo Editor, Arts & Letters Picture Perfect, will open the WMF, but will be very jagged, grainy, and not at all suitable for reading.

I downloaded the upgrade from my previous 1.52 to 1.70. The width of copy area issue has already been taken care of in the newer 1.70 version. The metafile copy no longer cuts off the measure numbers along the left side.

Re: Copy from Print Preview

Reply #5 –
Thanks. The insert into Word option does work nice. That mostly solves my problem of converting the NWC file so I could fax it or email it. Don't double click on the image to edit it though. Yikes!

Re: Copy from Print Preview

Reply #6 –
And, as has been pointed out many times in the forum, Irfan View http://www.irfanview.com is a free viewer that will open Windows metafiles and convert them to bitmap, GIF, or whatever.

Re: Copy from Print Preview

Reply #7 –
Irfanview has crashed on me when I try to print from it. anyone else have that problem?

Re: Copy from Print Preview

Reply #8 –
OK, I tried Irfan View. The results were about the same as the other unacceptable programs I mentioned in a previous post. This is only a rough approximation, and not suitable for reading. Notes were misshapen, staff lines were uneven, some thick, some thin.

This is very much what the Ghostview printing did, too.

ACDSee prints as clearly and sharply as if you print directly from NWC. Same with my method of placing the WMF file into MS Word. With so many PC users having Windows and Word, this is probably the best method for most recipients.

Re: Copy from Print Preview

Reply #9 –
Art - no, the current version of Irfan-view (V3.21) has been perfectly stable on my system. If you can document the sequence of events that causes a crash, I'd suggest sending them to Irfan. He's very receptive to bug reports, suggestions, and general comments.

I'd also like to point out that Irfan view is freeware, unlike ACDSee which is over $74 Cdn (presumably $50 US)... and does not allow file modification, whereas Irfan view lets you crop, resample/resize, change color parameters, and even includes a filter package. Pretty hard to beat, in my book...

Re: Copy from Print Preview

Reply #10 –
Well, Fred, does your Irfan View have the jagged edges and rough, grain appearance on the WMF's? Is there a setting I can change to improve it on my computer?

Re: Copy from Print Preview

Reply #11 –
Nearlt all of the time, Irfan View opens a WMF at 300 dpi resolution. This is just great for text, and not bad for objects with curves in them (note-heads, clefs, etc.) However, horizontal and vertical lines (although sharp) are not of uniform thickness, presumably due to something mathematical regarding the 300 dpi resolution versus 72 or 96 dpi screen resolution. Down-scaling the image results in similarly non-uniform results. So, for some users, Irfan View would not be the best choice for NWC to WMF to GIF image conversion.

I have Adobe Acrobat (full version) and have found that using Acrobat Distiller to print from NWC, I get similarly irregular line widths. In fact, the results are quite ugly. Something similar happens with Ghostscript/GSview. BUT Adobe PDF Writer, which comes with Acrobat, does a marvelous, sharp job. From the PDF file produced by PDF Writer, I can select all or part of the image, copy it to the clipboard, and paste it into Irfan View for a sharp image (then, save to GIF).

I conclude that the underlying problem is inconsistency in how WMF and PDF are interpreted at different resolutions. Although I haven't tried ACDsee, presumably its reputed sharpness is due to some strategy that is posess by Adobe PDF Writer, but not by Adobe Acrobat, nor by the direct interpretation of a WMF file by Irfan View.

Printing (rather than making images for display on the web) is a different matter. I find that files created from NWC by PDF Writer produce prints that are as clean and sharp as those printed to paper directly from within NWC. However, files derived from NWC by Acrobat Distiller do not look as good, even though Distiller works great with (say) MS Word. I have found that WMF files from NWC can be opened and visually edited in Adobe Illustrator, and the resulting printout is sharp, with one exception: I have sometimes had to sustitute Postscript text fonts for TrueType text fonts for maximum clarity.

It may also be that these various programs interact with other in mysterious ways that vary from user to user.

If ACDsee works for you, go for it.

Re: Copy from Print Preview

Reply #12 –
Thanks, Joe. I'd long ago abandoned trying to do anything with .wmf, due to inconsistencies in behaviour even within microsoft application environments. If I really need a bitmap-type image (as is necessary for doing strange things like upside-down clefs, etc.) I use the export to .bmp option in the 16-bit build. Otherwise I use GSview, with consistently excellent results.

Incidentally, to get GSview to give a good screen display, you have to set the display settings to give anti-aliasing. Instructions for this (and an A-B comparison between GSview and Acrobat Reader) are given at:

http://www.netidea.com/~fredn/aboutst.htm#postscript

This anti-aliasing can be used to good advantage to give reduced-size "previews" in gif or other format, using the GSview File-->Copy command, then pasting into a .bmp file for conversion to .gif or .png using PSP, IrfanView, etc.

Re: Copy from Print Preview

Reply #13 –
> lines are not of uniform thickness, presumably
> due to something mathematical regarding the 300
> dpi resolution versus 72 or 96 dpi screen resolution.

If you created the WMF from NWC Preview, then the DPI of the WMF matches the printer. If the printer is configured for 720 x 720 DPI, then the line thickness will vary when displaying at 300 DPI, for somewhat obvious mathematical reasons (300 does NOT divide well into 720, for example).

Re: Copy from Print Preview

Reply #14 –
Are you saying that NWC looks at the Printer resolution before building the WMF file? That's good to know, since many of us could set our printer to 1200 dpi if we so choose.Then distill it down to whatever resolution needed. I'm still confused, though. The WMF is object based. Is it resolving each object (note, etc.) at the printer resolution?
I hate to be a pain, but you still didn't say WHY the BMP copy function is no longer supported. If it wasn't on the dialog box grayed out, I might not have even thought to ask. But it is, and i'm askin'.
I wouldn't have started this thread if Photoshop 5.0 could process the wmf. I still have trouble believing it.
Finally, since my mommy taught me to be nice when hassling someone: I showed some of my music to a Composition professor at the local university. When I told him about NWC,he was quite suprised. He said "Really, I thought you were using Finale."

Re: Copy from Print Preview

Reply #15 –
Yes, that is exactly what I am saying.

Re: Copy from Print Preview

Reply #16 –
It would seem like a nice feature if the resolution of the WMF could be set independently from the printer resolution. (I imagine, however, that the fact that it is tied to the printer resolution to start with somehow has to do with the internal way in which the WMF file is being created.) It just seems a little silly to tie the resolution of a file used to achieve portability to the printer attached to a specific machine. (What if you had an old dot matrix printer on the machine you were using, but the file was ultimately going to be printed on a typesetting machine? This is obviously an extreme example, but you get the point.)

Re: Copy from Print Preview

Reply #17 –
Well, the term "resolution" is not exactly correct for WMF files. The term "coordinate system" would be more appropriate. NWC uses the printer "resoution" as the basis for establishing the "coordinate system" used to in the WMF file.

Re: Copy from Print Preview

Reply #18 –
Thanks for the terminology clarification. I agree entirely. I still wonder if it is a little undesireable/unrealistic to have the coordinate system for the objects within the WMF based entirely on the resolution of a printer attached to the system.

Re: Copy from Print Preview

Reply #19 –
Just for fun, I have been fooling with the PPD (postscript printer description) files, as these are editable with Notepad. Don't try this at home, folks, as it seems to be a copyright no-no. But I changed the "standard" resolution intended to accomany a real printer, to one that was an integral multiple of the monitor screen. I then specified this as the "printer" within NWC, then created a WMF. Guess what! The resulting WMF, when opened in Irfan View, looked really great.

Similarly, I discovered that the reason my Acrobat PDFwriter gives very nice images from NWC, whereas Acrobat Distiller (from the same CD-ROM) does not, was that PDFwriter was set to "screen resolution" whereas Distiller was set to a standard printer resolution.

Mathematics, indeed.

Re: Copy from Print Preview

Reply #20 –
I have found that using pdf995 (a free "printer driver"), I can make wonderful pdf files - which I can turn into bitmaps or jpegs or gifs (oh my!) with photoshop elements, if I wanted to.  The pdf files turn out rather small in filesize, which is nice.   I arrange lots of parts for different instrumentalists, so if someone new shows up, I can just go to the folder I store the files for that particular instrument, select all, right click, hit print, and walla!  Every piece of music for that instrument is opened in Adobe Reader and printed.  Beautiful!