Digital Light & Color

It hasn't been possible to successfully create a calendar from a tif.

The first time I tried, after setting the parameters for the calendar, the computer froze attempting to process it. It was necessary to use task manager to close out of the PWP 6 beta. A message appeared to the effect that Windows had adjusted compatibility settings.

For several more attempts, one of two things happened: an image which appeared to be a negative of the photograph was produced by the transformation -or- once again, the computer froze attempting to process.

The calendar transformation seems to work successfully with jpegs, based on one quick attempt.

The computer is a Windows 7 64-bit and a tif file of about 80MB was used trying to make the calendar.

Otherwise, the beta is running very nicely for me.

--Lorin

Lorin,

The problem is probably a memory issue. To make the numbers in a calendar appear smooth, calendar images must be constructed at several times their final size and then interpolated down. (This technique is called anti-aliasing.) If you start with a large image in the first place, like the 80 MB images you are using, the intermediate calendar image is likely to be very large indeed. My recommendation is to resize calendar images to the size you need for final printing before running the calendar transformation. For instance, an eight or ten megabyte image is more than adequate for an 8x10 final image size. An added advantage is that the calendar transformation will be much more responsive.

If you are making a multi-month calendar, you can easily incorporate the resize step into a workflow. See http://dl-c.com/content/view/59/90/ for an example.

If you still see problems with resized images, please let me know as then some other factor is probably involved.

Kiril

Thanks, Kiril. The calendar transformation has worked successfully by converting the 16-bit tif to an 8-bit tif.

This differs, however, from PWP 5.0 where the calendar transformation can readily handle the larger tifs.

--Lorin

Like Lorin, I was experiencing 'hanging' even with jpeg files which up until now have worked with the calendar option no problem. I guess this is the trade off for a more advancing software package!
On the good side, the possibility of adding a calendar button to the toolbar is a nice addition in the beta as is the 'holiday days' and color preset options. Is it possible to show/hide any other buttons on the main toolbar, I have noted what options are there?

Although several calendar month layout presets are given is it possible to include a square 2x2 months option for the square image user?

An ongoing problem I experience is with the font size variable option. Is it possible to set it to clear the size with 'backspace' once the cursor is positioned to highlight the size? My experience todate using PWP of any version particularly in text transformation always leaves a residual digit. In addition the cursor has to be re-positoned each time to delete /enter a digit! I presume the program is processing away in the background with every key action and not waiting until the options are set. Is it possible to stop background preview processing until an 'enter' key is pressed ? Little things can make life miserable!