How to Generate High Quality Image of Front Panel

[ebohannon]

Hello,

So I am using the PDF Generator from Simplicity AI in order to create a PDF of my front panel. What I am currently doing is getting the image data of the front panel using FP.Get Image and then write to JPEG/PNG, saving that image and then having the PDF Generator turn that image into a PDF. The issue is that the image appears to be pixelated and so the PDF in turn looks to be a bit pixelated. I am trying to avoid installing a PDF printer so I was wondering if anyone knew of a way to generate a better quality image of the front panel. Thanks.

[Bob_Schor]

Front Panel Images are "naturally" pixelated because they are displayed on a computer monitor, which has its resolution stated in pixels.  I'm sure NI designed its components to look "reasonable" with monitors of various resolutions, including 8-year-old laptops with 1024x768 pixels (or fewer) on a screen.

I just tried this, myself, and I must say I'm rather pleased with the quality of the PDF.  Here are some suggestions:

• Use a reasonably good monitor (anything in the last 5-7 years should be OK).
• Save as PNG -- in my experience, this is the clean(er) format for images-that-are-not-photographs.
• Once you have your PNG, use a good PDF-converter (I used Adobe Acrobat).
• I've never used the PDF Generator (is this a third-party tool?), so I can't comment on the final step in producing your document.

Bob Schor

[RTSLVU]

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@Bob_Schor wrote:

• Once you have your PNG, use a good PDF-converter (I used Adobe Acrobat).

Bob Schor

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Also good PDF converters have setting for the resolution of imported images. I have found many cheap converters (specially "print to PDF" types)  don't have this option and images always look like crap in the PDF's they make. 

[Kevin_Price]

In basic agreement with Bob_Schor, just adding:

- never use .jpg for screencaps, it's a lossy format and doesn't preserve fine detail such as fonts.  These days I always use .png.   It's a compressed lossless (i.e., pixel-perfect) format and can preserve additional info such as transparency (if both the capture and re-rendering tool honor it).  A couple decades ago, .bmp was a reasonable choice as an uncompressed lossless format because some popular tools didn't support .png

- I don't think it matters what monitor you have.  You'll be grabbing the pixel values that are *intended* to be displayed.  For instance, I know the LabVIEW "Get Image" method works fine even when the monitor is powered off.

-Kevin P

[ebohannon]

So I've tried using PNG as well and it doesn't seem to be any better than the JPEG. The image file itself is fuzzy/pixelated. Is there an image generator that can do better quality than fp.Get Image or a PDF generator that can generate a PDF of the front panel?

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[Kevin_Price]

I've used fp.Get Image on a number of my installations and the .PNG files always look exactly correct.  (I've even been fooled when someone left an image file up for viewing and I thought the system was locked up when the buttons didn't respond to my clicks.)

Maybe you need to wire a better value to Image Depth, like 24?  I think the default might be 8-bit color, which is often fine for standard UI elements but not necessarily for everything else.   Try the attached trivial example which works fine on my end.

-Kevin P

[Bob_Schor]

I took an "overly-busy" Front Panel (I'm helping a colleague clean this up), shrunk the borders of the pane to save some space (and reduce it to 1200x800 pixels), saved the Front Panel Image as a PNG, then converted it to a PDF with Acrobat.  I don't see anything terribly wrong with this image (as an image -- still much too "busy").  If you are not getting this quality, look at the PNG first (does it look OK?), then look at the PDF.  Where did pixelation appear?  Maybe it's your printer ...

Bob Schor