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From: leue@galen.crd.ge.com (Bill Leue)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Problem with Aldus Freehand
Keywords: Freehand, bitmaps, memory
Message-ID: <3490@crdgw1.crd.ge.com>
Date: 23 Oct 89 12:23:54 GMT
Sender: news@crdgw1.crd.ge.com
Reply-To: leue@galen.crd.ge.com (Bill Leue)
Organization: General Electric Research & Development
Lines: 35

I've got a problem with Aldus Freehand that I can't work around.  It's
the latest version of Freehand (2.0?), just bought recently.  I'm running
it on a IIcx with 5 mbytes of memory, using system 6.0.3.  The behavior
of the program is the same under MF or Unifinder.

Briefly, there seems to be some arbitrary (and low) limit on the size of
a bitmap that I can import.  I scanned some material at various resolutions
from 75dpi to 300dpi using an Apple scanner and one-bit-per-pixel, and saved
them as PICT II.  MacDraw II cheerfully imports any and all of these large
bitmaps, but Freehand always complains about too little memory.  Even
a quite modestly-sized bitmap, only about 3"x4" at 75 dpi, wouldn't load.

Whasamatta dis program??!??  I had heard various reports about problems
with Applescan's PICT format, so I imported it into MacDraw II and 
tried resaving it as PICT (I), and then reimporting the result into
Freehand.  Still no luck.  I also tried Superpaint as the intermediary, alas
with the same result.

Sigh.  As of now I've given up and am using MacDraw II to trace over the
scanned image.  It works fine, except for the one VERY annoying detail that
MacDraw II doesn't know how to convolve a 50% grey mask over the scanned
bitmap, so it's hard to distinguish the original art from the lines
that are traced over it.  (If anyone from Claris is listening, this is
one of the few features that is really lacking in MacDraw II -- along with
editable bezier or spline curves -- that keeps it from being even more
competitive with the Illustrator/Freehand drawing programs, IMHO.)

Has anyone else encountered this kind of problem, and if so, has anyone
found a workaround or fix?  (Yes, I know that I can ask Aldus, but I'm
reluctant to start the clock running on my free support period.  Just
cheap, I guess. :-$

-Bill Leue
leue@crd.ge.com