I've posted this question to quite a few computing forums now and gotten nowhere. It's extremely frustrating. Eventually I reasoned that this is something that patternmakers would have experience with. So here we go...
I'm not simply tryiing to resize/scale the whole image/page, but a (any) portion within it.
A setup for simplicity's sake...
On a page is a line drawing of a rectangle that is 4 inches wide and 2 inches tall (it is scaled with a page annotation). The whole jpeg/pdf/png/ etc "image" is much larger than this, including the blank white surround.
You print the page and the rectangle comes out 3.25 inches across.
How do you rescale the rectangle within that whole image to print properly? I've been told over and over that it is impossible to prescribe this dimension because everyone uses different screen pixel counts, printers, print drivers, etc. Sounds reasonable. HOWEVER, I posted the above rectangle (as a pdf) to another forum and a gentleman in Sweden corrected it within one minute and attached it to his response. I never told him my system, screen size, or printer. I printed his corrected pdf and, to my astonishment, the rectangle printed EXACTLY 4 inches across. I went back and asked him to tell me how he did this and he recommended importing the image into "any common vector graphics" program and rescaling the rectangle. I tried a half a dozen programs, including inkscape, DIA, google sketchup, and other to accomplish this and was simply met with frustration. I went back and asked him to elaborate and he never responded.
How is this done?
I've tried drawing the rectangle in google sketchup and scaled it to PRECISELY 4 inches. It insists on breaking my heart every time the printer spits out some random percentage of that. I've adjusted all the right settings and spent hours in the Sketchup help forums. I have followed tutorials and directions to a tee. I know I'm not missing anything in the settings of those programs. I've scaled it in humble little MS Paint. It accepts precise measurements in its "image attributes" section. Saves them. And then goes and prints them in some random percentage of that figure!!!! I can print, measure, zoom, print, measure, zoom, print, etc etc. but that just seems absurd in 2010 for printing to scale. It must have more to do with technique than just settings, because the tutorials never seem to remedy it. And it blows my mind how many "experts" tell me that I have no choice but to print, measure, scale, print, measure, scale, print, measure, scale, and likewise crawl my way toward a correct printout.
How to do this? (before I dump this half gallon of gas on it all and strike a match)
I'm not simply tryiing to resize/scale the whole image/page, but a (any) portion within it.
A setup for simplicity's sake...
On a page is a line drawing of a rectangle that is 4 inches wide and 2 inches tall (it is scaled with a page annotation). The whole jpeg/pdf/png/ etc "image" is much larger than this, including the blank white surround.
You print the page and the rectangle comes out 3.25 inches across.
How do you rescale the rectangle within that whole image to print properly? I've been told over and over that it is impossible to prescribe this dimension because everyone uses different screen pixel counts, printers, print drivers, etc. Sounds reasonable. HOWEVER, I posted the above rectangle (as a pdf) to another forum and a gentleman in Sweden corrected it within one minute and attached it to his response. I never told him my system, screen size, or printer. I printed his corrected pdf and, to my astonishment, the rectangle printed EXACTLY 4 inches across. I went back and asked him to tell me how he did this and he recommended importing the image into "any common vector graphics" program and rescaling the rectangle. I tried a half a dozen programs, including inkscape, DIA, google sketchup, and other to accomplish this and was simply met with frustration. I went back and asked him to elaborate and he never responded.
How is this done?
I've tried drawing the rectangle in google sketchup and scaled it to PRECISELY 4 inches. It insists on breaking my heart every time the printer spits out some random percentage of that. I've adjusted all the right settings and spent hours in the Sketchup help forums. I have followed tutorials and directions to a tee. I know I'm not missing anything in the settings of those programs. I've scaled it in humble little MS Paint. It accepts precise measurements in its "image attributes" section. Saves them. And then goes and prints them in some random percentage of that figure!!!! I can print, measure, zoom, print, measure, zoom, print, etc etc. but that just seems absurd in 2010 for printing to scale. It must have more to do with technique than just settings, because the tutorials never seem to remedy it. And it blows my mind how many "experts" tell me that I have no choice but to print, measure, scale, print, measure, scale, print, measure, scale, and likewise crawl my way toward a correct printout.
How to do this? (before I dump this half gallon of gas on it all and strike a match)