SoftCopy Settings

The "SoftCopy Settings" page allows you to set default print settings for all Windows applications.

• General
• • Page Size. Specify the default page size. The page size multiplied by the resolution will give you the dimension of the output image file. For example, if the default size is Letter (8" x 11") and the resolution is 300 dots-per-inch, this will give you an output image file of 2400 x 3300 pixels.
    
    Please refer to Defining custom forms to find out how to add your own custom page sizes to the system.
  • Resolution. Specify the output resolution of the image files in DPI (dots-per-inch). In general, the higher the DPI setting, the larger will be the size of the output image file.
  • Color. You can specify whether the output image files are black-and-white, grayscale or full color. (Note that the JPEG format does not support black-and-white, so it will default to grayscale)
  • Antialias. When the output resolution is less than 300 dpi (eg. 100 dpi), the output image could appear rather coarse on screen. By enabling antialiasing, SoftCopy will render the printing internally at 300 dpi, but scale it down to 100 dpi when saving the image file to disk. This will produce much nicer looking result. However, you should disable antialiasing when there is not enough memory to complete the print job (eg. you are printing to a very large form at reduced output resolution). Note that this parameter has no effect when the output resolution is 300 dpi or greater.
• JPEG
• • Quality. Specify the JPEG quality factor to use. The preset values of low, medium and high default to 60, 75 and 90 respectively. You can specify a custom quality factor by choosing "Custom".
  • Custom. Specify a custom quality factor for the JPEG files. You can specify any value between 1 to 100. The higher the value, the better the quality.
• TIFF
• • Compression (Black and white). Specify the compression scheme to use for black-and-white output. The supported compression schemes are: PackBits, CCITT (Modified Huffman), CCITT T.4 and CCITT T.6.
  • Compression (Grayscale/Color). Specify the compression scheme to use for grayscale or color output. The supported compression schemes are: JPEG and LZW.

  • Note: The JPEG-in-TIFF format generated by SoftCopy is the recommended one specified in TIFF Technical Note #2. Unfortunately, neither Microsoft Imaging (in pre-WinXP systems) nor Microsoft Viewer (in WinXP and above) support this format. Many existing image viewers such as XnView, IrfanView and ACDSee have no problems handling it.

  • Quality. Specify the quality factor to use for JPEG compression scheme. The preset values of low, medium and high default to 60, 75 and 90 respectively. You can specify a custom quality factor by choosing "Custom".
  • Custom. Specify a custom quality factor for the JPEG compression scheme. You can specify any value between 1 to 100. The higher the value, the better the quality.
• PDF
• • Quality. Specify the PDF image quality factor to use. The preset values of low, medium and high default to 60, 75 and 90 respectively. You can specify a custom quality factor by choosing "Custom".
  • Custom. Specify a custom quality factor for the PDF image files. You can specify any value between 1 to 100. The higher the value, the better the quality.