XON FASA Star Trek Gaming
http://www.anzwers.org/free/fasa
Last updated on 02/04/12

• Starship Combat Support
• The Role Playing Game Support
• Star Trek Downloads
• Star Trek Product Lists
• Magazines Related To FASA ST
• Star Trek Computer Games
• Star Trek Authors
• Working With DOCS, PDF, Images, Office, etc

Also check the many FASA Yahoo Groups and Web Sites; many of those locations contain portions of the FASA ST material, available in one form or another.

The file formats you will come across during your FASA travels:
.ZIP .RAR .HTML/.HTM .TXT .RTF .DOC .PDF .XLS .XLR .JPG .GIF .PNG

Supported formats:

• Packing / unpacking: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR
• Unpacking only: ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, DEB, DMG, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MSI, NSIS, RAR, RPM, UDF, WIM, XAR and Z.

If your software doesn't have such features, dump the scans out as bmps and use an art program. Remember to crop the image and size it as a standard piece of paper. Supply the size in inches. (This isn't necessary as most printer software allows you to print according to the size of paper used) Reduce the amount of colors if possible, text pages usual only need 2 colors, Black and White, some may require grayscale. (jpegs don't allow B/W) When saving, save as jpeg, the compression usually defaults to 90% quality, and normally supplies a decent file size. You only want to compress a jpeg file once.

BLACK and WHITE or GRAYSCALE

1-Place the magazine page square to the scanners window
2-Scan in at 300dpi
3-Do a good Crop of the Image (right up close to the edge of drawings or text)
4-Save scan as a jpeg (grayscale photograph)
5-Set jpeg compression to full (if there's a drawing on the page set compression to 75% or so)
6-View the saved file and zoom in, the letters should be perfectly formed, if there's small lettering or a drawing the lines should be visibly separated.

MANUAL

A More complex method is to save the image as a bmp and edit the image manually for the amount of colors and contrast, but you have to have allot of practice to really benefit, allot of comparing file sizes Vs technique.

The lighter contrast adjustment removes background marks or the reverse of the page showing through and reduces file size. This is common with FASA Star Trek pages and especially magazine articles. Reducing the colors (or grayscale colors) reduces file size. Cropping reduces file sizes and enlarges the letters.

When MAKING A PDF

I find allot of the PDF's are usually un-cropped and the details where fuzzy or broken up. I seen them too with too much compression as well.

Of course you can experiment with different image formats depending on the results you want but the above method will produce printable pages, and will look identical on a computer monitor.

OR you can send me the raw images and I can work with them from here before adding them to a PDF. The whole Idea is to have the best un-bloated PDF you can while retaining the quality of the scans of original books or parts.