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1985-10-22
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19-Oct-85 11:51:28-PDT,4832;000000000005
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Date: Sat, 19 Oct 85 14:16:55 edt
From: mtu!russell@glacier (Russell Reid)
To: glacier!"INFO-MAC@SUMEX"@glacier
Subject: ThunderScan software... WOW!
Cc: glacier!"adobe!greid"@glacier, glacier!reid@glacier
ThunderWare just sent me the software update for my ThunderScan, a
digitizer for the Mac that works by snapping an optical scanner into the
ImageWriter in place of the ribbon cartridge. You then can scan anything
that you can fit through your ImageWriter. With photographs and
photocopies everywhere, that means nearly anything.
The potential for something like ThunderScan is obvious. Whether it
fulfills its potential depends on lots of gritty details. It seems like a
lot of Mac software has problems there: MacPascal is slow and has serious
size limitations, MacPaint is hobbled by screen resolution, MacDraw can't
do subscripting (important for scientific stuff) and gets too slow to be
useful if graphics get complex.
I found the first version of ThunderScan to have the classic Mac blues..
it was a splendid thought, but I just could never seem to settle down and
get serious use out of it. I am happy.. no, overjoyed, thrilled! .. to
report that the update software is beyond my wildest dreams. It is, to use
a sober, reliable appropriate-for-a-review sort of word, WONDERFUL!
ThunderScan records 32 levels of gray at any of a wide range of sizes, from
400% magnification to (I think) 25% reduction. Before, during or after
scanning, you can mess with "halftoning", i.e. the mimicing of levels of
gray by dots. In the first version of the software, you could adjust the
brightness and contrast, and also something having to do with the range of
grays that I never completely understood. I found the controls to be
inadequate, (so too was my understanding of what was going on), and it
typically took a long time for me to get an image I liked. Often I just
couldn't get it right.
The update fixes these problems, and does it so cleanly and well that it
opens up whole new horizons. (gee, I really have to whack the "s" on this
terminal to make it go...) The new software allows you, among other
things, to draw any curve you want as an input-output gray map. That means
you can decide which incoming shades of gray print as which outgoing shades
in virtually any way that you want. You can take an image with a lot of
very dark shades of gray and spread them out, or one with a lot of soft
grays and add contrast, or whatever. The "or whatever" includes possibili-
ties that never occurred to me until I read the new ThunderScan manual.
(you can cause whites to print as blacks, and the reverse, or cause SOME
shades of gray to print as black or white, or other shades of gray, or
*anything you want*.
The new manual is, in a word, terrific. From the first version, I never
even understood what contrast is, in any fundamental sense. I now under-
stand it completely, and a lot more besides, and because of that understan-
ding I can really DO THINGS that I want to do. That is a lot to get from
software documentation--I am usually grateful if the stuff can at least
refrain from confusing me thoroughly on points that should be obvious.
Another enormous plus, if you have access to somebody's LaserWriter, is the
ability to print the scans in all sorts of sizes and resolutions, with the
300 dot-per-inch laserWritings being little short of breathtaking.
I heartily recommend ThunderScan. I am not sure I could have said that
about version 1, but I can about version 2. Its value increases by a
factor of 5 if you have access to a LaserWriter. It also requires some
learning, as most good tools do.
One final word. Mathematicians have a word for solutions whose grace and
insight set them a step above the problem they set out to solve. They are
"elegant" solutions, something to be valued in their own right. The
reaction I got to working with the gray-scan map in ThunderScan is just
that: gentlemen, this shows a hell of a lot of class. My hat is off to
you guys.
A not-quite-usual disclaimer: I have absolutely no specific interest in
ThunderWare, except that I plan to do absolutely wonderful things with
their scanner. But I have an enormous interest in seeing this kind of
thing become a standard for the Mac in general: it is reasonably priced
(considering it includes hardware, too), splendidly documented, and it does
the job so well that I can't even think of something I wish it did.
Wow.
Russell Reid
Michigan Tech University