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Subject:RE: How Much Editing of Graphics Do You Do? From:"Dan Hall" <dhall -at- san-carlos -dot- rms -dot- slb -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 6 Mar 2002 11:46:10 -0600
Too much? :-)
Actually, since I document (mainly) hardware for our RF network, I do a lot
of graphics "clean up". There are lots of times when a picture of a device
needs to be cropped, tweaked for contrast, etc. Since most of our docs are
printed in black and white, there are the usual resamplings and adjusting of
colors to greyscale as well.
When writing for the software end of the system, I usually try to leave
screen captures "as is", although I do some cropping when I need to show
(just) a relevant screen area. Occasionally there may be some "noise" in the
capture (since I'm working locally, not using the network itself) - for
instance, files in a folder list - which I cut out of the final screen
shots.
In addition, there are times when the image files from our digital camera
yield illegible text (in labels on a device, for instance) - even if I
capture a TIFF. In those cases, I am often asked to use an image editing
program to touch up the labels so that they can be read in the printed
document.
Finally, I am also tasked with drawing line drawings (outlines, 3/4 views,
exploded views, etc.) of system hardware components, which usually involves
tracing bitmap images using CorelDraw or Illustrator. I'd count this as
"Editing," since I'm not really creating anything new - just tracing an
existing image.
Since I did technical illustration in a former life, I quite enjoy it all.
Dan
Dan Hall
Sr. Technical Writer
SchlumbergerSema RTEMS
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