A Newcomer's Concern

[Crayons]

Whatever the source - scanner, created, made with plasticine and photographed etc, if you have a digital image you can rescale it. Most standard graphics software packages - GIMP, Paintshop Pro and so forth - will have a facility to do this. With something like GIMP you load up the piccy, chose Image-Scale and play with settings and look at the results.
Then save the image as some other filename or type. Actually, to be safe, get into a habit of "Saving As" some other filename before you start tinkering with your original.
When saving compressed image formats like jpg, look out for the compression level options in the save dialogue. The choices are all about compromise.
It also likely that your scanner software, or a freebie package that came with it, can rescale images.

[Jaxilon]

I had the same question not that long ago (How to post a lower resolution) and I asked one of the experts here Torstan about it:

by reducing the dpi in the Image settings from 300 to 100 - and it automatically reduces the pixel dimensions of the image by 1/3. In Gimp I think you need to reduce the pixel dimensions yourself. I usually reduce the size by 1/3 as print is 300dpi and screen resolution is about 100. So you end up seeing it on screen at roughly the size you'd see it on paper.

Took me a bit to figure it out because I AM using Gimp but I think I got it now. If not hopefully someone here will point it out to me when I post something that is clearly full resolution. In Gimp there is 'Image>Scale image' where you can change the size of things as we;; as pixel resolution and so on.

edit: Ninja'd by Crayola

[Crayons]

Well there's a thing!! I'd never really considered that 300 dpi / 100 dpi thing! That Torstan's a clever one eh?

[Midgardsormr]

Do be aware that changing the dpi won't necessarily rescale the image. For instance, in Photoshop if you don't have "Resample image" checked, it will only modify the way the picture prints, not the number of pixels present. It's always a good idea to control your pixels yourself instead of indirectly through a print resolution setting.

and the really big boys won't steal it, they'll pay an artist to do one for them just different enough to get past the law...

Not necessarily. Consider the case of Saul Steinberg and the movie Moscow on the Hudson. I've attached an illustration that Steinberg made for The New Yorker and the poster for the movie. Columbia Pictures lost that lawsuit.

[Jaxilon]

Ok, so how do you re-sample in Gimp? I for one would like to have this process down pat before I start producing things that sell. Thanks in advance.

[LonewandererD]

I think it's only possible with computer made images as I'm not that familiar with scanner resolutions. Normally you can set an image's resolution when saving it, in photoshop for example when saving an image of as a jpg you can choose a resolution on a scale of 12. You normally have to lower an image's resolution and size to make its memory small enough to post it on this site, so if your map is higher resolution, greater size thats still rather clean looking and takes up more memory than someone elses then you have a better claim to nhaving the original.


EDIT: I should have read the baove posts before responding, feel free to disregard this message.
-D-

[Midgardsormr]

That's not resolution; that's jpeg quality. The quality slider determines how much the image is being compressed.

Resolution refers to two things: The dpi at which the image is being printed (print resolution) and its actual pixel dimensions.

[LonewandererD]

Woops, my mistake.

-D-

[Dmitri]

Wow, thank you for all of the responses!! I now have a digital copy of my drawing in a lower resolution, and hopefully it won't affect the viewing too terribly much. I think it's only apparent when you zoom in pretty far.

So I now have a lower resolution picture to post here, and I have all of the original copies and such. I believe this is enough to reasonably protect a piece of work?

[Gamerprinter]

Actually I've come to easily recognize the work of various cartographers just by viewing without seeing a signature. And their fans of mine that recognize my style as well. In one case someone pointed out a map which they thought was mine, due to similar style - I checked, it wasn't, but the thought exists that there are fans out there who know some of our styles and when they detect a map that might have been stolen, often it gets reported. So I'm not extremely worried, though I am always on the lookout.

GP