[texhax] Query about loading images into LaTeX

[Pierre MacKay]

George Vlasakakis wrote:

>  
>  
> Hi,
>  
> My name is George and the last couple of days i m trying to find a way 
> to load images into my LaTeX file. I searched quite a lot about that 
> and the conclusion was, that i need to have my images converted to a 
> .ps format in order to be able to load them. Since i had no idea on 
> how i'd be able to convert them into that format i searched again and 
> i found out that a suitable Postscript printer driver is able to make 
> this conversion from a jpeg or bmp to a .ps file. Thus, i downloaded 
> quite a lot of defferent types of Postscript printer drivers but 
> unfortunatelly nothing has worked so far..!
> Is there any other convenient way that i can use to make this 
> conversion? Your assistance is kindly appreciated.
>  

The GIMP (Gnu's answer to Photoshop) is free, and works in Linux and 
Windows.  There may even be a Mac version.  It does a fine job of 
producing EPS (Encapsulated PostScript, which you want, because it 
provides you with a bounding box you can use for clipping, etc.) from 
just about any graphics format presently in use.  GIMP gives you the 
opportunity to tailor the bitmap to your needs before converting to 
EPS.  It is surprisingly good at interpolation to bring bitmaps of 
unsatisfactory resolution up to usable density but, be warned, it needs 
a huge swap file to do serious interpolations. 
I recently passed 164 wretched black-and-white scans, which were 
supplied to me at just over 200 DPI resolution through the GIMP.  I'm 
glad the job is over, but I was able to run the resolution from 200 DPI 
all the way up to 1200 (a preferred resolution for black-and-white line 
art, even though it is overkill for most halftones).  The EPS end 
product can be scaled with Tom Rokicki's epsf.

ImageMagick is also astonishingly good, but doesn't give you the editing 
capabilities of the GIMP.

If you have an emacs editor, you can do a very precise job of clipping 
by editing the bounding box directly, while looking at the results in 
ghostview or ggv. 

Pierre MacKay