We can all thank Georges Seurat for his pioneering work in pointillism to advance the theory of, and reproduction of, color. The confusion is in the terminology and different printing technologies used to reproduce the image. Many people incorrectly interchange dpi for Lpi. PPI is for pixels per inch that your monitors resolution is manufactured at. I believe most to be around 92 ppi for crts. DPI (or dots per inch) is for the original image resolution. The actual printed size and method of reproduction should determine the number of dots per inch to render at. SPI (spots per inch) is the terminology for how laser printers & most photo printers output resolutions are measured. Photo printers are typically 1200 + spots per inch horizontally. You can imagine a grid that is 1" wide with 1200 potential spots or color. When the various colors are called for to "print" the nozzles either print that color dot or they don't. It operates much like the old dot matrix printers did, if you remember them, only at a much finer resolution. LPI (lines per inch or screen frequency) is the measure for offset printing screens used to burn the image printing plates, one for each color (CMYK). The LPI will vary depending on the type of paper being used but in general a line screen of 150 or 175 is common for coated offset paper. The general rule of thumb is to use an image resolution of 2 1/2 time the lines per inch. Hence, a one inch final printed image size printed at 150 lines per inch should be 150 LPI x 2 1/2 = 300 dpi. The reason that the image for CMYK offset printing needs to be higher then the one for the ink jet printer is a matter of ink spot size relative to the "spot" at which it is to print. Not only does each color have the potential to be "on or off" for the spot at which it is to print (like for the ink jet printer) but also the "size" of each ink spot is variable between 0 & 100% for that particular spot on the matrix. Short story is to use the 300 ppi (to the actual printed size) as others have said.

I have a dual 1.25 G4 with jag (1 gig ram) but don't have C3. Pick a scene from the C2 content CD & I'll test that (unless someone else has this info).

If you create a tree or any other piece of art then you automaticly own the copyright to that work, even if you do not register it. Makes no differece if you sculpt one out of clay or draw it with a brush & paint. The tools you use to create your work are immaterial. Would Stanly Tool own the rights to a wood sculpture you made because you used a chisle made by them? Does Grummbacher claim any right to any painting created with their oil paints? There are some plug-ins that create trees and lightning that will not allow you to sell (or distribute) their output. It makes sense in that the "plug in" really creates the object. All the user does is push a couple buttons to call out some presets.

The trace tool in Illustrator isn't as good as Streamline. You could make a color selecton in PSD & save the paths to Illustrator also.

Attached Link: http://www.chez.com/litst/eng/fs-shaders.htm

I'll be content with V.7 for quite some time.

Attached Link: http://raystew.virtualave.net/downloads/os9fix.html

The only advantage to a faster video card is that it will render the on screen area "preview" faster only. It dosen't make the actual render times better.

PixelSmart scaler, saves me much time in trying to explain to someone with a two megapixle camera why their image will not print at 8 x 10 inches with offset lithograhy. If they can't understand that they probably can't see the subtle diffrences in detail in the shadows & highlights anyway.

Welcome back @ big congrats on the new job. Sure makes life more enjoyable when you love what you do at work. Haven't moved to V3 myself yet as I just got V2 a couple months ago to run on my new OSX machine. Hope to get the upgrade soon. Also, haven't seen a post from litst for many months, he did a nice new collection of his Shader Packs 2 & not long thereafter he trickled off this forum (at least for posting).

Another good start is to open up several of the models that come with the content CD and jump into the parts within the model rooms. Helps to see how they are constructed.

Attached Link: http://www.pl32.com/endocs/starten.htm