Best images for upload to CTouch

What format do people use to get best quality images on to CTouch.

I've tried various greyscale/black-white/colour images etc. and cant find one that produces a really good look on the CTouch.

I've tried undithered images, but CTouch still seems to make them go speckly.

Any advise appreciated.



Dean.

 

ctouch images

I use Paintshop to make black and white BMP images that work well
have attached sample images


dave

 

I also use Paintshop to create images. If I have a colourful image or photo I want to use, I reduce it to 2 colours and use dithering.

An important thing worth noting - try to create images the exact size you need, so you don't have to resize them in the C-touch software. This will ensure they retain their original quality. This can mean a bit of trial and error getting your images in there (ie, insert the image, oops! too big, delete it, go into Paintshop, resize it, insert it into C-touch again...etc etc).

If you are inserting an image that you want to cover the whole screen, the correct size is 320x240 pixels. I have attached an example of our standby screen, which is based on a photo taken outside our office. It looks great on the actual C-Touch unit.

The second attachment shows a combination of images and text. The original Master Builders Club logo was a colour jpeg, now a dithered monochrome bitmap.

This is (in my opinion) the best you can do. If you want something better, don't worry, apparently the new model isn't far away!

 

C-Touch only has two colours, so trying to display colour or grey scale pictures is always going to look grainy.

It shouldn't make any difference which image format you use, or whether you use colour or Grey Scale. In the end, the same dithering algorithm is applied to them.

If you don't like the way that the dithering is done, use one of the many commercial drawing packages and use it to dither the image and then use that in C-Touch.

 

graphic manipulation

great "free" program from http://www.irfanview.com It is good for greyscale conversion, resize etc.