Preserved Topic: Any ideas / tutorials on barcodes?

Those things are super cool and Im just about to scan my crap I buy and stick it in there...are there any tutorials to making barcodes? tHaNk yA!

<--self portrait

You want a tutorial to show you how to draw vertical black lines of varying thickness? With a space cut out on the bottom for a bunch of numbers?

here's my quickie tutorial:
1) use the line tool to draw a bunch of vertical lines, varying the thickness and distance in between.
2) about 30 lines should do
3) cut out a piece of the bottom half as big as the size of your numbrs
5) place numbers in the space provided.
6) voila, barcode. hooray

threep tries to write his first tutorial:
"step one: buy a product, preferably one with a barcode. if you are in an uncivilised area without access to currency, shops or barcode scanners, this may prove difficult. however, seeing as you seem to have internet access, this is not highly likely.
step two: buy a scanner. steps one and two may be combined, if the scanner comes with a barcode. for now, we shall work with a scanner that i prepared earlier.
step three: put the barcode onto the scanner (preheated to 180 degrees celsius), and leave for 50 minutes, or until golden brown. alternatively, if you have the 'usual' scanner variety, scan the bloody image.
step four: headbutt the monitor
step five: lather, rinse repeat

this should give you either a realistic looking barcode, or a headache. depends on how well you follow directions."
threep wonders if such nonsensical posts are the result of staring at a monitor for too damned long, and goes to get a glass of water. as soon as he can find somewhere to download one from, of course...

Now if Im not mistaken there are barcode shareware proggies out there. I've used them before to label products that I sell. Just do a search on BC generators. If anything, some may have trial versions so you can just use it and scrap it.

Have you tried a bar code font? Ive seen those around as well.

try this. should do what you want it to!
http://download.cnet.com/downloads/0-10019-100-3424649.html




wayoutwestenterprises.com

[This message has been edited by Radical Rob (edited 06-28-2001).]

Check this out

cu
~Xdreamer.ch~

Ok, now, just to make sure the point hasn't been lost here:

IT'S A BUNCH OF FUCKING STRAIGHT VERTICAL LINES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


a tutorial?????????

Well, DL was a bit more straightforward then I would've probably been, but I was thinking pretty much the same thing...

Chris

KAIROSinteractive

My barcodes always turn out like shyt. That's why I wanted to know how others make them. Otherwise, I wouldn't ask.

edit : thank you xdreamer.ch they dont look so much like shyt now hehe

<--self portrait


[This message has been edited by oZoNe_bOi (edited 06-28-2001).]

I remember contracting for a place that used the Corel suite a little while back (PhotoPaint sucks!) and they had a small app called the 'Bar Code Wizard' Whic was aparently used to generate different standards of barcodes using only number imput?? odd..

Didn;t have anything real to add.. sorry...

everybody needs a swamp bear

Yes, in fact, *I* have a very good idea:

• Get a barcode
• Look at it
• Draw what you see

let me repeat:

• Get a barcode
• Look at it
• Draw what you see

k maybe we should clarify whether he needs a realistic barcode (lines that actually represent the numbers printed in the barcode system), or just a dummy mock up wannabe bar code kind of thing...


Me. Loony. 'nuff said.

Im looking for a real barcode. I scanned a barcode in my scanner today and got it all fixed up =) allll natural

<--self portrait

[This message has been edited by oZoNe_bOi (edited 06-29-2001).]

Marquee tool, drag out a bar

press d

press ctrl+backspace

rinse and repeat

Jason

Here is a fun easy way to make fake barcodes.

1. Create a new document, Greyscale mode and set the width to the desired width of the barcode at the desired ppi, Set the ppi height to 1 pixel

2. Set the Forground color to black and the Background to white.

3. Run the Clouds Filter

4. Run Pixelate >> mezzotint Using course dots.

5. Now use Adjust >> Posterize setting the value to 2 levels. This will reduce you image to just two values black and white. Our you could jsut switch to Bitmap mode using 50% threshold.

6. Now use image size to resize the image height to the desired height of the barcode, remember to deselect constrain to Proportions.

7. Now just set you background to white and enlarge the canvas. Just add numbers and such and .....

Ta Da! Barcode.

jstuartj

whoa! thats crazy!! i love it!! i have a whole page of different barcodes now!! thanks you guys

<--self portrait

i'm beside myself

Jason

I`m beside him.

I'm stuck in the middle of them....

Like being stuck between a rock, and a dumbass, eh DL ?

hehe, kinda like that bob. who's got dibs on 'rock'???

I`m not sayin, but I`m not the one that hasn`t figured it out yet.

aiight aiight, who ain't had their tail whipped lately? I got a bad sunburn, a stiff back and massive flesh loss on me bum and knee, and I'm cranky too so you'd better... heck widit - I'm goinda bed, dibs on rock, dumbass.

Jason

eH...

[This message has been edited by oZoNe_bOi (edited 07-02-2001).]

eH?

eH wHat?

it's backwards fartknocker...He



Jason

Well, i ain`t been whupped lately, but butter up, JK it`ll be ok, The flesh will grow back.

And for the record, I`ve been a dumbass in lots stupider crowds than this one.

No...wait...

Ack! Bugger!... She's lovvin it!

Funny you should mention that Bob, I was recommended "udder butter" today. For when cow tits get a li'l drah and cracked ya'll.

uh-uh

Jason

Not sure if anyone would still check this thread but... :

"First of all, look at any 12-digit bar code. It is made up of black bars and white spaces between the bars. Assume that the thinnest bar or space that you see (for example, the first bar on the left) can be called "1 unit wide". The bars and spaces can therefore be seen to have proportional widths of 1, 2, 3 or 4 units. If you look at any bar code you can see examples of these four widths.

The start of any bar code is "1-1-1". That is, starting at the left you find a 1-unit-wide black bar followed by a 1-unit-wide white space followed by a 1-unit-wide black bar (bar-space-bar). Following the start code, the digits are encoded like this:


0 = 3-2-1-1
1 = 2-2-2-1
2 = 2-1-2-2
3 = 1-4-1-1
4 = 1-1-3-2
5 = 1-2-3-1
6 = 1-1-1-4
7 = 1-3-1-2
8 = 1-2-1-3
9 = 3-1-1-2 "
From howstuffworks.com


I ended up using this for creating a barcode in Illustrator that spelled out the name of my company once. Would be pretty easy in photoshop using grids 'n' guides. It's the kind of thing that nobody will ever get and it is for that reason that I love it.


If you're looking for usage guidelines, check out:

http://www.mecsw.com/info/info.html

The fun part about barcodes, IMHO, is that they are relative - the width of the "1 unit" is determined by the scanner at the time of scanning. You'll see on some products that the barcode is stretched to fit around a package (Carmex, I think, does this. Maybe it's blistex).

Anyhow, some relatively useful information.

- D



[This message has been edited by 3Ten D (edited 07-04-2001).]

there ya go, thats the whole tute. Use the above ratios, draw some lines, make the two front and back the same, space them semi-randomly put the clever text in and thats it, takes about 5 minutes. Wow 3Ten D, great contribution.






[This message has been edited by moaiz (edited 07-04-2001).]

In case you're interested, also check out this rather simple tutorial:
http://www.wastedyouth.org/tutorials/barcode.htm

Whay has't this post been locked yet?? were talking about a bunch of verticle lines here? heh?