Image clarity

Junior WebHelper Joined: 27 May 2004 Posts: 9 Location: MN

Hi...I'm a newbee to this site but thought it might be very helpful. I've started developing the website for the company I work with virtually no web experience. Their using a software aid most things are going smoothly.

But, I'm having a major problem though with creating images, both pictoral and text that are clear AND that have a reasonable file size. I've been using Adobe photoshop and when I decrease the file size when I save it for the web all my text and images get are too distorted.

Is there a better way to create and manipulate images than adobe or am I messing somethig up somewhere along the way?

The company that set up the website was able to get images on there that are clear and of a small file size, but my contact there never gets back to me and doesn't seem to have a good grasp on the subject. Kinda feeling like they moved on to other customers before I took over this project over and are less than interested in helping me out.

Thanks a bunch for any input!

Brian

Team Member Joined: 06 Jan 2002 Posts: 2564

What format are you using for your images?

Junior WebHelper Joined: 27 May 2004 Posts: 9 Location: MN

Thanks for getting back so quick...I was out of the office on friday and didn't see your message tilthis morning. I've messed with both GIF and JPEG formats and I haven't seena clear advantage to one or the other.

Maybe I'm wrong. With both formats though I was converting it from bmp files and there may have been a bitmap or TIFF in there as well.

Junior WebHelper Joined: 27 May 2004 Posts: 9 Location: MN

If you go to industrialspring.com you'll see the difference between the top and bottom images/content pieces......The top (header image) is one I put together in Adobe and you can see it's not as clear, particulariily the text, as the content piece below.

I'll try to leave that alone til later in the day so you can take a look if you have the chance. Thank you.

Team Member Joined: 06 Jan 2002 Posts: 2564

What was the file size before you decreased it?

Also does the text look clear before you decrease the size?

Part of the problem is the background you're using, which isn't ideal in the first place (notice the original has a white background).

Junior WebHelper Joined: 27 May 2004 Posts: 9 Location: MN

The text and image are crystal clear before I manipulate them. The problem is I want a clear image but am worried about the file size being to large. The header image is the best I could do with what I figured would be a reasonable file size.

The text is clear in the original, as I mentioned above, but the lower image text still looks crisper. Would having a more up to date version of Adobe make a difference? They have me on just about the slowest computer you can find these days and I was JUST able to fit Adobe photoshop 6.0 on it.

I'm not entirely clear on what you mean by the backround color? The original size of the building photo alone is 865K and I believe the entire image was a bit over 1 MB before I decreased it.

Team Member Joined: 06 Jan 2002 Posts: 2564

Oh, sorry, I was talking about the wrong image. The main problem here is that you should really be using the GIF format for the text. What I suggest is that you split the image up, and put the text in a GIF image.

Junior WebHelper Joined: 27 May 2004 Posts: 9 Location: MN

Alrighty, thanks for the help.....I'll have to give that a try. I have to finish up some stuff on their sister site first though.

....and to think I didn't think there would be enough work with this stuff to keep me busy until I head back to school inthe fall.

Thanks again for the timely responses!

Brian

Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2004 7:01 am (19 years, 10 months ago)

The only problem being that the springs which are part of the same image as the text should be a JPEG.

Any way you can split them in to seprate images?

Better still the text should ideally just be plain HTML text theres not really a need to use an image, except maybe for the main title.

You should be able to recreate the way the text appears to follow the line of the springs. Maybe by having the spring image as a background image? I'm sure it would be possible.

Junior WebHelper Joined: 27 May 2004 Posts: 9 Location: MN

Thanks for the additional input...I'm waiting to here from the company who set the stuff up to find out how to get to the code. I've just been going off their software and don't even know how, where or if I can get access to the code. New done this before so it might be right there and I just don't know it but I searched through every inch of the program I have and can't get to it.

Starting to get really frustrated with this and how they set a few other items up. I'll keep you updated when I get new info on the subject.