PLUGIN: ProJPEG…where to buy?

D
Posted By
DavidPwrMc
Jul 31, 2004
Views
561
Replies
19
Status
Closed
I was curious as to whether a Photoshop plugin called "ProJPEG" (version 5.2.1) might be a good tool to use for optimizing jpegs for the web. About the only place that I can find where you can actually "buy" it is at its home website for BoxTop Software (http://www.boxtopsoft.com/).

Last year, I tried to do just that… I submitted an order with the understanding that I would receive an automatically generated email with appropriate serial numbers for the products in the bundle I was interested in. Unfortunately, no email ever came. Additionally, I tried emailing them and got no response… I tried several phone calls and no one ever answered. So, there was no way to actually buy the product even though you could still download it from their site.

Their site is still up. You can still download files from their site. But I’m hesitant to try the purchase again unless I can be reasonably sure that I’ll be able to have some success with a purchase. (NOTE: I tried a phone call last night, no answer…. I also tried sending an email to their "info" address and it was returned to me via a MAILER DAEMON error — insufficient disk space, message could not be delivered. I guess too many other people have been trying to contact them too via email?) Maybe they went out of business and for some odd reason left their website up?

So, in the meantime, I’ve been trying to find an alternate location where the software might be sold. Thus far, I’ve had no success.

Does anyone have any ideas on how a copy might be acquired? Also, if anyone has used that software, can you offer any reactions as to how well it works?

Thanks very much for any info you can provide!

– David
Related Tags
plug-in

Must-have mockup pack for every graphic designer 🔥🔥🔥

Easy-to-use drag-n-drop Photoshop scene creator with more than 2800 items.

RL
Ronald_Lanham
Jul 31, 2004
David

IMO it’s a waste of money. Between PSCS’s Save for Web and IRCS’s Save for Web I can’t imagine that you would need any more.

Beyond the reduction/compression that the above use you would almost certainly begin to see a loss in image quality.
RL
Ronald_Lanham
Jul 31, 2004
In IRCS the Optimize palette > Quality &/or Blur can achieve excellent reduction of image file sizes. Unfortunately — as with all applications — it will be at the loss of definition at some point. Often on a monitor though it’s almost surprising how much you can lower the quality without noticing much of a difference.

A few years ago I tried Fireworks for a short time (some people that I knew were lauding its compression ‘abilities’ and how much smaller the file sizes were than could be achieved in either ImageReady or Photoshop).

I discovered — to the disappointment of my acquaintances — that what MM is not telling its users is that the default for FW is set to blur (in their euphemistic terminology they call it ‘Smoothing’) was set to a lower setting (i.e. more blurry than IR or PS is set to by default). Of course they were smaller file sizes! They were blurrier! (BTW I feel that Adobe’s labeling it Blurring is much more honest/accurate than MM’s labeling it Smoothing.)

Stick with ImageReady or Photoshop for saving your JPEGs for the web. You won’t go wrong.
D
DavidPwrMc
Jul 31, 2004
Ronald,

Thanks very much for your replies!

Currently, I’m still stuck with MacOS 9.2.2 (both here at home and at work) and am therefore using Photoshop 7.x. (Hope to upgrade to a new G5 later this year.)

May I conclude (from your discussion above) that the Save for Web feature from Photoshop (or saving out of ImageReady) for that version is *still* a superior way to go than another tool such as ProJPEG (or some other plugin)? I.e. is there any great difference in that area between PS 7.x and PSCS?

Background: I haven’t had the need to do web-oriented work (I’ve mainly been in the print advertising category, where high resolution is usually paramount) so I’m not that familiar with the best ways to process out graphics to make them (a) as small as possible and (b) to also still make them as sharp as possible. I’m facing a fair amount of that type of work coming up so I need to get "booked up" on this as soon as I can.

Thanks for any further info you can share on this!

– David
WG
Welles_Goodrich
Aug 1, 2004
David,

When PS7 was released, I did a good comparison of BoxTop Pro JPEG, Save As…, and Save For Web… Until that time, Pro JPEG was superior to native Photoshop JPEG compression in my opinion. My test was simple. I took an 800 X 600 PSD file and saved the file with each of those compression options. I tried to match the file sizes of the resulting JPEGs as closely as possible and then zoomed in on the images to compare artifacting. I was convinced that Save For Web… was significantly superior to Pro JPEG (to my surprise) and have not bothered using it since shortly after that test. I was also convinced that, at the same file size, Save For Web… was somewhat better than Save As…!

All of BoxTop’s software used to be very good in it’s time but newer software has made it obsolete, unless one is running old versions of Photoshop. Then there is the issue that no updates have been released for nearly three years and the company seems defunct, or nearly so.

Finally, there appears to be no difference between the Save For Web… results in PS 7 and CS. I’ve never used ImageReady for saving to JPEG.

Cheers!
D
DavidPwrMc
Aug 1, 2004
Welles,

Thanks for your reply! I appreciate your insight regarding the testing you did between PS and ProJPEG. Also, it’s good to know that information regarding Save for Web from PS 7.x vs PSCS.

I had concerns about the fact that BoxTop did not appear to have had any updates for a number of years for their product. If it were the case that ProJPEG was so good that it still did not need to be updated, then that would be a reason to still consider it. On the other hand, if it’s the case that output from PS itself now outstrips ProJPEG’s capabilities, then obviously it would become a "waste of money" to purchase that product.

In any event, I do appreciate your taking the time to comment on this subject!

– David
D
DavidPwrMc
Aug 1, 2004
To anyone who may care to comment:

Since it appears to be the case that ProJPEG is now an inferior option to the Save For Web feature in either PS 7 or PSCS, this would obviously suggest that PS is all one would need for web image production (as far as considering an add-on like ProJPEG is concerned).

My further question would then be: Is it also the case that both PS 7 and PSCS obviates the need for *ANY* plugins that deal with image compression? Or, is it the case that there are indeed other software solutions out there that augment or even exceed PS’s capabilities?

Any and all insights are welcome!!

As I said earlier, I need to find out info on this stuff as soon as I can… I’ve been searching in many different locations but haven’t managed to find a discussion of this nature (there may have been one right under my nose, but I obviously managed to somehow miss seeing it!).

Thanks!!

– David
RL
Ronald_Lanham
Aug 1, 2004
Glad to help.
Aug 1, 2004
David…

If you have any images that are "mission critical" I’ll tell you what I tell everyone:

Jump over to ImageReady for final compression and export.

Why?

Because within ImageReady you have access to some image adjustment tools that aren’t available in Photoshop’s "Save For Web" dialogue. This can be important if you preview the image with a simulated Windows monitor setting and discover that shadow detail is occluded. With ImageReady you can adjust the Gamma setting while viewing the compressed version. Finding a happy medium between Windows, Mac and uncompensated monitor profiles is much easier when you can make adjustments on-the-fly.

And you can’t do that in Photoshop’s "Save For Web" dialogue.
WG
Welles_Goodrich
Aug 1, 2004
Phosphor,

That’s a good tip which I’ve never heard before. Of course all my monitors are profiled with 2.2 Gamma so I don’t really worry about being off for Windows viewers and Mac people never complain that my images are too dark. That was the simple solution for me.
D
DavidPwrMc
Aug 1, 2004
Phosphor,

Thanks very much for that info. That would be something that I would likely need to do as most (but not all) of the images that I would need to produce would almost certainly end up on Windows monitors.

I’m appreciative to all who have responded and become part of this thread. This exchange of information has been enlightening and helpful. I also invite anyone else who may be checking this thread out to please chime in with anything you feel might be useful. I can use all the info I can get!!

– David
D
DavidPwrMc
Aug 1, 2004
Something else that I need to ask about (regarding preparing files for the web) would be concerning text. Does anyone have any tips regarding how to keep type legible when it goes way down in resolution?

What I’m referring to here is this: I will have to produce some graphics which are essentially ads that would be linked to e-newsletters. The ads would have an image component within them, but there would also be some typography. The typography would have a headline, body copy, and (here’s the part that’s driven me a little batty) some small disclaimer type. The small disclaimer type suffers greatly (and becomes very nearly illegible) whenever the ad file gets taken down to its final size.

The only two things I’ve been able to do to try to combat this has been to either (1) make the type for that disclaimer a little bit bigger to try to increase the "survivability" of that type at low res or (2) to do a "sharpening" of the type just prior to making the final jpeg.

Does anyone have a more technically proficient way of dealing with typography in general (and small text in particular)? Thanks for any and all replies!!

– David
AS
Ann_Shelbourne
Aug 1, 2004
David:

I have to do similar Ads. and find that I get the best results if I place the JPEG image, set the type and add Logos in an Illustrator document (correctly sized in pixels).

Then "Save for Web" directly from Illustrator.
D
DavidPwrMc
Aug 1, 2004
Ann,

Thanks for that insight! I have been so fixated on dealing with stuff coming out of Photoshop, that I completely forgot about the possibility of exporting out of Illustrator! I can see where there might be a better likelihood of "survivability" for small text when it’s exported straight out of Illustrator.

I will run some tests on this myself and see if it works for my particular situation. On the surface, I think that this might be a good way to go.

Again, thanks for your mention of this approach! I’m glad you commented on this!

– David
RL
Ronald_Lanham
Aug 2, 2004
David

FONTS <http://www.wpdfd.com/pixelfonts.htm> especially made for the web. (To be used as a graphic of course since no one will have them in their font folders.)

And if (for whatever reason) you wanted to stay in Photoshop and Save for Web with a 2.2 gamma simply create an alternate profile for your monitor for 2.2. Then you simply have to click on the 2.2 profile while you’re working on images for the web (if most of your viewers will be PC people… shudder… and switch back when you’re done.
AS
Ann_Shelbourne
Aug 2, 2004
I don’t use those "made for web" fonts (such as Emperor 8) as they are very ugly: they are made-up from separate disconnected bitmapped pixel dots.

If you set the type in Illustrator in pixels and make your document size the exact dimensions you require, also in pixels, (the ones that I make are required to be EXACTLY 311 pixels in each dimension) you will find that you can use whatever font you like and it will still be clearly readable in the final JPEG that you make by Saving for Web out of Illustrator.

This example used 8 pixel sized type—each line of which had to link to a different web-page <http://users.rcn.com/cameraart/Ann/Pawling-311x311px.jpg>
D
DavidPwrMc
Aug 2, 2004
Ann and Ronald,

Thanks for the additional info regarding fonts and the web! I will check both out and see how things work for me.

Ann, I must be doing something wrong with that output from Illustrator. Both of my attempts so far have yielded very bad results. (NOTE: I tried the Save For Web from Illustrator before reading your last post.) I’ve never had occasion to set type in "pixels" before so I presume it’s a choice in a pop-up menu in Preferences (or thereabouts)?

BTW… that sample ad that you provided a link for is very close in nature to what I will need to do. The main difference is that I will need only one line of text that’s really small… the rest will be bigger. However, I would still like ALL the type (or as much as possible) to be as clean as possible with the final jpeg file.

Again, thanks muchly!!

– David
D
DavidPwrMc
Aug 3, 2004
I believe it was Ronald who gave an opinion regarding Fireworks. Is there anyone else who can also offer an opinion regarding the relative merits (or lack thereof) of Fireworks? Also, curious to hear if anyone has any reaction regarding the selective jpeg feature that Fireworks has.

Thanks!!

– David
AS
Ann_Shelbourne
Aug 3, 2004
David:

You can change Illustrator’s Prefs, to use pixels for Type. Preferences/Type & Autotrace/ …

I have not used Fireworks: I use the Illustrator/Save for Web JPEGs in GoLive CS to add the Links and complete the interactive Ad..
D
DavidPwrMc
Aug 4, 2004
Ann,

Thanks for the follow-up regarding Illustrator! I will give that a try and see how things go.

– David

Must-have mockup pack for every graphic designer 🔥🔥🔥

Easy-to-use drag-n-drop Photoshop scene creator with more than 2800 items.

Related Discussion Topics

Nice and short text about related topics in discussion sections