Simple Question, I Hope…

I am editing some images my boss wants to put into a website. The images are from an application and not from the web. He did the originals by doing screen captures, highlighting the areas he wanted to accent in MS Paint, then he reduced the size of the images from 800 x 600 pixels to 640 x 480 pixels.

I don’t know if this will work, but you could try sizing them up and back down again (by in/decrements of no more than 10%) to remove some of the grain. I never tried that, though, but I figure it could work. It could also become horrible 😉

Most of the images came out ok, but some of the images that had gray in them went from a gray (hex CCCCCC) to a kind of sickly green (hex C0DCC0). When I take the greenish version into PhotoShop and check the color in ‘web safe’ colors, it comes up as gray (hex CCCCCC0): but under ‘all colors’ in the color picker, it comes up the sickly green (hex C0DCC0).

This happens because – according to the algorithm in photoshop – CCCCCC is the closest matching websafe color to C0DCC0. If the image you have is 8bpp, I suggest you up it to 24bpp before you start editing, then simply use the fill bucket (tolerance set to 0, and contiguous and anti-alias unchecked) and replace the color (this only works well if the color is not aliased, but if paint did the resizing, I doubt it will be). Select the color you want it to be (CCCCCC) and click anywhere on the image that has the wrong color. If you want this to happen to a certain section of your image only, use the selection tool first.

BTW, you might want to do this before trying the resizing trick I opted earlier, because this _will_ introduce anti-aliasing and is going to make your job harder.

So, what I am asking you, the experts, is why is this happening? Is it because he’s saving the screen capture in the wrong color settings (all colors) or is it a result of the size reduction – or is it a combination of the two? He asked me and I couldn’t give him an answer, though I am inclined to think it is because he didn’t save it in web safe colors to start with.

This I am not sure of. It might be because he saved the image as 8bpp colors (while the capture is 24bpp or more). I have no idea how Paint will handle that. This is often a problem with screencaptures (more so in the past than now), BTW: people running their computers at 16bpp, which is still somewhat "paletted" (i.e. limited in colors) which can run colors askew at times, especially when taking screenshots.

Sorry, I am lacking the educational background on the subject too, but hope this might help a bit.

Good luck,

—
Martijn
http://www.sereneconcepts.nl

Thanks Martijn!

I neglected to say that when he did the captures, he did them in a 24 bit ..bmp
format. At least now I have a clue as to what might have caused this.

Once again Martijn, thank you!

"Martijn" wrote in message

I am editing some images my boss wants to put into a website. The images are from an application and not from the web. He did the originals by doing screen captures, highlighting the areas he wanted to accent in MS Paint, then he reduced the size of the images from 800 x 600 pixels to 640 x 480 pixels.

I don’t know if this will work, but you could try sizing them up and back down again (by in/decrements of no more than 10%) to remove some of the grain. I never tried that, though, but I figure it could work. It could also become horrible 😉

Most of the images came out ok, but some of the images that had gray in them went from a gray (hex CCCCCC) to a kind of sickly green (hex C0DCC0). When I take the greenish version into PhotoShop and check the color in ‘web safe’ colors, it comes up as gray (hex CCCCCC0): but under ‘all colors’ in the color picker, it comes up the sickly green (hex C0DCC0).

This happens because – according to the algorithm in photoshop – CCCCCC is the closest matching websafe color to C0DCC0. If the image you have is 8bpp, I suggest you up it to 24bpp before you start editing, then simply use
the fill bucket (tolerance set to 0, and contiguous and anti-alias unchecked) and replace the color (this only works well if the color is not aliased, but if paint did the resizing, I doubt it will be). Select the color you want it to be (CCCCCC) and click anywhere on the image that has the wrong color. If you want this to happen to a certain section of your image only, use the selection tool first.

BTW, you might want to do this before trying the resizing trick I opted earlier, because this _will_ introduce anti-aliasing and is going to make your job harder.

So, what I am asking you, the experts, is why is this happening? Is it because he’s saving the screen capture in the wrong color settings (all colors) or is it a result of the size reduction – or is it a combination of the two? He asked me and I couldn’t give him an answer, though I am inclined to think it is because he didn’t save it in web safe colors to start with.

This I am not sure of. It might be because he saved the image as 8bpp colors (while the capture is 24bpp or more). I have no idea how Paint will
handle that. This is often a problem with screencaptures (more so in the past than now), BTW: people running their computers at 16bpp, which is still
somewhat "paletted" (i.e. limited in colors) which can run colors askew at times, especially when taking screenshots.

Sorry, I am lacking the educational background on the subject too, but hope
this might help a bit.

Good luck,

—
Martijn
http://www.sereneconcepts.nl