Not sure I understand Rosanne’s answer …
Can you please set through what you are doing. A possible problem is the text being resized after it has been rasterized. When you enter text in PS, it is normally vectored and is, therefore infinitely sharp.
When you enter text in PS, it is normally vectored and is, therefore infinitely sharp.
Only if output to a PostScript printer. Otherwise, ppi determines how sharp it is, just as if already rasterized.
Mac
Mac
What you say is, of course, true, but we are talking about screen output here. So PPI is essentially irrelevant. Only pixels matter – I can even set my type size in pixels.
My concern is that, if I want to make a Web banner say 700 pixels wide from some nice hi-rez graphics, I might work on it at a much larger size – say 7000 pixels wide. As I add my text, it is vectored until I flatten the image, after which I’d need to resize down to 700 pixels.
My view is that the resizing should be done before the text is added. Thus the vectors are resterized and not messed with any more.
All text looks fine on my monitors here at 1024 x 768 and 800 x 600. As clear as any other website.
Any particular text you’re concerned about?
Have you tried rendering the non-photographic areas as GIFs (in conjunction with the various anti-aliasing options) to eliminate artifacts from the JPG process?
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Regards
John Waller
yeah what text are you concerned about? None of it looks fuzzy to me.
I see quite a bit of digital noise around the letters and throughout the fields of color, similar to a badly compressed video file (like a remastered anime) or compressed digital camera images. The banners look as if they were photographed and compressed (or just compressed badly) and I would suspect the compression methods.
John and Pete,
Your comments are interesting because, frankly, the text looks fine to me too.
Unfortunately, the client isn’t seeing it the same way the three of us are.
I work on a 19 inch monitor at 1280 x 1024 resolution to maximize screen real estate. At this resolution, my text always looks good, but when I test the images at that disgusting 800 x 600 resolution, I get fooled into thinking the text looks bad myself.
The reason I posted the question is that I wondered if maybe someone knew a secret method to make all text in all typefaces on all monitors at all resolutions so that all viewers with all the various vision problems thought it looked great.
How’s that for a dream?!
Thanks to all of you for your help! I’ll keep chasing my dream!
C
Might I suggest SVG or Flash? Vector may be the only completely foolproof method for getting type to look good in all browsers with all color bit depth settings. Jakob Nielsen would have my head for saying this, but it sounds like usability may be secondary to appearance for your clients. Sorry.
Greg,
I’m actually going to try your suggestion just for the fun of it!
I use LiveMotion 2.0 for Flash animation (which should make Jakob smile) will your suggestion have the same results in Livemotion?
Also, I’d never considered using Livemotion to create static web graphics, and I’d never noticed it online (only because I never looked for it.) Is it at all common to use Flash or Livemotion to create static web graphics?
Does it have that significant effect on graphic quality to create static Flash (or Livemotion) graphics?
Thanks!
C
Chris
I know this sounds daft, but surely the text text looks so damn small on your hi-res 19" monitor, that you’d need a microscope to see the fuzz?
Colin,
Well, yes, at hi-res it looks pretty darn sharp, but when I switch to 800 x 600, obviously everything is magnified.
As I said in one of my postings above, to me it looks fine, but as the saying goes, "the customer is always right" no matter how much I argue, and she tells me it’s blurry on her iMac, and when I switched to 800 x 600, yeah, it looked pretty bad.
As a graphics professional, I’m sure you can relate to the frustration of sending proofs to clients who don’t have the kick-ass systems we have!
C
when I switched to 800 x 600, yeah, it looked pretty bad.
Are you viewing it at 100% magnification? If you have it zoomed to some odd %, say 66% or such, the text could look whacked out when it is not.
