Digital Workshop

Hi Everybody

I recently had a problem with importing some black outline coloured graphics - line drawings etc as images. The file format i used was PNG. The lines broke up especially lines drawn at an angle. I cannot make the lines too thick to stop the breaking up because they will overpower the coloured drawings. I do not know whether its ia anti-liasing problem or something else eg file format.

These graphics are drawn in Illustrator CS3 and exported as PNG. I also imported them into Photoshop and converted them into PNG there. Did not solve the problem. The problem gets worst if you reduce the size of the graphics in Opus. The smaller the size the more the lines break up around the graphic.

I have tried BMP format but does not seem to help the problem very much.

Does anybody have any suggestions as to which file format is best to use in Opus and are there any ways of improving the quality of the graphic. The graphics look great in illustrator.


Steve A

XP using Opus Pro 6.0

Steve,

When I've used Corel Draw/Suite, I have had very good luck with exporting .jpg and .png (including transparent areas on png). There was a menu item there for "Export for OFFICE" or similar wording. It made the difference for me. Maybe CS3 has some similar compatibility selection?

Good luck.

Thanks for your quick reply. Illustrator CS3 does have the same menu item. 'Save for Office'. So I will try that and see whether the quality improves or not. I will let you know.

Thanks again

Steve

Resizing bitmaps will always introduce errors of one kind or another - it's inherent in the way the data is represented.

If you are exporting vector images to bitmaps, you will get the best quality if you export at exactly the size you are going to use them at in your Opus publication. Make sure you set the Opus image objects to Fixed or Centred to avoid any resizing.

One thing you can do to improve the quality of resized images is to turn on Bilinear Resampling for the image (on the image tab for each object, also you can turn it on by default in the preferences). This is a higher quality resize that will help with the artefacts you are seeing

Hi Duncan

Thanks very much for your suggestions. I will try that as the savings/exporting as Office in Illustrator did not seem to improve the quality very much in my case.

Thinking about it I suspect converting graphics at full size into a PNG bit map graphic and then reducing the graphics in Opus to fit a particular area as you say is the cause of the problem. I will experiment with the same graphics and see what happens. Preplanning the graphic size will hopefully be the answer.

Thanks again.

Regards Steve A

Hi Lar

As you can gather by my previous reply that save to office did not work. It automatically converts the postscript graphic to PNG file format. I then imported this into Opus. No improvement.

One question I am not certain about is that the graphic is done on a Mac and then copied to

Windows XP. It should not affect the quality of the graphic but...........

Regards Steve A

Steve

While I would tend to think the same... that graphics on a Mac come over to Windows pretty clean these days.

You could try opening the graphic in a Windows application first before using in Opus.

For example, Irfanview is free or cheap. You could try "Resize/Resample" image in Ifranview, even change the DPI to much higher. There are selectable options for "resample" filter process and quality. (other options possible... when SaveAs .jpg, for preserving quality etc).

As a curiosity, what would happen if on your WinXP machine you found some image on the internet and used that jpg or other in Opus the way you want to use your originals? (as a test only) If they do not 'degrade', I'd say you focus on the source or the conversion issues.

Here are some other considerations to add to those already provided:

1: If the graphic is created in CS3 and is in vector format why not export to EMF and import into Opus as a vector object via the Import Vector item on the Draw menu. You will need to remove graident fills and it won't work if the object is too realistic or otherwise too complex but it will provide the outline as a hairline (at a minimum) which Opus can then maintain.

2: Try reducing/increasing the size of the image in CS3 before exporting it to PNG and ensure the export process doesn't produce the file at too large or too small a size and resolution. (You don't need 300dpi for screen display for example). The objective should be to create the image at the size (in pixels) you need unless the publication is going to be scaled very significantly. (Modest scaling is handled well in Opus using the Bilinear resampling Duncan mentioned).

Hope this helps.

Paul Harris

CorelDraw is by far the best graphics tool for working with multimedia, it offers a host of export options and their EMF and PNG are the best on the market.

Xara is another option but not much experience myself. Try CorelDraw.

i still use corel draw, but i have started playing with the open source inkscape application recently. very powerful and easy to use, also exports to emf for opus.

it handles svg graphics and this is the apps native format, works good so far.
http://www.inkscape.org/

If you like Open Source,

Check out the entire creative suite replacement packages.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/say-goodby ... ive-suite/

Mack

I am not a heavy graphics user, but I've done enough to experience some of the issues raised in this thread.

An excellent Open Source application is The Gimp which seems to be designed as a PhotoShop competitor.

I've tried a range of other apps, but recently returned to using Paint Shop Pro -- but version 5 rather than the current version. I made the backward move because I found less hassles with v5.

HTH