Removing jpg fuzz

[BobInce]

> Customers will supply jpgs (and that's all they have)

Ain't that the truth. "Can you supply me with a copy of your logo?" - "Sure! Here's a Word file containing the same grainy 21x13px JPEG saved from our web site!" Right, thanks...

[handrawn]

or here's a print out of the word file, sorry its a bit crumpled, its been in my back pocket........

[David O'Neil]

Just so it is conscious, you can also simply draw freehand shapes over the speckles in Xara, filled with the page background color. It is a lot easier than the MS Paint alternative, but it may not be as easy as some of the other methods.

[gwpriester]

Welcome to the Xtreme Conference TL@ITS

The fuzzy edge you are referring to is called anti-aliasing and it is what bitmaps use to avoid another long forgotten buzz word, jaggies.

Anti-aliasing actually creates the impression of a sharper image not a fuzzy one when viewed at the proper resolution.

If you need to convert the bitmap to a vector object, which is then resolution independent and you can scale it up and down with no distortion, then you can either use Xara's drawing tools to recreate the image or use a service such as Vector Magic where you can upload your grayscale bitmap and get a really excellent vector version.

This site used to be free but they are now charging for the service.

Xara has a bitmap tracer as well but it does not do as accurate a job unless you are working with a high resolution image and you are willing to work with it a bit.

Paul Solderholm did an excellent Guest Tutorial for doing a bitmap trace which you can find here.