Image preview is sharper than after publish?

[TobyH]

Hi all,

Back with some more image issues I'm afraid.

I'm setting up a wildlife photography site and image sharpness is extremely important for me. I want the images to be displayed exactly as I've processed them. So far, with help, I've got over the majority of the hurdles but the next one has come up.

When I preview an image that I want to use in the Bitmap Gallery, an image that I've placed there, the preview looks exactly as I want it. Perfectly sharp and exactly as I see it in my processing software. However, weirdly I've noticed that although I ensure that quality is 100% and that the image shows (as a pop up) at the same scale as I processed, it's losing some sharpness when I export and preview the page. I've unticked the boxes for "Smooth when scaled up". I have ensured that I have right clicked and optimsed for 100% quality too.

Appreciate any advice please. I'm not sure how I can demonstrate my issue but this is quite important as it's the main reason for wanting to set up my own site.

Thanks

TobyH

[TobyH]

Annoyingly I seem to have answered my own question again. All my pop up images have a 1 pixel border around the edge of the thumbnail to help it stand out, and presentation wise I think it looks better. It seems that Xara decides that actually this is included in the size of the image so if, as I have been doing, you say that you want the image to show at 1200px, it resizes it to 1194. This may seem insignificant but it actually softens the entire image. It seems to counter the effect you need to input the image pop-up width to 1206 to counter the effect.

If anyone feels masochistic, feel free to check it out at www.tobyh.myzen.co.uk - go to the Butterflies and Moths gallery and you'll see that there are two images the same (Orange Tip Butterfly) - the first image has been amended to show correctly, the second is without the extra 6 pixels "added". Use the gallery controls to ensure you view that at full size and check the detail in the wing on the near side or even the flower on the right to see what I'm referring to.

Bizarre. Is that the only way round - i'll be amazed if someone has worried about this in the past.

TobyH

[steve.ledger]

Toby, remember that Highslide popups will autofit browser windows when the browser window is smaller than the image resolution you have used for your popup.
Your butterfly images are quite large for web use (1206 pixels and 583kb) , too large really (read: slow) and even though I have a 24" monitor, I never run it a full screen (common amongst those with larger monitors). This means your images are not showing full size, therefore they are resized by the Highslide script and show much softer that you expect people to see them.
Also, providing the highest quality and at a printable resolution on-line is generally regarded as unwise.

[TobyH]

Sledger,

Thanks for the response. I was aware that the images were initially resized by the editor which is why I point to the gallery controls to view the image at the "correct" size. My initial point was that even when they are viewed at the full size, they were still being resized to 1194 pixels and image sharpness was being compromised.

I hadn't realised that the images were particularly slow when loading (they hadn't been overly slow on the machines I tested on) but that point coupled with your last comment means perhaps I should be rethinking the size and resolution I am offering.

Appreciate the advice

TobyH

[steve.ledger]

.....they were still being resized to 1194 pixels and image sharpness was being compromised.

The butterfly images I downloaded were 1206 x 860 pixels.



Anyone with a 1024x768 monitor resolution will never be able to see the full size unless they right-click and download the image to their HDD. Even then, they will have to scroll the image about.

May I ask what the point of your landing page is? The one with the 'Please click to enter' link?

I ask because there has been many comments on this forum about such pages being unnecessary unless they are to give the visitor some alternative options (flash version / html version and so on)

[TobyH]

Thanks again for your time Sledger.

The butterfly image that you have grabbed at 1206x860 is the size after I have amended the pop up size for that image. There are two images identical on that page as an example of what was happening. All other images have been amended so that they show correctly. The 1200x856 image (the second Orange Tip Butterfly image) is an example of the softer image.

My landing page, as you point out actually has no real function. I think I somehow regressed to my memory of early webpages and as I had that mentally as a starting point, I just went with it. Point taken though, it offers nothing extra, I should just scrap it and use the first page the menus appear on as my starting point.

Thank you.

TobyH

[gracehjs]

I have plenty of room on my monitor for the pictures and I can see what you mean, the second one is not as good as the first.