Export advice please....

[dafipp]

I haven't been entirely pleased with the results of my exports for the gallery. Can y'all (I'm Texan you know) give me the settings that you generally use for exporting?

What page settings do you work with to start the pictures? Mine seem to want to overfill the browser.

How big is too BIG for the file size?

Thanks,
Dale (the kid) [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

[dafipp]

I haven't been entirely pleased with the results of my exports for the gallery. Can y'all (I'm Texan you know) give me the settings that you generally use for exporting?

What page settings do you work with to start the pictures? Mine seem to want to overfill the browser.

How big is too BIG for the file size?

Thanks,
Dale (the kid) [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

[Renaud]

I sugesty you build your image with the "web 750x600" template. When exporting, look at the "Bitmap size" tab : there you should use 96dpi, or choose manualy the desired size in pixel (then, don't care about dpi... this is meaningless for web images, just consider the ration imageSize/pageSize).

Usually, a bitmap such as photo or illustration must be under half the page in width.

For the file size, there's just one law : smaller it is, faster it load. Weight for pictures and photos may be between 15-30 Ko. More is only acceptable if the picture is the main subject of the page, and that's the point : the more your "picture" is important for one page, the more it can weight in the total weight of the page.

Graphics used for the layout of the page are generaly pieces of 1-5 Ko or less.

A single picture heavier than 70 Ko should be exception, an so should be total page weigh greater than 100 Ko.

I repeat: that's a point of view, not a strict rule [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Renaud

[Ross Macintosh]

Most of the time the page size I work on is irrelevant. If I'm exporting to post here or in the gallery - here's what I do: First, I almost always draw a rectangle (or square) around what I want the export to be. It is an old web-graphics trick to give that line a thin black line weight. It can make your export look crisper. (It isn't appropriate to all exports - often I give the rectangle no line colour). Of course (unless it is behind everything else [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]) the rectangle should have no fill. With only the rectangle selected I export. In the export dialog box I make sure it is a jpg (usually) and then set the bitmap size. I try to avoid anything larger than about 640pix for these forums. As the size of the image effects the file size - if I'm contributing to a thread with other images or that is likely to get other images, I think about producing the image from 450 to 550 pix wide. I pay no attention to the dpi. It will change with any inputting of your desired image width.

Next I go to the options tab to get to the image quality slider. Each image I export has different settings. I use judgement as I look at the how many kb the export will be. If I'm posting to a thread with lots of pics I try adjusting the slider to have an export maximum of say 40k. If it is going in its own thread and unlikely to have other image postings I'll go considerably larger -- say 65 to 75kb. Sometimes bigger but I do try to remember some forum members have slow internet connections.

When exporting I always click the 1:1 button next to the preview pane. It allows you to see how your results will look in your browser.

Last step is to click the export button.

Regards, Ross

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

[dalel]

&nbsp
I can relate to your export problems.

The problem with a few of your latest images, is the gradual blending of two colors, which causes banding of colors. This banding is much more noticeable when you apply a gradient effect between two colors over a distance.

Image optimizers used a process called dithering to handle such gradual gradations. Dithering is essentially the placing of two colors next to each other to simulate a third color. When you are exporting a gif from Xara X, there is in the dialog box, an entry for dithering, which offers two choices, none or error diffusion. Error diffusion is what you should use to keep the banding effect to a minimum, when exporting in the gif format.

The jpeg format does not offer dithering in any of the image programs I have used. While jpeg is supposed to be able to use many more colors than gif, I find that it causes banding as much as the gif format, sometimes even more with certain colors.

Below are a some samples I did in Xara X to show the handling of gradations in exporting from Xara X. I did all of these as 200-step blends.

And by the way, when you originally posted your first offering to the 2D challenge, you used the jpeg format, and compressed the image too much, which caused what are called jpeg "artifacts", squiggly looking areas. In the export dialog box, under Options/JPEG Quality, play with this value to find the best compromise between file size and quality. My basic rule of thumb is to try to keep images I post to 50k or less, but with some images that just isn't possible without the quality suffering.

Dale

http://www.eyesitewebdesign.com/colorbanding.jpg

Why, I’m afraid I can’t explain myself, sir, because I’m not myself, you know...
- Lewis Carroll

[dafipp]

for the help guys. I was reading some of the online manual today and stumbled on to a section that discussed this issue too. I guess I will have to play with it and keep notes when I find the settings I like. I really appreciate your input and I plan to use your advice.

Dale Fipp...