Strange white spots on "pop-up" photos

[songman]

I have noticed that in some black areas of "Pop-Up" photos on my sites there are tiny white spots that appear . This is true even though the originals are perfect and they show after I import them and choose the "Pop-Up" feature no matter how I size them and regardless of what quality I choose when I save the original jpgs in PS elements.

To see what I mean, check out the photo with the two kittens on this page. www.namesandpoems.com/namepoems.htm. (The spots also appear in several of the names at the tops of several other "Name Poem" samples on this page.

Thanks, Steve

[steve.ledger]

Hi Steve, these are 'mosquitos' (compression artifact) which are a result of the JPG compression.



By default, WD applies a 25% compression (gives 75% quality)
You can reduce the compression by going to the Web Properties>>Image tab and increase the Quality slider to say 85%.



See if that helps

[jyoung]

FYI - White spots show in IE 7 but not in Firefox 3

[steve.ledger]

Identical here in all current browsers.
(My screen shot was actually taken while viewing with Google Chrome)

Here's the actual image:
http://www.namesandpoems.com/namepoems_htm_files/8.jpg

Note:
I was doing a side-by-side comparison, but I think Steve is currently re uploading, because all of a sudden 8.jpg is now "Samantha'

Note#2:
Steve has changed it to http://www.namesandpoems.com/namepoems_htm_files/10.png - looks much better Steve, but takes longer to show...

[songman]

Wow, you guys are really on the ball. When I went to that image tab and chaged compression and selected jpg at the same time, the spots did not go away.

However, these illustrations are not really photos as much as they are graphic images, so when I selected PNG and left the compression the same
(75), the spots vanished. Thanks so much!

Now I'm gonna tell 100 more people about XWD. Steve

[steve.ledger]

When I went to that image tab and chaged compression and selected jpg at the same time, the spots did not go away.

Steve could I impose upon you to attach the original? Pre XWD?
As always, my curiosity is getting the better of me

[songman]

Hi Sledger...here's the original

[steve.ledger]

Hi Steve,

Thanks for that.

Is the original 800pix? Or did you resize it for the forum?
Because I see there are quite of lot of 'mosquito' artifacts on (this) original to start with.

I'd ask why you don't just use the 800pix for your popup image instead of the default 500pix?

If the image you drop into WD is 800pix, and you resize it to say 200pix for the thumbnail, then tell WD to popup at 800pix and 'Let Xara Choose..' (in Web Image Type) - there appears not to be any change.

[songman]

Sledger, I thought that possibly the whole problem was due to the fact that I took that image from the image folder on my old FP website and it was resized for the web before placing it into that folder by PS Elements.

But even when I recreated the whole pic from scratch in MS Pub and saved it as a JPG (at 846 pixels by 673) and imported it in XWD, it still had those dots when I chose "let Xara select". They only disappeared when I chose PNG as image type. (I know it sounds confusing but I have to use MS Pub to drop the words onto my backgrounds.) Steve

[steve.ledger]

(I know it sounds confusing but I have to use MS Pub to drop the words onto my backgrounds.) Steve

You can create the entire graphic within Web Designer with much better results than using MS Publisher, believe it - it's true

If you also have Xara Xtreme, then you have even more power