Image export problems

[Squeaky]

Is the image in even pixel amounts and is it located on the screen at even pixel amounts.

If the answer to either of these questions is no, this could be the cause of the problem.

I am currently using Xara Designer Pro X to create all the assets for a Wordpress website and have run into a problem.
It seems that when I export the bitmaps I get a lighter/antialiased edge. Normally this is not noticeable but it shows when the images are butted up to the footer.


The first image is trimmed in photyoshop and the second in Xara. Notice the lighter line where the bottom of the wine glass meets the footer.

This happens with either a JPG or a png exported without alpha and with minimise screen antialiassing checked. The graphics were trimmed by using a clip view with the clipping shape with no line of fill and even broken apart.
It took a while to discover that Xara was the culprit but trimming the assets in either photoshop or Fireworks does not give that error.
I'm hoping that this is something easy to fix or that I'm doing something daft but for now I am having to swap to another app to prepare my images.

[Acorn]

Squeaky, I think Xara is anti-aliasing to your current Xara background, which I am assuming is white.
Grab a jpeg of your WordPress footer or simply place a block of solid colour behind your trimmed image that matches your footer.
When you export the Xara image the coloured edge will then be better tuned to your footer detail.

Acorn

[steve.ledger]

Try using File>>New>>Blank photo document for you JPG editing/trimming.

Photo Documents

Sometimes it's useful to work on one photo alone, rather than as "objects on a page". This is called a photo document or "photo mode" in Designer Pro, and it behaves more like a traditional photo editor. You can create a photo document in a number of ways:
• Drag a photo file from your file explorer onto the title bar or toolbar of Designer Pro
• Select "File" > "Open" and select a photo file
• Create a blank photo document by selecting "File" > "New" > "Blank photo"

Photo documents are characterized by the following behavior differences compared to traditional Designer Pro documents:
• There is no visible white page. In fact the page dimensions are set automatically to match the photo plus any other objects you've added.
• Photo documents have a 1 pixel grid by default and snap to grid is turned on. This makes it easier to get pixel-accurate crop or clip regions.
• The Pasteboard (the area around the photo) is a darker color. This makes it easy to distinguish at a glance between photo documents and drawing documents.
• The document zoom is set so that the photo fills the view and the Photo Tool is automatically selected as the current tool.
• Dropping additional photo files on top of an existing photo just adds a new photo to the document instead of replacing the photo in its frame. And the view will zoom out so you can see the whole image.
• Images are not resized to be 500 pixels on import as they are in normal documents, but are imported at 1:1, so that at 100% zoom you're seeing the image at full size.
• The pixel smoothing options are altered. By default it selects the "Very high quality" display mode, which is best for images scaled down or zoomed out. It also has pixel smoothing turned off when zooming in, so you can see the pixels are very large zoom factors.
• If you've opened a JPEG photo file as a photo document, when you save changes your JPEG file will be overwritten. See Editing Photo Files below for details.

[Squeaky]

Is the image in even pixel amounts and is it located on the screen at even pixel amounts.

If the answer to either of these questions is no, this could be the cause of the problem.

Bizarre! I didn't write this but it may well be the solution. (I'm assuming a Mod edited me instead of replying)
I was about to say 'of course the size was whole pixels because I entered them to get the exact size' but on checking the document it seems that I must have accidentally re-sized by .8 of a pixel.
Changing to whole pixels seems to have cured the problem. Many thanks (the less adobe the happier I am)

[Squeaky]

Try using File>>New>>Blank photo document for you JPG editing/trimming.

Very interesting Sledger. I hadn't caught any of that. In this instance I'm not sure it would help as I am building and tweaking a mock up based on a number of screen caps. This certainly bears more research on my part as I am only recently starting to do slightly more in depth photo editing in Xara.
Thanks!

[steve.ledger]

Sounds to me like the blank photo doc is exactly the right place for your screen caps (bitmpas) mockup.

Photo documents are characterized by the following behavior differences compared to traditional Designer Pro documents:
• There is no visible white page. In fact the page dimensions are set automatically to match the photo plus any other objects you've added.

[Squeaky]

Looking at the docs and playing around a bit you are right. That is exactly what I need.
Many thanks for the tip!

[steve.ledger]

Cool

The Blank Photo doc is often overlooked, unfortunately.

[csehz]

Steve that is a great tip, thanks for it. Sometimes I still used to launch the old Paint Shop Pro version for simple tasks like resize, because was not aware that also in Xara can be done things without that white page