Hi all
Graphics files, how do I get my graphic files to display at pristine quality as I see on other Freeway sites. At the moment my images are ropy at best.
I’ve tried saving files as PNG, GIF and with continues tone JPEG but the displayed files in a browser are not at all sharp.
Any help is always appreciated.
Tony
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On 8 Jun 2012, at 11:36, Tony wrote:
Graphics files, how do I get my graphic files to display at pristine quality as I see on other Freeway sites. At the moment my images are ropy at best.
How are you bringing them into Freeway—are you using them at their original size, which, if they come from a digital camera, will be several dozen times too large? Ideally, you’d resize them to the same size in pixels that you want them to display on the page, or perhaps just a tad bigger. Reducing a photograph in size drastically always softens it somewhat, so a little sharpening doesn’t hurt when it’s reduced.
When I put photographs into Freeway I do this:
I’ve tried saving files as PNG, GIF and with continues tone JPEG but the displayed files in a browser are not at all sharp.
The different formats are good for different things. For a continuous-tone photograph, JPG is best. For a flat area of colour, such as you might get in a logo, GIF or an 8-bit PNG is best, but GIF is hopeless for continuous-tone pictures. Do be aware, though, that you should never JPG a picture that is already a JPG, as it will lead to a big quality loss; better to start with a non-lossy format like TIFF and put the TIFF into Freeway, letting Freeway turn it into a JPG, and adjusting the quality to suit. If you select the picture box in Freeway then go to the icon in the Inspector that looks like a little web page, you can choose what format Freeway will output the file as. If you choose JPG there, you can adjust the amount of compression applied with the ‘Quality’ slider, and if you go to the ‘View’ menu in Freeway you can turn on ‘Graphics Preview’ which will allow you to see, in real time, what effects your compression settings are having.
best wishes,
Paul Bradforth
Holiday in wonderful Cornwall:
http://www.stoneybeckcottage.co.uk
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Hi Tony,
Are you selecting any options in the inspector after you’ve imported the graphic? I think by default Freeway will display the image on your site as a Jpeg at 75% quality. Personally, I think this looks rough and certainly not as good as the original.
When I import anything (be it a PDF, AI, etc) I always select the ‘item output settings’ in the third ‘tab’ of the inspector (with your graphic selected) and select PNG, colours to millions. I realise this can sometimes result in big files so keep an eye on it but generally this is fine.
I also like to use the ‘export for web and devices’ from Photoshop and edit the quality of it there, before importing into Freeway.
Neil.
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Thanks for all your advice, I’m familiar with the file formats but not with the way Freeway converts the files for output.
Upon double checking I have the files set to GIF. The files are for Logos. The images still look a little ropy even though I’ve adjusted the setting within item output settings to:
Bilinear: Off
Dither: Off
Interlaced: Off
Anti Alias: set to Auto setting this to off seems to improve the quality a little.
I’ll give the Photoshop output a go and try 8-bit PNG.
Thanks for your help so far.
Tony
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the way Freeway converts the files for output.
As long as you stick to the guide that Paul outlined ie jpeg for continuos tone photos, gif for text and logos etc. etc. you shouldn’t go far wrong.
Just remember that if you are going to preprocess your images in Pshop to create web ready graphics (jpeg etc) then you do not want to jpeg them again by using FW to reprocess them.
You can use the pass-through option in FW to avoid this.
But when all is said and done if you start with a lossless format image in pshop (psd or tiff) and import into FW then the correct output type in FW will produce good results in the majority of cases.
David
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What about the colours? My image colours look fine in the original, whether jpg or tiff, and showcase makes a great slide show with the correct image colours. But if I import the same image into a graphic box, the colours are all washed out as if the contrast has been greatly reduced.
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Hello all
I used the ‘pass though’ graphics option in freeway so that the graphic files receive no further processing once imported into freeway. This works a treat the files are now seen as they should be 
Thanks for your helps guys
Tony
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On 9 Jun 2012, at 15:39, Tony wrote:
I used the ‘pass though’ graphics option in freeway so that the graphic files receive no further processing once imported into freeway. This works a treat the files are now seen as they should be
Good to hear Tony, but I reckon you’d be better off pursuing why they didn’t look good in the first place, and solving it. Pass-through is fine, and foolproof, but it takes away the ability to do all the stuff that Freeway does so well: cropping, enlarging, reducing, rotating, applying effects/fades, altering brightness, contrast, colour etc.
There was definitely something going wrong before, and if you can beat it, you can forget it in future. Pass-through works, but it’s fantastically restricting.
best wishes,
Paul Bradforth
Holiday in wonderful Cornwall:
http://www.stoneybeckcottage.co.uk
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Good to hear Tony, but I reckon you’d be better off pursuing why they didn’t look good in the first place, and solving it. Pass-through is fine, and foolproof, but it takes away the ability to do all the stuff that Freeway does so well: cropping, enlarging, reducing, rotating, applying effects/fades, altering brightness, contrast, colour etc. There was definitely something going wrong before, and if you can beat it, you can forget it in future. Pass-through works, but it’s fantastically restricting.
Like Tony, I cannot get single graphics to look correct unless I use pass-through. I tried an experiment on a new test page that has a plain white background.
I created three test files of the same image, all with reduced pixel dimensions. One JPEG, one TIFF, and one PSD. In iPhoto they look identical.
On my test page I created 6 graphic boxes, all the same size. Into three I imported the three files as pass-through. Into 3 I imported as non pass-through.
In freeway:
In the page view, all six look identical, all with greatly reduced contrast from the original as viewed in iPhoto.
In preview (and in browser preview) the pass-through JPEG looks as good it does in iPhoto. Four of the other 5 look the same as each other, all with greatly reduced contrast, same as the page view. The other one, the pass-through of the PSD file, does not display at all, except for an error message saying “Missing Plug-in.” Yet another mystery to solve!
I have graphics preview turned on in the view menu.
Could this be an OS problem? I’m using Lion OSX 10.7.4.
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Tony: I found an answer in the Softpress Knowledge base, here at
It’s colour space.
I was not using the sRBGB colour space. When I switched to that, the TIFF images worked fine.
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If it was the Tiff or trhe PSD that gave the missing pug-in it is because they are vnot web ready formats but Safari does a pretty good job at giving them a go. (Most likely the PSD)
David
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