I am having a very frustrating time getting my logo to work on a page (my first one) I’m trying to build in Freeway pro 5.5. The image can be seen here:
I can successfully upload it to photo bucket, and it looks okay.
When I put it in the freeway page builder, it also looks okay.
When I go to Preview mode, or launch it in the browser, it looks terrible! I have a screenshot link here (i am totally just trying to learn the software, so my page is really just a jumbled mess of experimenting):
The logo is fuzzy, and blurry. I am using web safe colors, and “saving for web” in photoshop to get a good balance of size and quality, and you can see by the first link that the exact same file inserted in Freeway Pro looks geat when its just uploaded straight to photobucket.
Does anyone have any suggestions on what Im doing wrong?
Rather than a screenshot - can we see the page online?
If you have “Saved for Web” in PS then use your image as a Pass-through in FW. When you import there is an option down the bottom left of the dialogue box, check it, but your image will need to be the correct size in PS as you wont be able to alter it in FW.
If you look in the Inspector palette when you select a graphic item (not a pass-through) there are various options to generate the final file output.
Here you can choose the type of image to output - png, gif, jpeg etc and also the quality/compression of the image. These parameters can also be set as a ‘standard’ value in File>Document Setup under the Graphic Tab.
Often a tweak in here will give you what you want in terms of quality etc. FW will guess what file type you want to output but it doesn’t always get it right and you might get a jpeg (automatically) when you wanted a png but it can be changed to suit individual requirements.
Just as an aside - if you leave your original file as a PSD you have the advantage of doing all scaling, cropping, compression etc within FW and leave your PS layers intact.
This means that you don’t need to finalise your layout in FW before creating your images in PS.
it seems that some things work better as PNG and some JPG.
For example, the logo issue was solved by telling FW that the image was a PNG (or I thought thats what I was doing), before u pointed it out, it was set to JPG, and I was using a file that was a PNG.
but then I made some background elements in PS that had shadows, and saved them as PNG files. Setting the Graphic Item to PNG, the drop shadows came out very grainy, but setting it to JPG (even though the file was a PNG) seemed to fix it. But it seems that you globally set the file type, as when I changed it to JPG, the background elements shading/shadows came out smooth, but the logo had the problem again.
So it seems that if I could set the logo in FW to be PNG, and the background elements to be JPG, I may be set, but it seems that it will only allow me to set it to be one or the other globally for the whole project.
I really need to use these as PNG files, and not selected as Pass-Through, as I need to be able to edit their scale in FW.
The secret to using PNG with things like drop shadows is to set Colors to Millions. Otherwise, you’re limited to 256 colors like a GIF and things may not look very good.
Generally speaking, JPEG should only be used for photographs or other things with a lot of colors, like scans of paintings and the such. Things with clean lines, text, or very few colors (like logos) should usually be GIF or PNG, and gradients, semi-transparent objects, and things with shadows (especially if the background should be transparent) should be PNG with Millions of colors.
There are exceptions, of course, but this is a good rule of thumb.
Katie Wagner
Technical Support Operative
Softpress Systems Ltd
On Oct 30, 2011, at 7:31 PM, Chad S wrote:
it seems that some things work better as PNG and some JPG.
For example, the logo issue was solved by telling FW that the image was a PNG (or I thought thats what I was doing), before u pointed it out, it was set to JPG, and I was using a file that was a PNG.
but then I made some background elements in PS that had shadows, and saved them as PNG files. Setting the Graphic Item to PNG, the drop shadows came out very grainy, but setting it to JPG (even though the file was a PNG) seemed to fix it. But it seems that you globally set the file type, as when I changed it to JPG, the background elements shading/shadows came out smooth, but the logo had the problem again.
So it seems that if I could set the logo in FW to be PNG, and the background elements to be JPG, I may be set, but it seems that it will only allow me to set it to be one or the other globally for the whole project.
I really need to use these as PNG files, and not selected as Pass-Through, as I need to be able to edit their scale in FW.
To change the output for a single image, select that image and go to the Item Output Settings tab of the Inspector; you can change the settings from there and it will only affect the selected image.
Best regards,
Katie Wagner
Technical Support Operative
Softpress Systems Ltd
On Oct 31, 2011, at 5:01 AM, Chad S wrote:
Ahh, I got it to set the colors to millions in FW!
Now, if I want to bring in a JPG for a photo, how do I set just the one image to JPG, it seems to want to set the file type globally in FW.
