Working with Optimized Images ("Pass Throughs")

Documentation Freeway
1

When you import a photograph (or graphic file with lots of colors) into Freeway the default behavior is to reduce the quality of the image to 75% and the pixels per inch to 72ppi (the web standard).

If you’ve already optimized your images in your favorite graphics application then you’ll wind up degrading your image more than necessary. In this case you have two options:

1. Import the image as a "pass through" image. A pass through is an exact copy of the original image you imported, no change can or will be made to the quality, size, or any aspect of pass through images.

To import as a pass through:

  1. Select your graphic item
  2. Use Import from the File menu to open the Import dialog
  3. Select the image you want to import
  4. Check the checkbox labeled Pass Through

Another way to use pass through images is to:

  1. Draw an HTML item
  2. Use Import from the File menu to open the Import dialog
  3. Select the image you want to import. Because the item is an HTML item, the Pass Through option will be checked automatically
There are a few points to consider when using Pass Through images.
  • You can’t crop a Pass Through image in Freeway so this will need to be done beforehand in your graphics application
  • Freeway will not optimize the image at all (like it does with normal image import methods), so if the image is very large it may be too large and slow to load when used on the web
  • Because Freeway Pro allows you to import many different file formats, it means that you can import files like PDFs, .psd, TIFFs, etc. which are not web-compatible file formats. It is important to save the images beforehand as either JPEG, GIF or PNG files - otherwise browsers will not be able to display the images

2. Set the quality of the image to 100%. You can do this for individual images or all images you import (Pro only). To change individual images select the graphic containing the image and move the Quality slider in the Inspector palette's third panel (Item output settings) up to 100%. To change all images that are imported open the Document Setup dialog from the File menu and in the Graphics section turn the Quality slider up to 100%.