TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Subject:RE: Why JPGs for screen captures? test results From:"Gregory Sweet" <Gsweet -at- cdphp -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 26 Feb 2003 12:36:29 -0500
I just did my own test
I captured 5 screen caps of the same image with Snagit 6.1.0 outputting to file and saving formats PNG, GIF, JPG, TIF, BMP. Each image into Photoshop 7 and reduced the image size by 50%. All images were then place into a Quark 4.04 document (my DTP of choice). I placed the original, the photoshop-reduced image and a second original scaled to 50% by Quark side-by-side. I then printed on an HP4000 and eye-balled the results for clarity. I accept that there may have been techniques I could have applied in Photoshop when reducing the image sizes to obtain better results.
Quark reduced
PNG Quark cannont use PNG format
GIF Slightblur at 100%, text slightly blurred at 400%
JPG Slight Blur at 100% noticeable color-shift near all edges and some fields
TIF Slight text blur at 100%, no blur at 400%
BMP Slight blur at 100%, no blur at 400%
In print all images were identical in quality
In conclusion it would seem that when file size and image size are the top two concerns that GIF, resized directly with Quark would be the best solution for me.
I've made a PDF of the quark file if anyone is interested in taking a look.
LAST CHANCE for this steal of a deal! Purchase RoboHelp X3 by February 28
and receive $100 mail-in rebate and FREE WebHelp Merge Module ($339 value)!
RoboHelp, the Industry Standard in Help Authoring, has won over 55 industry
awards. For more information please visit: http://www.ehelp.com/techwr-l2.
"RoboHelp X3 is simply remarkable." - George Bell, Techno-Vision Systems
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as:
archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.