I use to make my pictures in clip2pic, so they are saved as jpeg's. To edit them I use Photoshop Elements 2.0. Unfortunately even simple editing operations cause a significant lack of the picture quality. For example:
- After every resizing (even if it is very slight, for example if I remove the yellow frame croppping the picture and the return to the previous size)
- After operations changing the perspective etc.
I didn't notice the lack of quality after changing contrast, saturation etc.
I described particular situations, but I am also interesting in more general tips how to protect the quality during the editing process.
An additional question: I make frames for my pictures pasting the picture on the bigger background (my pictures are 750x600, background is 800x650). I suppose this method increasing the file size unnecessarily. Am I right or not, and maybe could you give me any tip to make frames in another way? :)
Any time you resize or distort an image, it will degrade. Can't be avoided. The only way to avoid visible degradation is to start with a much bigger source image than you have at present.
Also, your JPEG compression settings play a BIG part in producing sub-quality images. I tend to avoid anything less than 90% quality and bedamn the file size.
When you play with the colour settings, you are altering the colour range of the image and could be pushing it past the visible gamut of what's displayable, causing the computer to "best guess" the colour, which can cause banding and distinct breakups between colours.
If you want to edit screenshots, you should not save them as JPG, even if you set a high quality. JPG is a lossy format, so although the loss is not that large if you use a quality setting of 99%, it's still there. I don't know if Clip2Pic allows other formats, but I use IrfanView, where I select BMP as output format. This way, I maintain the original quality, and saving the file as JPG is always the last step. Also, when posting screenshots of application windows (i. e. for a tutorial), you should use GIF or PNG, since they are far smaller and better, even with 256 colors. With JPG, text and the appearance of menu buttons etc. always tend to get a bit blurry.
@callgrafx,
Thank you very much for such a quick answer!
QuoteAny time you resize or distort an image, it will degrade. Can't be avoided.
Of course I understand it.
QuoteThe only way to avoid visible degradation is to start with a much bigger source image than you have at present.
So, instead of making 750x600 picture in clip2pic (I can set 800x600 as a limitation) I should to make the picture as big as possible (for example 1600x1200), make all editing operations and at the end resize it to the needed size?
Can I limit the quality degradation changing jpeg settings before saving? When I want to save a picture, I see the window with some parameters (some of them I don't know - for example the number of scanning steps) - how to choose them to achieve a good compromise between the quality and picture size?
At the end - so if I want to achieve a really good quality, should I make the picture as PNG using the ingame tool, edit it and then save as jpeg (to show it on the forum)?
Edit: Thank you Andreas, unfortunately clip2pic doesn't allow other formats. Also thank you very much for your tip about posting pictures of application windows. I always had problems with it! :thumbsup:
Yes, the in-game PNGs should serve well as resource files - or you can use IrfanView, as mentioned before. Once it's set up, it's very convenient and easy to use.