I am running Mac OS X on a MacPro. I need to get InDesign pages to gif format so they can still be clearly read. I’ve exported the InDesign CS3 pages to eps using the best, highest resolution settings and they are very legible and clear in Photoshop CS3. When I Save As to gif format, still in Photoshop CS3, they become fuzzy, very light, and hard to read. I think I’ve tried everything, or nearly everything, in Photoshop but I must have missed something. Can anyone give me a hint how to keep the clarity when I go from eps to gif?
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For what purpose are you using these files? Files saved as .gifs should be reserved for Web use, and for type, line graphics, and non-photographic images. If you need sharp type and images and a small file size for multiple pages, .pdf would be the way to go.
For what purpose are you using these files? Files saved as .gifs should be reserved for Web use where there are type, line graphics, and non-photographic images. Don’t use .gif for printwork. If you need sharp type and images and a small file size for multiple pages, .pdf would be the way to go. For example, I do ads and display work as PDF/X-1a files, a format which gives very high quality for print reproduction with surprisingly small files.
The files are definitely not being used for print work. The files are being used as part of our proprietary software. When the clients enter data and then click on an icon, they get the gif picture corresponding to that data. I don’t know if they must be in gif format – I’ll have to ask our programmer if she can use pdf files instead.
A clarification – the gif file corresponding to the data is a picture of a page of text with one graph on it. I wanted to be clear that it is not a gif of a picture.
For a web app? If they need to read it through I suppose. As a thumbnail I would say absolutely not. At any given single viewing size, a GIF will outperform a PDF every time. I agree, if Marcy can create very lightweight PDFs, they might be preferable (but that’s not going to be her decision anyway).
OK, I stand corrected. I’ve got some problems with font management on my machine which have skewed my feelings toward in-browser PDF. Neil is correct, there’s a ton of advantages to PDF in this situation.
I just spoke to the person who wrote the software and she used Digital Fox Pro (I hope I wrote this correctly) to write it. She said that Digital Fox Pro wants a picture in this situation and is not set up to open a pdf using Acrobat Reader. Also, the owner of the company does not want pdf because she does not want anyone using the software to be able to get to the text or print out the information – it is for viewing on a PC only.
So I’m not sure where that leaves me. The eps files from InDesign are perfect but they are too big to use. I’ll definitely try the dithering and save for web option – we did not think of that.
J – you mentioned font management. We used Optima and Palatino as the fonts for the document. Do gif files have issues with certain fonts? I could be way off base with this question but I’m really grasping at this point because I need to get this to work and the files have to look professional.
there’s a ton of advantages to PDF in this situation.
Unless the programmer does not want to mix in PDF display with their app.
If a 256-color GIF file is produced at the required output resolution, there should be absolutely no issue with text being ‘fuzzy, very light, and hard to read’. If this is a sub-pixel rendering issue, increase the size of the font and experiment with disabling font smoothing.
I was actually turning the files to grayscale – could that be an issue? They were black and white pages even though the eps files opened as RGB in Photoshop.
J,
What is the page that you included in your last post?
What is the page that you included in your last post?
Just a vector PDF turned to Gif. Nice and sharp, readable, etc by my paltry standards.
Use save for web and don’t bother converting to gray. Make sure your blacks are 0,0,0 and that dithering is turned off. IF they’re black and white, you can probably get away with 16 colors. Depends on what you mean by that (grays?). If a true black and white, you can probably get away with eight colors for anti-aliasing. Make sure you rasterize your PDF with that turned on.
I don’t think they’ll be much advantage to PNG8 in this situation, unless your programmer says so. PNG24 will undoubtedly be better quality-wise, but I would think the advantage will be in the area of 1-3% (whatever that means), and the size difference is something like 5-fold. If it’s a gray PDF, I would think a 256-color GIF (total overkill) would be identical to PNG24, but half the size.
The pdf is only an option if you don’t mind that many users/vistors will not see it in the webpage at all but have to download it to be able to see it. You can never be sure that the visitors webbrowser is set to show the pdfs. If it is not, they instead get a download and won’t see it in the browser.
I agree. Webmasters or designers whose Website links immediately start downloading PDF (or other) files — sometimes quite sizable — without a head’s up ought to have their servers amputated.
