Regarding image clarity

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Vanitha R
Posts: 19
Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2018 7:57 am

Regarding image clarity

Unread post by Vanitha R »

hi Team,

Which format is best to be used in Help and Manual.
My images are in jpg or png format. Viewed on it own its quite clear, but when published as part of web help it loses clarity.
How can I preserve the same clarity?

Regards
Vanitha
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Tim Green
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Re: Regarding image clarity

Unread post by Tim Green »

On modern computers this is normal. All images viewed in a web browser are now scaled up or down because nothing is ever viewed at 100% 1:1 pixel to pixel any more -- or almost never. There is a complex chain of different scaling operations involved: The zoom level of the browser; the defined size of the image in the browser; the resolution of the user's monitor; the zoom level of the operating system relative to the resolution of the monitor (high-resolution monitors now combine multiple pixels to create virtual pixels, and this also involves scaling) and other steps as well. When all these steps are combined your image will almost never be displayed at its "natural" size.

This works for high resolution graphics and photographs, but screenshots are almost always low resolution, and if you are working on a low resolution monitor you can't get high-resolution screenshots, because they depend on the resolution of the monitor. Any kind of scaling of a low resolution image will always make it look a little fuzzy.

If you can make your screenshots on a 4K or other high-resolution monitor you can insert them larger than you need them and use the "% of page width, maximum is physical size" option to get the display size you want. However, this will also make your output files larger, of course.

The file type you use is not so important, although JPG files are generally not good for screenshots and line graphics because their compression type creates artifacts at hard edges. PNG or GIF are better, but GIF will only look good if you can get by with not more than 256 colors. You can also use BMP and then set your image conversion options to PNG in Configuration > Publishing Options > HTML Help/WebHelp > HTML Export Options.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Vanitha R
Posts: 19
Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2018 7:57 am

Re: Regarding image clarity

Unread post by Vanitha R »

hi Tim,

Thanks, Will try your suggestion.

Vanitha
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