Jpegs In Banner Help

voicelit

Trying to make a banner with text and a JPEG on a white background. Always seems to come out "dingy." Hard to describe : kind of washed out: just not crisp. I know that Gif. or PNG. would be better for text, jpeg better for text, but is thereany trick to get this to kind of work ?
Am wondering if I should try it with a different color background , maybe the white is too unforgiving. Except that white is the only color I can stand in the SmugMug selections. Other than black, but I don't want black for this project.
I'll try and add a photo of the problem here.
it's at :http://dotfur.smugmug.com/gallery/5714874_4HUBe/0/352664620_3aNLd
Any ideas ?

Marty ( voicelit, dotfur)
dotfur.com

digismile

I'm not really sure what you're referrring to, but I'll tell you what I see.

I don't think the issue is the background color, but the font and original font size. Even though Spooby is the largest font and word, I can easily see litte jagged steps on the curved areas. I would expect that your font should be able to produce much smoother edges at that size. So check the following:

1. Be sure to create your banner (and resulting text) at the desired final output (e.g. 603 x 180 in this case). Your text will suffer if it is scaled up or down later on. The html for the banner will then point to the original size for the banner.

2. Be sure that your font supports italics. Not all do.

If the banner looks fine in Photoshop (or whatever you are using) and not on the actual web page, I expect the problem is the size is being scaled up or down.

The same goes for the images. Re-size them to the correct size in your editor.

voicelit

Still not looking right
Still doesn't look right. Even in my photo viewer before uploading. You can see all the little "artifacts" ? -is that what they're called ? Jagged steps. No resizing - that I know of.
I'm making the banner in PAINT. Viewing it in Fast Stone. Jpeg. Even font without image, no italics looks wrong in jpeg. Looks fine in GIF, but I'd like the photo image ?

Geee ?

Marty
(dotfur.com )

digismile

i don't think Paint supports anti-aliasing (which helps the eye see a smoother curve at lower resolutions), so I'm pretty sure that this is your problem. Is this the only editor that you have?

ElginetPhotos

try Corel's Paint Shop Pro X. It's cheap, does some pretty good hi-res stuff as far as text with graphics goes.

It sounds like whatever you're making is defaulting to something like a 72dpi (which is what most of the programs start with unless you specify other).

Up the DPI to 300, then try it again whatever you were doing.

Good luck.