Expert: Scott Valentine - 3/5/2008

Question
QUESTION: Hi-I am trying to create a school yearbook using Adobe photoshop 7. After reading your blog-perhaps I am using the wrong software! My pages look beautiful while creating, and I can go back and look at my PSD and they look great-but when I save my documents as JPEG images and upload them-they look blurry. I am fairly new to PS, so there is a good chance I am not taking the proper steps. For example, last night I read about converting text to shapes, but things still look blurry. Can you offer a suggestion as to either proper steps to go through to use text on my pages and save, or a program better suited for this application? My deadline is coming and I have yet to figure this out! Thanks in advance if you can offer any advice!Laurie

ANSWER: Hi Laurie,

Photoshop is a great image editing application, but it really is geared towards graphics, not text. Your JPGs may be coming out blurry due to the compression or quality settings you are using.

If you are printing your yearbook, you should consider using InDesign or another page layout application. This will keep your text crisp, and will maintain your photo quality straight from Photoshop (without having to save to JPG, first).

However, if you are putting your yearbook online in some way, then the only thing I can suggest is changing your settings when saving as JPG. I highly recommend you use the "Save For Web..." feature rather than exporting to JPG from within Photoshop. Also, if you are including text, you may have to either increase the size of the text itself, or consider using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to position your text on a web page.

If you can tell me exactly how you are producing your yearbook (printing to an inkjet, sending to a publisher or producing a web page), and perhaps provide a link to some sample page, I will happy to see about offering more help.

Cheers,

-Scott

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Thank you. I am using windows XP.The production method is actually through Lifetouch Publishing Webease program. You upload the pages/pictures to their site and place them on the appropriate page. They need to be JPEG, but high resolution.Their site was very limiting in design, hence my idea of PS! I uploaded one of my pages so you could take a look at it. Please go to http://PWS.internet49.com/teehee/ll12.jpg (you may have to copy and paste into browser) for the lovelines page which definately shows poor text and because the pictures aren't of the highest quality on this page (old pics) I also uploaded one of my sports pages as well, in which pictures and text both appear poor quality to me. http://pws.internet49.com/teehee/7thbbsf.jpg
I am creating my pages 8x10 300dpi. The examples I sent are not created converting the text to shape. I just made the document, did not merge, flatten, rasterize or any of those other things. I used Papyrus size 30, crisp. I just saved as: JPG, I unchecked the ICC profile (on some-tried both ways) then used max quality (12) baseline standard format and saved. I can't tell you how much I appreciate your looking at this. Thank you! Laurie  

Answer
Hmm... it looks like the image is either being recompressed, or your Photoshop settings are off. Does the image look like this as soon as it comes out of PS? Or is this what happens to it when you upload to Lifetouch?

To be honest, I can't even read anything but the largest text. What you describe as your document settings look fine, so I'm not sure how this is happening. Can you zip up a sample PSD file that uses the same settings and text, and post it online?

I might have misunderstood your need, because I recommended Save for Web & Devices, which forces your document to retain the right pixel dimensions, but reduces it to 72dpi. Using Save As... and choosing JPG retains the 300dpi setting as well as the print and pixel dimensions. Try using Save As and Maximum compression to see if that doesn't solve the problem.

If this last trick works, please accept my apology for not understanding your request properly.

Let me know how this goes!

-Scott