Expert: Glen Demers - 1/7/2011

Question
QUESTION: Hi Glen,

Happy New Year to you buddy. Now from this image that I am sending you, yes I even tried and succeeded from the question that you answered on putting images in text. Well, I even tried with a shape as from this image on the American Flag that I made from scratch well I placed it in the star shape, well as you can tell by the red circles that I placed on one side of star and the other side that there is a rough spot and it is all over the star. The question that I am asking you here is how do I smooth the edges? When I first made the shape of the star I went to layer and then rasterize the star and it made it smooth, now I can not get it to do again. How would you get the edges smooth, again? I hope you just understood what I just asked and explained? I will also be asking you the same thing, but with the text, well this would be a special font that you would have to make an image out of to place, since fonts are different on the computer that people do not have, so, well I think you know what I talking about. I will send it to you later unless you. Oh what the double h tooth picks I will send it to you all in one image. This one is an image of the U.S.A. with the American Flag with stroke around the letters and as you can see too with the red circles around two of the letters that it is rough just like the star, even with the stroke it make it look like, well what you see and it stands out a lot the rough edges on the letters with the stroke around the letters. So as of this image that I am sending you I figure To get these  questions answered, cause All Experts only has one image for you to send well with some one such as my self asking an expert like you a question or two. I also figure on doing it all in one shot. I hope you can answer them. I believe you can, with the help that you gave me in the past, I am asking you again can you? Well, help me with this one I mean two. Thanks again Glen as like all ways.

Sincerely yours,

Martin

P.S. Glen I do not know if you can notice this, but the blue with the stars in the star image and the text U.S.A. does it look kind of distorted to you, I mean not clear, I also mean something around the white stars in the blue area in the star and text U.S.A.? Maybe a bit blurry and distorted like thing around the stars in the blue area, what can you suggest? The image that I am sending you is in a jpeg image format. I tried gif and png, what would be the problem here I would like for you to help me with this one as well and once again thank you, Glen.

ANSWER: Hi Martin,

Happy New Year. The ragged edges appear when you rasterize an object because you are converting the shape from lines to pixels. You are turning vector art into bitmap art. Vector or line art such as Photoshop shapes and Adobe Illustrator files are created with lines, photos and bitmap images are composed of pixels. When you enlarge a line it is still a line and will print at whatever resolution the output device is. When you enlarge a bitmap you increase the size of the pixels the image is composed of and make the jagged edges more pronounced.

You can reduce the jagged appearance of angled lines and curves by increasing the resolution of your image before rasterizing the shapes.

For more information on resolution, click here; http://www.bestprintingonline.com/resolution.htm

Hope this helps,
Glen Demers
Adobe Certified Expert, Photoshop 7
Prepress Technician, Best Printing Online
www.bestprintingonline.com

For more Photoshop tips please visit our help pages here: http://www.bestprintingonline.com/photoshop.htm

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

QUESTION: Hi Glen,

Thank you for getting back to me. Though I do understand what you are saying, also though I did not enlarge the image of the star and the U.S.A. I understand that if I did enlarge the image from a smaller size without having the original large size, yes I would get the pixels. And when I did write you and after I sent it I was thinking it had to be the difference between rasterize verses vector. So, what I am now asking is how do I get rid of the ragged edges? I believe and I think there will be no problem if I get the image like the star and the U.S.A. with smooth edges instead of ragged edges that the printing will be good as what I see is how it will be when I print it out, but at this time I do not want to print the images out and they will look like they are now, so I want to work on this first before moving on.

So, I think if I can switch from rasterize to vector I will have something to work with, but would and how can I do this? Making or having the image from raserize to vector?

I do not know if you still have the image that I sent you, but if you remember looking in the blue area of where the stars are that it looks, well not a solid blue like there are spots, but I did ask you about it in the first e-mail to you on this matter. Wait I have the question that I asked about this and here it is.

Glen I do not know if you can notice this, but the blue with the stars in the star image and the text U.S.A. does it look kind of distorted to you, I mean not clear, I also mean something around the white stars in the blue area in the star and text U.S.A.? Maybe a bit blurry and distorted like thing around the stars in the blue area, what can you suggest? The image that I am sending you is in a jpeg image format. I tried gif and png, what would be the problem here I would like for you to help me with this one as well and once again thank you, Glen.

That was from the original mail that I sent you. Thanks again, Glen.

Martin

ANSWER: Hi Martin,

The image uploaded was at 72dpi, which is fine for the web but not for print. You need to be working at 300 dpi or more for smooth edges. To preserve the vector shapes and masks you need to save as an Photoshop EPS file and check preserve vector data. Save as a Photoshop file (.psd) as well because the eps file will rasterize itself if you open it in Photoshop.

The artifacts around the stars in your image are either caused by the jpg compression. This can be minimized by saving as a tiff or psd file, jpg is a lossy compression scheme which means that image quality degrades every time you save as a jpeg. Or it could just be the anti-aliasing. Anti-aliasing is a process that photoshop uses to makes edges appear smoother. When you use the type tool you can set anti-aliasing to Smooth, Crisp, Sharp, Strong or None. If the stars were created with a dingbat type font, you'll have to play with the settings to determine which works best for the font at the size you want.

Photoshop is made for image editing and a simple, solid color vector graphic, like the image uploaded, might be better done completely in Illustrator.

Hope this helps,
Glen Demers
Adobe Certified Expert, Photoshop 7
Prepress Technician, Best Printing Online
www.bestprintingonline.com

For more Photoshop tips please visit our help pages here: http://www.bestprintingonline.com/photoshop.htm

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

QUESTION: Hi Glen,

Thanks for getting back to me. Now, I have a question about this, though I agree jpeg is not a good idea as I have tried this and gif seems to lose the colors from a print screen shot where the image will be bitmap. I think maybe I can try png, or bitmap for the web, but I never tried tiff could I use tiff for the web? And now, getting back to rasterize and vector. O.k. I have tried rasterize images as you saw in my star and U.S.A. image. Now how can I try vector for my image? I think I can try this and it will and I hope work for my image, don’t you think? And again by printing I think it is what you see is what will be printed out that way. Sort to speak. I mean if it looks great as you see it in an image then it will print out that way, but if it looks just like the image of mine it will be printed out that way too. I believe I have tried this that is why I just said this. And it is no problem. And another thing too about printing I believe the colors that gets printed out will not be the exact color but close to it is that true, Glen?

But most of all I would still like to know. I never tried tiff could I use tiff for the web?
Now how can I try vector for my image? I think I can try this and it will, and I hope work for my image(s), don’t you think? And I can try png, or bitmap for the web? So Glen when I try this again with shape placing an image inside it with maybe a stoke and text the same thing how would I go about doing this so I do not get ragged edges in my images? Thanks, Glen.

Martin

Answer
Hi Martin,

Jpeg, Gif and Png formats are suited to web graphics because they compress the image size and Tiff does not. Gif is more suited to logo type graphics and jpeg is better for photographic images. Web graphics are usually in RGB color mode because Monitors display in RGB colors.

Tiff is for graphics destined for print because small file size is usually not a consideration. Print files need to be in CMYK color mode because these are the ink colors used to reproduce all color graphics from desktop printers to large commercial presses. When you change from RGB to CMYK there may be some color shifts, particularly in the brighter reds, blues and greens. Click here for more info; http://www.bestprintingonline.com/cmyk-color.htm#converted

The use of vector graphics in Photoshop is limited to type, vector masks and shapes. As I mentioned before, once you have created these vector graphics, the only way to preserve them is to save in Photoshop EPS format. All other formats will rasterize the graphics with the exception of native Photoshop (.psd) format. Even a vector graphic may appear to have ragged edges once it is rendered on screen or printed on a low resolution device.

Hope this helps,
Glen Demers
Adobe Certified Expert, Photoshop 7
Prepress Technician, Best Printing Online
www.bestprintingonline.com

For more Photoshop tips please visit our help pages here: http://www.bestprintingonline.com/photoshop.htm