Poor text rendering in graphics

[masonbarge]

Does anyone have any hints about how to make text graphics so they look decent on a browser.

I try to generate text from html, but sometimes you just have to use the graphics program to put text in the graphic. The anti-aliased text degrades and usually to the point where I find it unacceptable.

Is the only solution to make it a really huge jpg file?

[sypher]

Post your text example, then i can see where your going wrong.

[masonbarge]

Thanks. It's just about impossible to show the two different versions in a post here. Hopefully I'll have the first draft of my first "professional" web page up and running in a couple of days, and I can show you easily.

For now, I've just eliminated the buttons, they didn't add a lot and it cuts the file size a bit.

One guess I have is that a lot of graphics engines render text at 96 dpi (this is the biggest pain I have found in Paint Shop Pro, you can't modify it -- you can draw your graphic at 72 or 300 or 3000 dpi, the text is still generated at 96).

[Legacy_Staff]

Difficult to help without know what you're working around but:-

With site text, I use html.
With text on buttons I rasterise it into a graphic representation.
As for the large file size, I slice my final image and save each as a gif or jpg, as appropriate (vectors as gif, detail as jpg).
Using sufficient image resolution and web-safe fonts of a sufficient size makes a difference too.
Hope that helps.

[Deano095]

I know what you mean - in the past i have had to do whole paragraphs of text as a graphic.

The best thing to do ive found is to creat the graphic (i use photoshop) at the correct pixel size you are using on the website. (eg. header graphic across top is 740px wide for a 740px wide site).
Keep the resolution fairly high still (eg 300dpi). Then save for web format (jpg/gif) which brings it down to about 72dpi but at the correct size still.

I think when a graphic is shrunk in your html code the browser struggles to show it right.

This is what i have found anyway.

Hope it helps.

[sypher]

whoa deano dont be using graphics to replicate normal text :P

[Deano095]

Okay okay i know - but sometimes you need a certain font (for a logo etc.) and you just have to do it. Alt tags are a must obviously. Im all for rules and standards but sometimes you just gotta bend them

Having said that - i would never recommend a whole paragraph as a graphic.

I still think all graphics should be created at 100% size used and when a graphic is shrunk in your html code the browser struggles to show it right?!

[sypher]

Ye you should never increase of decrease the image size via html, as it still has to load the original size.