Occasional fuzzy imported PNG images

Are the images being created by the same application, same user, same system, same O/S, or do they vary, i.e. can you identify "creational" differences amoung them? If it's only one app, what app?  What is the original, i.e. are they all screenshots of other applications, or ... ?

Are the images fuzzy only on screen, or do they appear that way when you make a PDF?

And, most importantly, please always specify your exact version of FM as shown in Help > About, and your O/S.

There's been some discussion on the Frameusers list about screen captures, sizing and importing of images into FM. You might try over there. I can't help you too much because I haven't started putting graphics in my docs yet - still too busy writing content.

Colum,

I am a little confused. In your examples, what is the png image? The movie camera, or the whole thing including the text? If the former, I see little difference. If the latter, remember that Acrobat Reader makes little effort to make screen view as crisp as possible. For example, it does not anti-alias text. If you zoom in, text gets clearer.

In general, PDF output should be better than your screen display, as long as the distillation process is NOT resampling or lossy compressing the bitmap images. So, if your png images are created at 300 dpi and you set the PDF job options to smallest file size, the PDF will not display images at 300 dpi quality. Both smallest file size and standard job options resample images at resolutions above 150 dpi.

I suggest opening Acrobat Distiller and select one of the best quality job options and edit it to turn OFF image resampling and turn OFF image compression. Save this job option. Then try varying the resolution of your png images to find the optimum quality for your project. By turning resampling and image compression off in the distillation process, you know that every bit of your image is carried through to the PDF.

Van

If you look at the image below, taken from my FM file, the image clarity

isn't too bad.

http://forums.adobe.com/servlet/JiveServlet/showImage/51288/fm_image.png

Now look at the output in the PDF.

http://forums.adobe.com/servlet/JiveServlet/showImage/51289/pdf_image.png

The image is taken from the same user, PC, monitor, etc. as is being used

to edit the FM file. It is a PNG image although I've tried TIF and JPG

with the same results. The image above hasn't been resized in any way so

that can't be the issue.

>

But the image has been resized. At least, the two versions you attached

are different sizes. The first one is larger and clear. The second one is

smaller and fuzzy. So I assume that the second image was downsampled from

the first and that explains why it looks fuzzy. Data was thrown away.

Perhaps your .joboptions file in Acrobat Distiller is set to downsample your

graphics.

Of course, we are assuming that you are viewing the PDF at 100% zoom. Is it

possible that the original in FM is a low-res screen capture and you are

just not viewing the PDF at 100% zoom? In that case, the fuzziness should

only be an artifact of viewing on a monitor. The image should still print

fine. That is, it will print as clear as it shows on a 96 ppi monitor but

not as clearly as a 300 dpi graphic of the same size would print.

The best way to resize screen captures is to change the dpi of the graphic

to resize the output. It is not usually a good idea to adjust size by

resampling the number of pixels-- especially if resizing downward. The

resolution is too low to interpolate well. However, it is possible to

resample upward in multiples of 100% using the "nearest neighbor" method of

resampling. Even then, as the image grows in size, it will become fuzzier.

It will become much fuzzier if you use bicubic method of resampling.