Blurry PNGs & JPEGs (Publisher & Designer)

[Xandria]

Recently (this week) my .image files (png and jpeg) have been exporting blurry. When I export as PDF everything is fine, but I need image files for a project I'm working on.

Everything was fine until this week. The only thing that changed was that I purchased publisher and photo and linked the programs. I don't know how to fix it and have scoured the boards to find a fix but nothing has worked. I've uploaded sample images. Does anyone have a fix for this?

[GarryP]

Welcome to the forums @Xandria
When you export to PDF there is a setting where you can change the DPI (which might make things look better sometimes) but when you export to PNG you get the document as set by the document size and DPI.
Therefore, zooming in to an 800×600 PNG image will show some “blurring” as you are looking at the pixels enlarged.
An exported PNG image will have as many pixels as you specify and there’s no way to make it have more than that.

[Pšenda]

1 hour ago, GarryP said:

When you export to PDF there is a setting where you can change the DPI (which might make things look better sometimes)

... open your PDF file in ADesigner, look at insert image dimension, and compare with your 800x600 PNG export. If you export PNG with the same resolution, the images should look the same.

[Xandria]

On 10/17/2020 at 2:56 AM, GarryP said:

Welcome to the forums @Xandria
When you export to PDF there is a setting where you can change the DPI (which might make things look better sometimes) but when you export to PNG you get the document as set by the document size and DPI.
Therefore, zooming in to an 800×600 PNG image will show some “blurring” as you are looking at the pixels enlarged.
An exported PNG image will have as many pixels as you specify and there’s no way to make it have more than that.

Hi Garry,

Thanks for your response. I recognize that you can't make an image have more pixels than specified. I'm sharing a part of the file that I was working on for a project. This is 600px x 215px. The program in which I am uploading it to requires an image no larger than 600px wide. When exported it looks blurry without zooming in and uploading it into the program just makes the blurriness more apparent. However in the program the image is very crisp. Shouldn't the exported image in the specified size look crisp without zooming in?

[Pšenda]

30 minutes ago, Xandria said:

Shouldn't the exported image in the specified size look crisp without zooming in?

Yes, and it is - but it is significantly smaller than the pictures you present here. Open it in ADesigner, and set the view to 100%.

[Xandria]

The file that I uploaded (not the screenshot) is the file that was exported. Setting my zoom to 100% in ADesigner (screenshot attached) still looks crisper than the exported image.

Maybe it is just the size that I'm working in and need to work with larger canvas sizes.

[lepr]

2 hours ago, Xandria said:

However in the program the image is very crisp. Shouldn't the exported image in the specified size look crisp without zooming in?

Using your first example with the "happy" photo...

You placed the 3431 x 5146 px image in your 800 x 600 px document and non-destructively scaled it down to about 10% size, possibly 343 x 514 document pixels.

AD's default view mode is a vector view where objects at their viewed size are rasterised at the screen pixel density for display on the screen. In this mode, the highly detailed 3431 x 5146 px image is resampled to however many screen pixels are covered by the image at the current view scale, and so it won't look pixelated unless you zoom in so that only a small region of the image fills the screen.

If you switch the view to "Pixel view mode", the document pixels are resampled to the screen pixel density. In this mode, a low detail 343 x 514 px version of the image is resampled to however many screen pixels are covered by the image at the current view scale, and so it will look pixelated when you zoom in so that it covers  more than 343 x 514 screen pixels. This view mode provides a preview of the result you will get when exporting the document to a raster format such as PNG or JPEG.

 

[Pšenda]

3 hours ago, Xandria said:

Setting my zoom to 100% in ADesigner (screenshot attached) still looks crisper than the exported image.

Why are you still viewing the working afpub file? Open the exported png file and view it 100%. And provide a screenshot to compare the sharpness with the previous one.

 

3 hours ago, Xandria said:

The file that I uploaded (not the screenshot) is the file that was exported.

Yes, that's obvious. But the display is not 100%, because the image is enlarged after insertion into the forum (compare the size of the exported image 600x215px with the screenshot of the ADesigner workspace, which is certainly significantly larger, but the images are the same size).

[Pšenda]

3 hours ago, anon2 said:

If you switch the view to "Pixel view mode", the document pixels are resampled to the screen pixel density.

When displayed at 100%, the Vector/Pixel view mode display should be the same.

[lepr]

Just now, Pšenda said:

When displayed at 100%, the Vector/Pixel view mode display should be the same.

Yes, when document units is pixels.

If document units is physical, such as millimetres or points, then 100% in vector view mode will make the document life-size on screen, whereas 100% in pixel view mode will map one document pixel to one screen pixel.