dreamweaver newbe

[leca07]

I've been trying to create some elements for a website in Photoshop (logos, background, buttons....) but when I optimized and loaded them in Dreamweaver the results were terrible. My gradient fill background was all wavy and smudged, jpg photo sort of pixelated, buttons and logo(since I optimized them as transparent gifs) torn and blurred. I've seen so many sites with perfect gradient BG and perfectly clear buttons and other stuff so I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. I even used the highest optimization settings but nothing really changed.

 

[balance]

Don't know why that is happening, but here a few possibilities.

Are you creating a 256 colour gif and then saving it as a jpg?

Are your video card display properties set to 256 colours? This will make graphics with more than 256 colours look terrible.

Hope that helps a little

AJ

 

[fxcolin]

Hi leca07,
The only thing I can think of (just pulled an all nighter-got a little brain-cramp) ...is when you make an image with a transparent bg, you have to go to file >save for web and under the optimize tab their is an option for 'matte', then you just choose a colour that matches your web page bg.
This will tighten up your image or text. You have to use matting when creating transparent images.

There might be other reasons, that's all I can think of now

later, skater

http://www.chefmedia.ca

 

[deecee]

gradients saved as gifs do no work...unles you are looking for that blotchy look...as for tansparent gifs i find they work best on white backgrounds other wise i give the image the background of my page and keep it as such...the differnece between gifs that are transparent or not in size is not that much..at least with what I have worked with

 

[derren]

Make sure that you are not resizing the images in Dreamweaver (if you have their sizes will be in bold on the properties inspector - to reset them click on "W" and "H" next to the values). This results in the cheapest, nastiest looking images around because it is not an image resizer (and neither is a browser). Make sure that the exported image is the size that you want it to be on the page. It only needs to be tweaked a pixel to look shite.

Flat, blocks of colour, transparencies and "cartoon-esque" artwork should be a gif, and leave photos and gradients to jpeg compression. However, always use the previews and tweak the image according to the use you require.

As deecee mentioned, if you are using transparent images, make sure the background colour which you are removing for the image is the colour of the background which you are going to be placing the finished product. This will ensure that the egdes of the image anti-alias to the right colour and don't result in the cheap (and frankly should be illegal) halo effect around images. Derren
[Mediocre talent - spread really thin]