Help! Colors not staying true!

[tviman]

I'm having a small problem creating an image effect...

I want to put a red box (border) around some image text but when I save the image (jpg format) and view it on a web page, the red border looks more like dark brown than red. I'm using a white background and the border line thickness is 1.

When I open the image again in PSP7, the white background appears pale pink and the red border looks like fresh rust. Why does this happen and is there a way to stop this?

Thanks for all your help There's always a better way...

 

[mThomas]

What compression rate are you using? If you did not save your image in the .psp format, re-create your image and then re-save it using a compression of 1. It sounds like you are over compressing the image.

If that doesn't help let us know and we will try to figure out what is going on.

mike

 

[tviman]

Thank you! I was unaware of the compression setting - it was set to 15 - probably the default. This got rid of the pink cast but did nothing to improve the color quality of the line. Still looks like rust instead of red (#FF0000). For the time being, I'm setting the line width to 2. It looks red but is a lot wider than I'd like.

Anyway, thanks for the advice. There's always a better way...

 

[mThomas]

If there are not a lot of gradients in the image, you might try saving it as a .gif.

Red and blue do not compress very well in the .jpg format.

mike

 

[tviman]

Saving as a .GIF was my first thought but there was no difference in appearance. The graphic is plain white background, black text, red line/box around text. No gradients. Like I said, I made the line thicker and it appears more red than before - almost too much.

I notice that when I draw lines, boxes, circles, etc. that the line that makes up these shapes seems blurred - not sharp and crisp. If I increase the viewing size by 1, I can see a 1 or 2 pixel "blur" on either side of the line. In this case, the "blur" is pink and seems to wash out the line. I can erase or paint over this blurred area but it always returns after saving the image and repoening the file. I've seen similar things done in Photoshop and the lines are clear and crisp - even thinner than the "1" that PSP usues. Is this a PSP problem or is it my system? There's always a better way...

 

[mThomas]

The blur you are describing sounds like the antialiasing. You can turn that off on most of the applicable tool palletes.

mike