Need Help with a Logo

[ep2002]

I have a logo that uses a very curly E, & in a couple of places the
line of the E becomes very fine. When I reduce the file size &
resolution, there appears to be dark or dirty spots where the font
"breaks up" in these fine areas. I am using photoshop and do not want
to use any blurring effect.

Pls. see the logo...

http://www.exoticpublishing.com/logo/newlogomockup.jpg

How can I fix this, as it looks fine when it's HUGE.

Thanks

Michelle (posting for my VA)

[DaveSW]

Using PSP then you'd use the 'smart' resize rather than the pixel resize. I don't know what the equivalent is in Photoshop.
You might also want to try using a png file as it would be smaller.

[AwSDesigns]

I use Ulead Smart saver does a brillient job (also dimminishes file size)
photoshop is not very good at minimizing file sizes PSP also good but still not great
to stop the picture going fuzy save it as a "giff" rather!!!! png sucks for website graphics (its size) great format but is a bit bloated at least 1.5 times the file size of a jpg (better quality though) for that logo definately use "giff" and to reduce file size reduce colours used

Origional = 70705 bytes
giff = 8501 bytes
jpg = 9580 bytes
png = 44956 bytes

using Ulead Smart Saver Pro

there is no loss to quality

I know this might be a bit ilegel but check it out here
http://www.zoutnet.co.za/update/newsimages/newlogomockup.gif

[DaveSW]

If you use a png for clipart or logos you can get file sizes smaller than gif with a custom palette. e.g. for a logo with a small number of colors reduce the number of colors and choose custom palette. Then you have smaller file sizes, plus better color representation.
I think there's a 30day free trial of psp on www.jasc.com

[AwSDesigns]

If you use a png for clipart or logos you can get file sizes smaller than gif with a custom palette. e.g. for a logo with a small number of colors reduce the number of colors and choose custom palette. Then you have smaller file sizes, plus better color representation.

No doubt about quality but the file size is still larger than giff. sure the png size that i posted is a tad larger than i could get if i sat at it for a while. BUT it will still be larger. If you know somthing SPILL IT!! NOW!! because i certainly cant get a png to beat a giff in size without total loss in quality!

[DaveSW]

the trick is the custom palette. It doesn't work if it's a photo, but say it's something like my logo. because it's two colors I use the custom palette (optimised octree), reduce it to 17 colors, and it's down to 1,729bytes. Whereas a gif in the same optimised octree palette is 2,380bytes. Same image, same palette.

[rus]

There are a couple of things that might be causing this.

1. You are using a thin thin script font that won't reproduce well at 72 dpi. Script fonts generally don't reproduce well in low resolution mediums such as the web and TV.
2. The black shadow is too dark on your (red) background, so it's causing the dots to bleed together.

Basically what is happening is that when you reduce the size, you are removing the number of dots available to draw the thin lines in your font. At the size it is now, you may have 5 dots making up the line in the top curl of the E, but when you reduce the size you only have 1 or 2 dots making that line. This also reduces the number of colors available to create the drop shadow.

Then there is the element of reducing the physical size (dimensions). In PhotoShop, it's pretty simple to go to the image dimensions, then change either the height or width. Once you have it the size you want you can use the built in "Save for Web" option. Here you can play with the type of file you want, the number of colors (.gif) or quality (jpeg) until it looks the way you want.

The best fix would be to thicken the lines of your logo before you reduce it's dimensions. Another would be to find a font that is more bold to begin with. A third option would be to lighten your red background.

I hope this helps.

Rus

[tgreer]

The only way I have known to work (12 years in the graphic arts industry) is to use true vector art, rather than bitmap. Instead of working in PhotoShop, for example, work in Illustrator.

[ep2002]

Thanks, I had my VA look into that & she fixed it. It was stretched out by the web designer, so she is going to redo the font so that doesn't happen again.

You can view it here.

http://www.currentswillshift.net/typo3/fileadmin/ep/exoticpublishing.html

Thanks, have a great Sunday & take care

Michelle :)

The only way I have known to work (12 years in the graphic arts industry) is to use true vector art, rather than bitmap. Instead of working in PhotoShop, for example, work in Illustrator.

[tgreer]

I'm glad I could help. The logo looks great. As your artist probably told you, the web uses bitmaps for graphics. What Illustrator does, though, is to work with vectors until the last possible step. That way it can render the best bitmap. With PhotoShop, you're only working with bitmaps, so run into all the problems that "rus" described in his post.