Best Practices for Sizing Images and Single-Sourcing

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kel322
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Best Practices for Sizing Images and Single-Sourcing

Post by kel322 »

I'm interested to know how users handle image sizing for print and online outputs when a single image is used in different outputs. While we have one style sheet that includes online and print mediums, most of our projects are set up with one output in mind -- pdf or html5. However, I am working on a project that is mainly going to be online but will also have a PDF component.

In our default medium (online), our basic images are styled to have a max-width of 100%. I do not have anything specified for image size in our print medium, so our images in print also get a max-width of 100%. This is fine for the most part.

In our print projects, we typically use inline styles to resize images to a smaller size because print images aren't always reduced to the same size. Sometimes we need to make an image 5 inches wide, sometimes it needs to be 4.5 inches wide, etc. The size of the image often depends on how the other elements fall on the page (awkward page breaks), how tall the image is, etc.

I'm curious to know if anyone has found a way to resize single-sourced images more efficiently? Does anyone use a method that is NOT inline styling?
SteveS
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Re: Best Practices for Sizing Images and Single-Sourcing

Post by SteveS »

I think one of the issues, particularly for print, is resizing the images and image quality.

We process our images outside of our publishing software and limit the size to 550px, fits our page perfectly. Images are always centred, so smaller images just sit in the middle of their space. And, by cropping to 550px (or smaller), I can focus the user's attention to the parts of a screen they should be looking at.

This gives us control over clarity, the images don't resize so remain crisp.

If you are using high res images resizing isn't as important.
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Steve
Life's too short for bad coffee, bad chocolate, and bad red wine.
kel322
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Posts: 34
Joined: Tue Jan 03, 2017 12:56 pm

Re: Best Practices for Sizing Images and Single-Sourcing

Post by kel322 »

Thanks for the info, Steve. Do you use Capture for resizing or another program?

I never resize images to be larger, just smaller and haven't had issues with image quality. I typically use Photoshop, mostly because that is what I am used to, but I'm wondering if I'm missing out on the medium features that are available in Capture. When I played around with it, it seemed like more of a hassle than it was worth, but that may just be my work style and stubbornness.
SteveS
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Posts: 2087
Joined: Tue Mar 07, 2006 5:06 pm
Location: Adelaide, far side of the world ( 34°56'0.78\"S 138°46'44.28\"E).
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Re: Best Practices for Sizing Images and Single-Sourcing

Post by SteveS »

I tend to use snagit, their torn edge and page curl effects suit what we are doing. You can use Capture (or any other graphics program) if you prefer, cropping is pretty basic so they all have it.

If you need to resample an image to make it smaller (or bigger), the better graphics programs handle this much better than a browser, so for clarity this is a better approach than resizing using CSS.
Image
Steve
Life's too short for bad coffee, bad chocolate, and bad red wine.
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