Why are my clear photos fuzzy when I import them?

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Level 1

8 points

Why are my clear photos fuzzy when I import them?

Recently, some of our images that look good in Preview and Adobe Photoshop look fuzzy or blurry when imported into a layout program (like QuarkXpress) or a word processing program (like MS Word and Bean). The affected pictures only seem to be those that we’ve reduced the image size on (from about 30”-40” to 2”-3”) and changed the resolution (from 72 ppi to 300 ppi). We have followed this same procedure with the same hardware and software for years with no problems. Now they’re blurred.

They look better when printed (compared to on screen) but they are still not the quality we have had in the past.

We have tried the following:

- We found the same results with the same pictures on multiple Macs (and multiple operating systems).

- We tried using a TIFF instead of a JPEG, but it didn’t seem to make a difference.

- We reinstalled our QuarkXpress (this was before we realized the problem was also in other programs, like MS Word)

- We tried reducing the image size in Photoshop rather than Preview

Any suggestions?

Posted on Sep 5, 2014 8:26 AM

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Answer 1

BDAqua

Level 10

239,219 points

Sep 6, 2014 12:28 PM in response to Lottiey

Sounds a bit like it's importing the icon, what happens instead of importing into Quark or Word, you Copy in PShop & Paste into those?

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Answer 2

Lottiey Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 7, 2014 11:30 AM in response to BDAqua

Thanks for your reply, BDAqua. I tried copy from Photoshop into Quark, but it didn't import them at the reduced size. I'm not sure why that happened, because double checked the image size and it was definitely set to 300 ppi and 3" wide.

I tried it in Word and now it isn't having the problem, but to my knowledge I didn't do anything differently than before.

I took the following screenshot and I hope you can see what I'm talking about. The bottom picture is in Preview and the top is the same image imported into Quark. If you can see my screenshot clearly enough, you can see that the imported image in Quark is fuzzy, even though it looks fine in Preview.

If it is only showing the icon, what can I do to change that?

Thank you!

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Answer 3

BDAqua

Level 10

239,219 points

Sep 7, 2014 12:40 PM in response to Lottiey

Haven't used Quark since OS9 days, can you do a Get Info on the pic once imported into Quark?

Any clues here...

http://www.planetquark.com/2010/08/11/full-resolution-preview-tips-for-quarkxpre ss/

Maybe save as PDF in PShop???

http://www.designgeek.com/why-photoshop-pdfs-rule

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Answer 4

Lottiey Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 8, 2014 3:38 PM in response to BDAqua

Thanks, BDAqua. Those links helped a lot! I figured out that at least part of my problem was that I was viewing the low resolution image on screen, but they would print actually print fine. However, I'm still having some images that are not clear when printed as well. I'm still trying to figure out if I'm selecting incorrect options when I resize them, but haven't had luck figuring it out yet.

Today I also had a picture that looked fine in Preview but was poor quality in Photoshop. It looked poor in Photoshop both before and after changing the image size and resolution. In my previous tests for the issue, I’d had the same results whether I changed the files in Photoshop or Preview, so I’m not sure what’s going on now. I don’t know if this is a related problem or something all together different.

Thanks for the help!

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