I have been trying to use Articulate '13 for a couple of months now, but I always encounter a critical problem with regards to image quality and Presenter screen resolution. I tryed saving pictures as .PNG files instead of JPEG and GIF ones, but I don't really see a difference when publising (I always start from PowerPoint presentations). The attached document shows the result and settings of my last attempt.
Would anyone have some tips & tricks I could use? Any best practices I should be considering?
I don't have Studio 13 installed on this PC, so my examples are going to be in Studio360. However, the ideas should be the same.
Key considerations:
The course is going to be published at a set resolution. For example, the default used to be 720x540 (which may still be the case in Studio 13). The published resolution gives you the best quality, which is why you lock the course to not scale. As soon as you scale you will degrade the image quality because the pixels get bigger or smaller.
Any image that is inserted has a resolution. If the resolution is larger and is scaled down on the slide, or smaller and scaled up, you'll have degradation. Ideally, the image is at the same resolution of the project. When you insert the image, the properties will show at what percentage it is inserted. Unfortunately PPT works off of inches and not pixels. You want an image that is as close to the slide size to not require any scaling.
Here are two tests. Slide 1: the first image is inserted in the slide and scaled by PowerPoint to fit the slide. The second image I set back to 100%. The second slide I made the image 50% smaller in an app and then inserted it and made sure it was at 100% just to see what it looks like.
As you can see the quality is pretty decent. Studio 360 is going to produce a little bit better quality, however, looking at your image and my experience with Studio 13, this is what I assume: the image is at a much higher resolution than 720 wide and then being scaled down to fit into the slide. That's what's causing that much blurriness. Try to capture an image that is not bigger than 720.
Do a test:
In the attachments you'll find two images. Insert both on a slide. Scale the larger one to fit the way you want it, as you were doing. On slide 2, insert the smaller image and got to the properties and set it to 100% and publish the slides. See if there's a difference.
When publishing, Storyline lets you adjust image quality. The default is 80%, and that compression will degrade images a bit. I'd guess that Studio provides this option, too. If so, try customizing to 100% (as shown in the image). Perhaps that will give you the quality you need.
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I don't have Studio 13 installed on this PC, so my examples are going to be in Studio360. However, the ideas should be the same.
Key considerations:
As you can see the quality is pretty decent. Studio 360 is going to produce a little bit better quality, however, looking at your image and my experience with Studio 13, this is what I assume: the image is at a much higher resolution than 720 wide and then being scaled down to fit into the slide. That's what's causing that much blurriness. Try to capture an image that is not bigger than 720.
Do a test:
In the attachments you'll find two images. Insert both on a slide. Scale the larger one to fit the way you want it, as you were doing. On slide 2, insert the smaller image and got to the properties and set it to 100% and publish the slides. See if there's a difference.
Thank you so much for your assistance. This makes sens to me.
I did the test; I don't see a big difference between both images/slides...
Hi, Josee,
When publishing, Storyline lets you adjust image quality. The default is 80%, and that compression will degrade images a bit. I'd guess that Studio provides this option, too. If so, try customizing to 100% (as shown in the image). Perhaps that will give you the quality you need.
Thank you for your reply Judy. This is what I did.
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