Support says it's a bug. But I don't understand why isn't everyone complaining about blurry images here? I can't believe hundreds of users are suffering in silence, so am I the only one?
I came across this discussion because I googled due to having the same issue with blurry images in my courses. I am creating custom high res images in canva, photoshop etc and they look great in Storyline but when published to 360 review they seem very blurry.
Sorry that you're running into a similar issue! It sounds like the images look clear in Storyline 360 but not in Review 360. Have you tried publishing the course for Web instead?
If you can share a .story file with us, that would be helpful! You can upload it privately in a support case.
Please do post any news here on images. I gave up as apparently there is no fix in sight. The only "solution" I have got is to use SVG images when I have output from graphs etc (via powerpoint to enable direct SVG save as picture). Super frustrating. The Storyline roadmap has only 2 things on it (when you look at it) and fixing graphics is not one of the magic two.
This is the complete Storyline roadmap....(published anyway)
Storyline 360 Feature
Description
Status
Buttons for 360° Images
Add buttons to marker and hotspot labels in 360° images so learners can trigger specific actions, such as launching a website or downloading a document.
In development
Progress-Tracking Exclusions for 360° Images
Exclude specific markers and hotspots from progress tracking in 360° images to capture more accurate results.
I am suffering too. I am utterly tired of how terrible Storyline can be when it comes to rendering high quality images. Maybe back in 2012 it wasn't so pertinent, but here we are, on the cusp of 2022, when even 4k is yesterdays news, and Articulate refuse to acknowledge the problem.
I have submitted a feature request (and everyone else should do the same) that Articulate stop focusing on adding new features to Storyline, but instead, devote their resources to getting the basics right. Images should not be blurry. Period. The Zoom function should use the native resolution of the image, and not just magnify the screen render. We should be able to screen record a full 4k monitor.
I am so tired of this. Articulate... PLEASE do something about this. This is not right.
Not 'help,' but isolate the issue. Is it only happening in Review 360, or is it happening in any other environment?
Also, thanks for helping out Mark. It does look like it was the quick posting, but all the replies above have been released.
It looks like you're still digging into your SVG findings, but please let me know if you'd like me to get these reported, or you can share them with the team here for us to dig in.
Is Articulate genuinely tone deaf to the frustration your customers are experiencing? I'm not "digging into" anything. I just gave up - see my other posts on the topic, and the generic Staff responses that get trotted out again and again, with no progress made. Storyline is a great product but if images are blurry then it's like you are expecting everyone to take their reading glasses off and just live with whatever they can still make out.
What I would like to see is just some transparency from Articulate. Honestly, I would admire them if they came out and said, 'yes, we know there's a problem', and then provide us with a timeline to fix it. If it's 6 months, a year, two years, well fine... I'll work around these bugs, or just use other tools in the meantime.
I logged on with hopes of reading some good news, but to no avail. I’ve been asking this question for way too long with no answers. I had to sell my company on SL and have been using it for the past 5-6 years. And now I’m still trying to convince them to keep it because of cost. AND in addition, my credibility is being questioned because “my work” looks so blurry. That’s not cool at all!
I have resorted to skipping the interactive aspect and have gone to videos in our LMS. And get this, I’m using PPT to produce the step by step videos because the images remain crystal clear.
Cmon Articulate, this is basic stuff. Perhaps give the folks at Microsoft a ring for some tips? 🤷🏽♂️ HELP, I’m barely hanging on here.
This was the most transparent answer I got, nearly a month ago, on 1st Dec 2021, (with no further help from "Support")
Hi Mark, I appreciate the follow-up, and I understand the frustration, but we're not able to share any concrete updates at this time. It is currently in the early stages of review. To help you plan, it's unlikely to be fixed in the next couple of updates. Since you have a support case, we'll notify you as soon as we have news to share.
My comment regarding 'digging into' was based on Matthew's reply above, so I apologize for any confusion. I've opened a support case so that we can take a look at the SVG items he shared.
I can see your support case where you worked with Renato, and it looks like you are experiencing an issue specific to pixelated screenshots. I appreciate you sharing the details with folx here.
I reviewed the reports shared here and the related cases filed, and the issue is specific to screenshots being pixelated when imported into Storyline 360.
I do not have a timeline to share at this time.
If you're experiencing an issue with an image that you did not capture as a screenshot, please share it with our team here.
Here's a link to a similar thread from 3 years ago. During the discussion, it was suggested by Articulate that the issues stemmed from us users not adhering to 'best practice', which is, quite frankly, bizarre.
I mean, 2 years AFTER the initial posting, Articulate jump in with the amazing announcement: "Fixed: Arrows and dashed lines were blurry when previewed or published."
Let that sink in.
We, the users of Storyline, have been creating workarounds and hacks to get something as simple as an arrow or dashed line to view pin-sharp, and kind of forced it into our workflow. Unless the client didn't mind (or notice) the blurriness.
It took untold years and innumerable complaints to get something as simple as non-blurry arrows to be presented to us like it was some kind of damned achievement level unlocked.
This is all really basic stuff. I mean, REALLY REALLY basic stuff - MS Painter level stuff. How can you trumpet 360 panoramic interactivity when one cannot make a simple mask within Storyline?
Why herald a 'feature', such as Importing SVGs as an image file, when its functionality is different to any other image instance, with regards Points 6 and 7 mentioned by Matt above?
After importing even a simple, single colour icon, one cannot alter the transparency of the SVG, to use, as, say, a watermark, in a course. It's nonsense. One cannot even use the old PNG trick of importing the icon as a white line SVG and select Format > Recolour.
The previously trumpeted 'feature' of being able to Import SVGs From Powerpoint, which allowed SO MUCH AWESOME flexibility, despite being a technical process, was actually a much better solution than what is now offered, and even that methodology has now been broken. Instead of importing as shapes, the SVG is now an awkward uneditable, un-tweakable, fully-opaque image.
The ability to do basic stuff WITHIN a software programme is kind of the point of most software programmes I use. Not many ask the user to use another, possibly more highly specialised third-party product to do basic stuff like creating bespoke shapes (c'mon, why can't we combine, break apart, tweak any shape combo within Storyline itself?), Masks (seriously, it's almost 2022 now!), import and/or store bespoke gradients, the ability to specify corner roundness/bezel values of ANY corner, (and not have to rely on flipping, inverting and rotating a shape to get the desired result thereby rendering all the internal geometry of the shape out of whack)...
There are so many basic features being asked for, including getting features that are actually in Storyline to work (Hello Format Picture > Picture > Blend > Mode... I mean, seriously WT-ACTUAL-F is it there for? It does not work, never has and shows such sloppy attention to detail, UX and interface design, and what Articulate really think of its user base).
Launching SVG Direct Import as a major achievement and to have the reality of it be so utterly disappointing and fundamentally broken clearly illustrates that Articulate is simply relying on loyalty (and fear of the unknown) to maintain revenues without addressing some nearly decade-old issues that are so blatantly, inanely, absurdly rudimentary to functionality is beyond depressing. It's despairing. It shows such a lack of vision, such a lack of understanding of who uses this software and what it is there for, and such a lack of respect to these same users who for years have been pleading to "get things fixed first, new features later".
Also, anytime something new is announced, something old gets broken, such as the annoying glitch whereby if one clicks on VIEW > SLIDE MASTER and then VIEW > FEEDBACK MASTER the screen jumps to the SLIDE VIEW.
I just wanted to add this as well - here are the settings I have in Illustrator for my SVG exports. It's the default, AFAIK, but I have had no issues with these settings using the now-defunct Import From PowerPoint method.
I also have to note that I am not having any transparency issues with these settings.
Maybe these can be tweaked for more editability within Storyline but I haven't the time to test it out yet. But for anyone confused with other SVG software setting out there, this might help.
Another blistering post. Thanks for sharing Diarmaid. I still think we are futilely keeping our frustration confined to this fuzzy forum, and we need a User Action Group. Have you (or anyone) ever tried discussing problems on LinkedIn?
Thank you for these valuable pieces of information. It looks like the focus of the thread got steered towards issues with SVG, but there seem to be a few different (but related) issues across the different posts.
I would like to start with the issue presented by Mark since he got this thread going. The degradation observed here is the scaling between the original image and the published output. EDIT/Rephrased to avoid confusion: "Unlike vector image formats like SVGs, EMFs, or WMFs, raster image formats like PNGs and JPGS will suffer a loss of quality when scaling."
Screenshots in general are best displayed without any scaling. As an example, Here is a basic html page referencing a screenshot of a Wikipedia page taken on a 1920 x 1080 monitor without using Storyline. If the page is viewed in full screen on a monitor with the same resolution, there is little to no degradation. However, once the browser is resized down, the degradation starts to manifest as early as 80%. If we take the same page, and view it on a 1366x768 display, the text becomes barely readable while the images are still ok. Our best practice document suggests to use images that do not need to be scaled to mitigate the loss of quality in the published output. Zoom images can also be used to display images at their original dimensions.
Matthew, thanks for breaking down the SVG problems into different points. For 1 and 2, would you be able to attach the raw SVG file here so that we can take a closer look? If not, you may use the same upload link in the support case to send it to us privately. For point number 3, this is something that we are aware of and are currently working on. I’ll skip number 4 because we cannot reproduce the issue either. Point number 5 is expected behavior for SVGs that have transparent areas. There is nothing being “hit” which is why the state is not being triggered, much like how an illustration with non-filled areas behaves. You could try filling these areas within the SVG with a solid color to get the behavior you desire. Point number 6 is definitely not a feature request and is something we will fix. Thanks for bringing that to our attention! Cropping SVGS (point 7) on the other hand is a feature request that we are not working on currently.
And thank you Diarmaid for sharing that helpful tip along with your feedback about SVGs. I'd like to assure you that these points have made their way to support and have been made aware of the issues highlighted in this thread.
Can you post a link to "the same page, and view it on a 1366x768 display, the text becomes barely readable" so we can compare (otherwise what was the point of posting the wiki page link? Of course none of this solves the problem.
Here's a screenshot of what Mike's mocked-up HTML page looks like in a 1920 x 1080 browser window, and here's a screenshot of what Mike's mock-up looks like in a 1366 x 768 browser window.
I think our goal was to demonstrate that we'd expect any text-heavy screenshot to suffer from a loss of quality when scaled, inside or outside of Storyline.
94 Replies
I came across this discussion because I googled due to having the same issue with blurry images in my courses. I am creating custom high res images in canva, photoshop etc and they look great in Storyline but when published to 360 review they seem very blurry.
I hope there is a fix for this soon.
Hello Casey!
Sorry that you're running into a similar issue! It sounds like the images look clear in Storyline 360 but not in Review 360. Have you tried publishing the course for Web instead?
If you can share a .story file with us, that would be helpful! You can upload it privately in a support case.
Hi Casey,
Please do post any news here on images. I gave up as apparently there is no fix in sight. The only "solution" I have got is to use SVG images when I have output from graphs etc (via powerpoint to enable direct SVG save as picture). Super frustrating. The Storyline roadmap has only 2 things on it (when you look at it) and fixing graphics is not one of the magic two.
This is the complete Storyline roadmap....(published anyway)
Storyline 360
Feature
Description
Status
Buttons for 360° Images
Add buttons to marker and hotspot labels in 360° images so learners can trigger specific actions, such as launching a website or downloading a document.
In development
Progress-Tracking Exclusions for 360° Images
Exclude specific markers and hotspots from progress tracking in 360° images to capture more accurate results.
Planned
I am suffering too. I am utterly tired of how terrible Storyline can be when it comes to rendering high quality images. Maybe back in 2012 it wasn't so pertinent, but here we are, on the cusp of 2022, when even 4k is yesterdays news, and Articulate refuse to acknowledge the problem.
I have submitted a feature request (and everyone else should do the same) that Articulate stop focusing on adding new features to Storyline, but instead, devote their resources to getting the basics right. Images should not be blurry. Period. The Zoom function should use the native resolution of the image, and not just magnify the screen render. We should be able to screen record a full 4k monitor.
I am so tired of this. Articulate... PLEASE do something about this. This is not right.
Jamie Shaw - yes, yes, yes. C'mon, get the basics right Articulate.
Maybe we need to be having this discussion on LinkedIn?
Not sure why that last comment is being reported?
Is it the mention of Linked In
Yep, it certainly is.
Sent from my iPhone
Yes, states on SVG’s don’t give us WYSIWYG.
Sent from my iPhone
Hi Matthew,
Not 'help,' but isolate the issue. Is it only happening in Review 360, or is it happening in any other environment?
Also, thanks for helping out Mark. It does look like it was the quick posting, but all the replies above have been released.
It looks like you're still digging into your SVG findings, but please let me know if you'd like me to get these reported, or you can share them with the team here for us to dig in.
Hi Leslie (McKerchie),
Is Articulate genuinely tone deaf to the frustration your customers are experiencing? I'm not "digging into" anything. I just gave up - see my other posts on the topic, and the generic Staff responses that get trotted out again and again, with no progress made. Storyline is a great product but if images are blurry then it's like you are expecting everyone to take their reading glasses off and just live with whatever they can still make out.
What I would like to see is just some transparency from Articulate. Honestly, I would admire them if they came out and said, 'yes, we know there's a problem', and then provide us with a timeline to fix it. If it's 6 months, a year, two years, well fine... I'll work around these bugs, or just use other tools in the meantime.
Over to you Articulate.
I logged on with hopes of reading some good news, but to no avail. I’ve been asking this question for way too long with no answers. I had to sell my company on SL and have been using it for the past 5-6 years. And now I’m still trying to convince them to keep it because of cost. AND in addition, my credibility is being questioned because “my work” looks so blurry. That’s not cool at all!
I have resorted to skipping the interactive aspect and have gone to videos in our LMS. And get this, I’m using PPT to produce the step by step videos because the images remain crystal clear.
Cmon Articulate, this is basic stuff. Perhaps give the folks at Microsoft a ring for some tips? 🤷🏽♂️ HELP, I’m barely hanging on here.
Jamie
This was the most transparent answer I got, nearly a month ago, on 1st Dec 2021, (with no further help from "Support")
Hi Mark,
I appreciate the follow-up, and I understand the frustration, but we're not able to share any concrete updates at this time. It is currently in the early stages of review.
To help you plan, it's unlikely to be fixed in the next couple of updates.
Since you have a support case, we'll notify you as soon as we have news to share.
Hi Mark,
My comment regarding 'digging into' was based on Matthew's reply above, so I apologize for any confusion. I've opened a support case so that we can take a look at the SVG items he shared.
I can see your support case where you worked with Renato, and it looks like you are experiencing an issue specific to pixelated screenshots. I appreciate you sharing the details with folx here.
Hi Jamie and John,
I reviewed the reports shared here and the related cases filed, and the issue is specific to screenshots being pixelated when imported into Storyline 360.
I do not have a timeline to share at this time.
If you're experiencing an issue with an image that you did not capture as a screenshot, please share it with our team here.
Hi Leslie,
Nobody appears to be solving our collective problem on blurry images. There is no support or communication with anything other than hollow platitudes.
Here's a link to a similar thread from 3 years ago. During the discussion, it was suggested by Articulate that the issues stemmed from us users not adhering to 'best practice', which is, quite frankly, bizarre.
I mean, 2 years AFTER the initial posting, Articulate jump in with the amazing announcement: "Fixed: Arrows and dashed lines were blurry when previewed or published."
Let that sink in.
We, the users of Storyline, have been creating workarounds and hacks to get something as simple as an arrow or dashed line to view pin-sharp, and kind of forced it into our workflow. Unless the client didn't mind (or notice) the blurriness.
It took untold years and innumerable complaints to get something as simple as non-blurry arrows to be presented to us like it was some kind of damned achievement level unlocked.
This is all really basic stuff. I mean, REALLY REALLY basic stuff - MS Painter level stuff. How can you trumpet 360 panoramic interactivity when one cannot make a simple mask within Storyline?
Why herald a 'feature', such as Importing SVGs as an image file, when its functionality is different to any other image instance, with regards Points 6 and 7 mentioned by Matt above?
After importing even a simple, single colour icon, one cannot alter the transparency of the SVG, to use, as, say, a watermark, in a course. It's nonsense. One cannot even use the old PNG trick of importing the icon as a white line SVG and select Format > Recolour.
The previously trumpeted 'feature' of being able to Import SVGs From Powerpoint, which allowed SO MUCH AWESOME flexibility, despite being a technical process, was actually a much better solution than what is now offered, and even that methodology has now been broken. Instead of importing as shapes, the SVG is now an awkward uneditable, un-tweakable, fully-opaque image.
The ability to do basic stuff WITHIN a software programme is kind of the point of most software programmes I use. Not many ask the user to use another, possibly more highly specialised third-party product to do basic stuff like creating bespoke shapes (c'mon, why can't we combine, break apart, tweak any shape combo within Storyline itself?), Masks (seriously, it's almost 2022 now!), import and/or store bespoke gradients, the ability to specify corner roundness/bezel values of ANY corner, (and not have to rely on flipping, inverting and rotating a shape to get the desired result thereby rendering all the internal geometry of the shape out of whack)...
There are so many basic features being asked for, including getting features that are actually in Storyline to work (Hello Format Picture > Picture > Blend > Mode... I mean, seriously WT-ACTUAL-F is it there for? It does not work, never has and shows such sloppy attention to detail, UX and interface design, and what Articulate really think of its user base).
Launching SVG Direct Import as a major achievement and to have the reality of it be so utterly disappointing and fundamentally broken clearly illustrates that Articulate is simply relying on loyalty (and fear of the unknown) to maintain revenues without addressing some nearly decade-old issues that are so blatantly, inanely, absurdly rudimentary to functionality is beyond depressing. It's despairing. It shows such a lack of vision, such a lack of understanding of who uses this software and what it is there for, and such a lack of respect to these same users who for years have been pleading to "get things fixed first, new features later".
Also, anytime something new is announced, something old gets broken, such as the annoying glitch whereby if one clicks on VIEW > SLIDE MASTER and then VIEW > FEEDBACK MASTER the screen jumps to the SLIDE VIEW.
Sloppy.
I just wanted to add this as well - here are the settings I have in Illustrator for my SVG exports. It's the default, AFAIK, but I have had no issues with these settings using the now-defunct Import From PowerPoint method.
I also have to note that I am not having any transparency issues with these settings.
Maybe these can be tweaked for more editability within Storyline but I haven't the time to test it out yet. But for anyone confused with other SVG software setting out there, this might help.
Another blistering post. Thanks for sharing Diarmaid. I still think we are futilely keeping our frustration confined to this fuzzy forum, and we need a User Action Group. Have you (or anyone) ever tried discussing problems on LinkedIn?
Hello everyone,
Thank you for these valuable pieces of information. It looks like the focus of the thread got steered towards issues with SVG, but there seem to be a few different (but related) issues across the different posts.
I would like to start with the issue presented by Mark since he got this thread going. The degradation observed here is the scaling between the original image and the published output. EDIT/Rephrased to avoid confusion: "Unlike vector image formats like SVGs, EMFs, or WMFs, raster image formats like PNGs and JPGS will suffer a loss of quality when scaling."
Screenshots in general are best displayed without any scaling. As an example, Here is a basic html page referencing a screenshot of a Wikipedia page taken on a 1920 x 1080 monitor without using Storyline. If the page is viewed in full screen on a monitor with the same resolution, there is little to no degradation. However, once the browser is resized down, the degradation starts to manifest as early as 80%. If we take the same page, and view it on a 1366x768 display, the text becomes barely readable while the images are still ok. Our best practice document suggests to use images that do not need to be scaled to mitigate the loss of quality in the published output. Zoom images can also be used to display images at their original dimensions.
Matthew, thanks for breaking down the SVG problems into different points. For 1 and 2, would you be able to attach the raw SVG file here so that we can take a closer look? If not, you may use the same upload link in the support case to send it to us privately. For point number 3, this is something that we are aware of and are currently working on. I’ll skip number 4 because we cannot reproduce the issue either. Point number 5 is expected behavior for SVGs that have transparent areas. There is nothing being “hit” which is why the state is not being triggered, much like how an illustration with non-filled areas behaves. You could try filling these areas within the SVG with a solid color to get the behavior you desire. Point number 6 is definitely not a feature request and is something we will fix. Thanks for bringing that to our attention! Cropping SVGS (point 7) on the other hand is a feature request that we are not working on currently.
And thank you Diarmaid for sharing that helpful tip along with your feedback about SVGs. I'd like to assure you that these points have made their way to support and have been made aware of the issues highlighted in this thread.
Can you post a link to "the same page, and view it on a 1366x768 display, the text becomes barely readable" so we can compare (otherwise what was the point of posting the wiki page link? Of course none of this solves the problem.
Sure thing, Mark.
Here's a screenshot of what Mike's mocked-up HTML page looks like in a 1920 x 1080 browser window, and here's a screenshot of what Mike's mock-up looks like in a 1366 x 768 browser window.
I think our goal was to demonstrate that we'd expect any text-heavy screenshot to suffer from a loss of quality when scaled, inside or outside of Storyline.