Poor image quality in Storyline 360

Apr 30, 2018

Irina Poloubessov
By Irina Poloubessov

Hey guys,

I have found a few threads on poor image quality of previous versions of Storyline, however the new 360 version has also very poor image quality when piblishing. Please see attached screenshot: original image in high resolution saved in png format, imported via Insert Image into Storyline (smaller size! should work fine!) and when published in HTML5 - you can see this low-quality soapy artifacts.

Please let me know where I can adjust image quality settings to avoid that. It seems not to matter how carefully original images are selected with a good quality -if the end result is poor. Please help!

Thank you!

135 Replies
Alyssa Gomez
over 5 years ago08/13/18 at 4:25 pm (UTC)

Hi folks! 

First, I'm really sorry to hear that you're running into issues with blurriness. I know your goal is to produce high-quality work, and blurry slide images are getting in the way of that. I wanted to share a summary of our findings from Katelin's case, and others.

If you're seeing blurry images in your files, follow these steps:

  1. Check the original size of the image, prior to inserting it in Storyline. 
  2. Insert the image in Storyline, and check the dimensions of the image under the Format tab:
    • If the image is the same size as the original, you shouldn't see a loss in quality.
    • If the image is larger or smaller than the original, you could see a loss in quality. 

We've got a lot of helpful information on best practices for using high-quality images in Storyline in this article. Hopefully the recommendations in that article will make a difference!

Irina Poloubessov
over 5 years ago08/14/18 at 6:38 am (UTC)

Dear Alyssa,

There is also some automaticity happening, when I  insert a high-resolution image into the storyline: when I work in the Photoshop to prepare it, without adjusting its size to Storyline size, at the insertion Storyline automatically adjusts the Image to fit the width of a slide. Which I find great, but if at this moment also some resampling is happening , then it is of course a pity that we cannot control it.

Lance Reliq
over 5 years ago08/15/18 at 7:42 pm (UTC)

one area I have a big problem with the blurriness is in zoom regions. storyline does not support a higher-than-slide-res image file meaning when your zoom region kicks on, it simply zooms the image downsampled to its 100% size IN slide. 

another way of saying this: I have a 3000x1900 image that has intricate details I want to do zoom regions on. when it is placed in the 1680x1050 slide and published, none of it's original resolution is kept, it simply zooms in on a down-sampled version on the image i put in and it just gets blurry. I have been on storyline since version 2 came out and have never found a way of keeping that image from being down sampled to slide size or smaller.  

Crystal Horn
over 5 years ago08/16/18 at 4:43 pm (UTC)

Hi there, RTSaud.  You've got a good understanding of what happens.  The HTML5 player is rendering images at a given size onto a canvas, losing any extra information it might have had.  When the region is zoomed, it can only use the pixels that were on screen and zoom them.

It sounds like this is an issue for you with your images, so I'm sharing your thoughts so we can continue to track requests to change this feature.  Thank you for contributing!

Leslie McKerchie
over 5 years ago08/23/18 at 7:08 pm (UTC)

Hi Thomas and welcome to E-Learning Heroes :) 

Thanks for reaching out and mentioning that you've tried the troubleshooting listed here.

Looking through the support cases that were shared with our team, it seems that most of the issues were due to image scaling, either up or down, when the image and the slide size varied.

Would you be able to share the image file that you are adding to Storyline so that we could take a look at what you're experiencing? What version of Storyline are you using and what is your Slide Size?

Elizabeth Douglas
over 5 years ago09/28/18 at 9:05 am (UTC)

I have just come across this now.(A new user trying to get it working on a MAC.  I thought my problems were becuase I was using Parallels in a MAC - and that was causing blurry images. SO I went out and bought a new PC and the blurryness is still there.!

Could we please have a link to an article that summarises what I need to do to get images nice and crisp in SL. I used to use SL 2 years ago and don't ever remember this level of problems!

Alyssa Gomez
over 5 years ago10/01/18 at 6:32 pm (UTC)

Hi folks! So sorry to hear you're running into issues with blurry images. 

First, can you tell me what version and update of Storyline you're using? You can find this detail by going to Help >> About Storyline. 

Second, can you tell me the dimensions of the original image and the dimensions of the image in Storyline? If the imported image is much larger or smaller than the original, scaling the image up or down will result in loss of quality. 

Barbara Pauley
over 5 years ago10/02/18 at 9:33 pm (UTC)

I am also experiencing blurriness within the Storyline 360 Editor.  I opened up a Storyline 2 file on my left monitor, and the upgraded Storyline 360 file on my right monitor.  The difference between the two editors is very clear.  Both of my monitors are identical, and are using the exact same resolution settings.   I also moved my Storyline2 editor window over to the monitor with the blurry Storyline 360 editor, and the Storyline 2 editor remained just as sharp as it was on the left monitor, so it's not the monitor settings causing this.  

I have attached 2 screenshots for comparison, and outlined in red the areas that seem to be affected.  

I am using Storyline 360 v3.20.16814.0

I am using Storyline2 update 12:1705.520

Both monitors are using 1920 x 1080 resolution

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