Image quality in Robohelp

[Guest]

I have a linked Framemaker book with images throughout. The image quailty in the finished Robohelp Webhelp html isn't very good.

What are the "best practices" etc. that will get me decent image quality?

Also, how can I get an image to spawn a larger version of itself when clicked?

Regards,

RP

[Guest]

You can reproduce the problem using the following procedure and attached frame file and gif .

This is using Comm Tech Suite II with all the updates installed.

Image Problem

Images will not display in generated Webhelp when set to scale at 0% so that they display in Robohelp at their original DPI.

The following procedure reproduces the image problem.

This frame file (imagetest.fm) was created in Frame by File>New>Portrait.

The following image (capture1.gif) is in an anchored frame. Special>Anchored Frame>New Frame.

It is a referenced gif. File>Import>File.

The DPI is set to 165 to allow it all to appear within the anchored frame. Object Properties>Set DPI>165>Apply.

Create a Robohelp project. File>New Project>Blank Project

Link this frame file. File>Link>FrameMaker Document.

Generate the html and you will see the image comes up at the DPI set in Frame. It looks unsatisfactory for online use.

In Robohelp do the following: File>Project Settings>Edit Conversion Settings for FrameMaker Documents>check Scale and set the scale at 0%.

Update the html by Right Clicking the imagetest.fm under the project files and Update>Update.

The image pops up at the originally captured resolution and looks nice.

Autogenerate yourself a TOC.

Generate Webhelp. File>Generate>Primary Layout (Webhelp)

View the Webhelp. The image does not appear.

[Deborah_Sauer]

Hi Rick

Sorry I've gone quiet. I'm fighting a broken cross ref problem. And I

haven't gotten a satifactory answer. Not sure what I'm going to do.

You've captured the image problem nicely.

Deborah

[Guest]

Hi Deborah,

I went through my project and reset each image manually (image>size>preferred width/height) and told Robohelp not to update the files. I then generated my Webhelp and got my images as I wanted them. This totally craters the whole idea of "linking" the frame files however.

Also, you know I thought the resize script worked the first time around but it actually doesn't. It seems like it should though.

Piyush Bhatnagar's post seems to indicate that they are working on the bug report I sent in. Hopefully we'll get a fix or at least a work around sometime soon.

[Deborah_Sauer]

Thanks, Rick. I'll have to do the same. I'm in the midst of hand tooling a

few other things to get the behavior that I want. The images are next. I

have a beta deadline Friday...sigh.

[Deborah_Sauer]

Hi Rick

I need a sanity check. I'm not getting this to work. How exactly did you

reset each image in RH? Also, many of my images are in DropDownCaption. Did

you have that? Did this fix work for those, too?

Deborah

[Deborah_Sauer]

Hi Rick

Can you tell me how you resized the images and got them to work?

Thanks

Deborah

[Guest]

Deborah,

In Robohelp you have to touch each image in each html file. (you might want to try this on just one file first of course)

Right click an html file in the Project Manager view and select Edit With>Design View

Double click an image.The Image properties panel appears.

Click Size.

Uncheck the preferred width and preferred height boxes.

Click OK and then click OK again.

The image should then pop out into its original DPI in the Design View. If it doesn't change in the Design View it won't look any different in the SSL. I have a couple of images that don't change but I haven't figured out why. All of my images are imported gifs in FrameMaker.

Generate your SSL.

All the images that you unchecked "preferred width and preferred height boxes" on should display in the SSL as they did in the Design View.

Please let me know if this works for you.

Best Regards,

RP

[Deborah_Sauer]

Thanks, I'll give it a try shortly...

[Deborah_Sauer]

Rick

Sadly, that did not work. In fact, when I reopened the Size dialog box, the

preferred width and height checkboxes were checked again. The images I have

the most trouble with are in DropDownBody DHTML. I'm not sure if that's the

problem, although some work fine.

Also, I have two images that disappear completely, leaving appropriately

sized white space. Have you seen this?

Deborah

[Guest]

Shoot. I'm not using DropDownBody DHTML myself. The checkboxes do reappear in the checked state for me as well but the images remain in the larger size.

I didn't notice any of my images disappearing. They only seem to disappear when I try what I outlined earlier where I included a Frame file and a gif as an example.

[Deborah_Sauer]

sigh...ok, thanks. It was worth a try.

[adrianaharper]

Hi Rick,

Is this still the only solution - to touch every image in every HTML file? Seems crazy if you have hundreds of images. I was just wondering if there is another solution/alternative coming from what you may have heard.

If you do this, what happens if your FM book is linked by reference into RH - when you update the RH book, does it undo all the manual changes you've made?

Thanks,

Adriana

[Guest]

Have you tried this script?

http://forums.adobe.com/message/2128548#2128548

It seems like it should work but I can't make it work as adverstised.

[adrianaharper]

Just tried it now (thanks) - it does not do anything for me. Too bad- it could be my solution! I posted in that other thread that I couldn't get the script to work- perhaps the writer will reply?

Thanks,

Adriana

[RoboAsh]

Can anyone attach the script that is not working an

d if it a JavaScript I will be able to figure out the issue and might be of some help

[Guest]

That would be great.

[Guest]

Any progress with the script?

[Deborah_Sauer]

Hi Rick

Nope. No epub output, even from the small, simple, four topic RH project I

created as a test.

I am getting an error message that the TOC is missing, but it is there.

I get a mimetype file amd two folders: META-INF and OPS. The former has a

container file. Ops has my css, html files for my topics, plus

content.ops and toc.ncx.

Deb

[RoboAsh]

Hi Rick,

         I went through the file set that you have shared and went through the steps that you have mentioned.

I think just two of the things have to noticed here (one in the example post that you wrote and another one from other thread).

Here you wrote to set scale as 0% to get the original dpi in RoboHelp but the actual step is to set Width and Height as 0% (and the check box "Do not regenerate images" should be un checked) and then Generate/Update the link, this solves the image issue in RoboHelp.

One of the missing/wrong step you or others might be doing is either you are keeping call outs or another image in the same anchored frame in FM source or you have "do not regenerate image" setting checked, I will try to explain both one by one.

1. If you have multiple images or a call out along with the image inside a frame then that image has to be generated from FrameMaker and the output quality is not so good (in TCS 3 even this is working fine due to distiller route), but if you have only a single image in an anchored Frame and Images Width/Height is set to 0% in RH then the original image is brought and referred into RH and thus without reduction in size the images look good - this works fine in all the TCS versions but in TCS 3 we have an additive advantage of converting through distiller route from FrameMaker and thus images are far better even after conversion.

2. Now if you make all the setting to bring the best quality images like 0% in Width/Height and check "Do not generate images" option then you are instructing RoboHelp to keep the already generated images untouched and thus the new changes are not brought. This can even mess up your project because of these contradictory instructions (by Width/Height settings you want to make changes to the images and by "Do not generate images" you instruct to keep the images unchanged).

Hope this will help you to achieve good quality images

Ashish

[anderics]

This is not script related but I thought I could share one experience with image quality when linking FM9 files in RH8.

The FM book originally referenced images of many different formats and I noted that some images were liked just fine into RH but some got down-sampled and bacame useless. I realized that the ugly images were TIF and EPS files that had been automatically converted to JPG. I think I have tried every possible combination of settings in the Import Image dialog but no luck.

The only solution I could find was to replace every TIF and EPS file in the FM book with a corresopnding JPG that I had converted manually myself. When every image in the FM book was converted to either BMP or JPG, the RH image quality was acceptable.

[RoboAsh]

Hi Anderics,

        can you share one of the small FM file set along with the image (of format EPS or TIF) which is showing up a lossy conversion

[anderics]

I have done some major cleaning since I got it working so I can no longer reproduce the conversion issue quickly.

I would guess that the problem only shows when the image is scaled down in FM. Eg:

1) Insert a tif image in an FM document and scale it to 50%.

2) Link to RH and see the lossy conversion result. Typically in an image that contains fine lines or text.

OR

1) Convert the tif to jpg (or bmp or png)

2) Insert the jpg in the FM document and scale it to 50% just as before.

3) Link to RH and now you have a much better looking image.

[ZeBarron]

In my experience you cannot use annotations with curved or diagonal shapes. Drawing a box with straight lines is ok, and will not pixelate the image to the same extent as a diagonal shape (e.g. an arrow head). Anyways, in our company the workaround is simple ... don't use annotations!

[B_43]

I posted this in another thread but will repeat it here:

Set the Width and Height to 0pt.

This is done in RoboHelp under File>Project Settings>(ImportTab)>"Edit conversion settings for FrameMaker documents" > Images, and then under "Preferred Dimensions" set the Width and Height to 0pt.

For years my verification team and our customers complained about poor quality, blurry screen captures, but not any more. They are finally impressed with the quality. Using this fix, the screen captures, which are a mix of GIF, JPG, and PNG are all perfect now. They look as good as the SnagIt-captured originals.

The only caveat is that if you have text callouts and arrows done in the FrameMaker anchored Frame, they look pretty bad after conversion.

My fix is to add the callouts directly in my capture program (SangIt) so that the FM anchored frame only contains the linked image.

Fortunately, most of my anchored frames contain only a single linked graphic with very few having callouts, so the fix is easily implemented.

I am stunned at how unintuitive this fix is and how long it took to find. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised given how complicated TCS2 and TCS3 are to use.

[Keith_dk]

Thanks for all the great tips; but unfortunately none of them really solved the problem.

I use TCS 1 and have a very simple work-around that works for me.

All my graphics are sized and saved in the graphics software:

size = 100% (size is set for FM file which is also used to create a PDF) 

dpi = 200dpi for screens/photos and 300dpi for line drawings.

format = GIF (unless the graphics contain graduated coloring)

The graphics are imported into FM by reference.

FM import into RH

I find that the Import function works best for me rather than Add by Copy or Reference. If editing is required, I always go back to the original FM source files. The grahics seem to be down-sampled once they come into RH. In my situation, RH always saves the imported graphics in the same directory structure. Therefore, I can simply copy all the graphics files from my FM graphics directory into the appropriate folders in RH (Note: the files have the same names in both folders). No re-import is required. The finished result provides me with high-resolution graphics that look great both on-screen and when I print individual topics from the chm or html output file

Hope this helps. Keith