clear letters on images, how?

[Tourguy]

My friend who's very good with Corel Draw, knows nothing about web design. I recently asked him to creat a logo for me, and he the letters in the images all look bad either in jpg or gif. please advise. He always starts with big size then shrink the final works to the desired demension. According to him, starting with the exact demension is not helping, is it true? He showed me the image with big demension which already has jagged letters.

Thank you in advance.

[Ronski]

I don't use Corel. I use Flash and Freehand for still illustration. But your friend probably needs to turn anti-aliasing on for the text. I work double size, also, in the vector programs. I save as a GIF at the double size, then shrink the image down in PaintShop Pro. Everything looks smooth.

Sometimes the fonts themselves cause problems. Some are not as good as others.

[bettyfordclinic]

The sharpest lettering will always be achieved using GIFs, and trying to avoid gradients in the backgrounds. Even as low as 8 colours will allow a sharp clear text on a plain background (see link below).

Anti alising could certainly be the problem, but it sounds like the logo is ok before it's compressed. If he exported it as an eps or illustrator file (creating outlines of the fonted text first) I could try and have a go at compressing it or should be able to see what's wrong.

bfc

my site (http://www.fantasyjackpalance.com/)

[Tourguy]

Luckily, just redo it with anti-aliasing in Photoshop, the problem was solved.

For anyone wants to see the difference, see here:
Testing Page (http://www.tourguy.net/vgl/newpagetest.htm)

the top 3 banners were without anti-aliasing.

Thanks to all.

[Ronski]

Yeah, they look much better.