BleepingComputer.com: Microsoft Photodraw

Has anybody ever used Microsoft Photodraw? If so, could you explain how to correctly save a picture from Photodraw's .mix format to a more commonly used image format such as .gif or .jpg, so that I can post the pics on the web, using my photobucket account?

I'm doing sth wrong: the images I design look good in Photodraw. But when I save them to a gif (or jpg) format smooth edges become jagged, the pics blow up, the colours disintegrate ...

Or is Photodraw just a crappy program?

Can anybody help?

touse

See if this helps:

http://www.forum4designers.com/archive10-2004-9-126436.html

The fix at Lovelady.com doesn't seem to be available anymore. But I doubt if it would have solved the problem since all the graphic philters are in place and I have no trouble viewing .jpeg or .gif formats with Photodraw.

So, I gather it is my inexperience in working with graphics design programs that is at the root of the problem, not the program as such. I did a bit of research and found some solutions:

I was able to significantly reduce the dithering while saving an image in .gif by creating a customized colour palette for the pic and selecting compression type LZM rather than the standard. Customizing a palette was the only thing that worked to decently save a picture that used a gradient colour (like the grey of the computer monitor of n° 1 n°1 ). But it only gives a clear, undithered picture with a simple gradient, covering a small surface.

For an image made up of large blocks of flat colour, with not too many curved lines (as in n°2) I got the best result when saving it in .gif selecting the standard web "solid" palette. Better result than .jpg!

I really had trouble saving n°3. I first used a gold gradient. A palette of 256 colours is simply to little to save all those gradient colours. I re-designed the image using a two colour gradient. Not perfect, but remarkably better.

I stil have to figure out how to get rid of those holes inan image that appear sometimes when you use a cutomized palette for saving a transparent gif.


As to the size... I'm more or less able to control the size of a picture by manipulating the pic's export size (via trial and error). But I have as yet no idea how smooth out those jagged edges. In Microsoft Photodraw v2. you can play around with the threshold setting, but my version of photodraw seem to lack that button in the save-as-gif options. Anybody know how to go about it to reduce those jaggies? Sth to do with anti-aliasing perhaps?

I have found this to be a helpfull read.

touse