Quark Xpress 5.0 colour problem

Hi

I am using Quark on Mac OS/9 to generate HTML and I am experiencing
difficulty when creating boxes with background colours, whereby a .GIF file
is created which has a dithering effect.

I'm using web-safe colours but when viewed in a browser, either on the Mac
or on a PC, the .GIF files have been made up from a mix of colours that are
nothing like the originals seen in Quark.

The problem occurs even when doing a preview from Quark.

I have resolved the problem by specifying the export file type of JPEG in
Quark but I rather think there ought to be a solution to this. Quark
mentions the problem of using non web-safe colours, but as far as I'm aware,
I'm only choosing web-safe colours.

I have no desire whatsover to change to using another software tool other
than Quark. I want to try to solve the problem.

Is there anyone with similar Quark experience there at all?

Thanks

Matthew

"Matthew" <nospam.RemoveThis@btinternet.com> wrote in
news:c2obej$h9$1@sparta.btinternet.com:

 > Hi
 >
 > I am using Quark on Mac OS/9 to generate HTML and I am experiencing
 > difficulty when creating boxes with background colours, whereby a .GIF
 > file is created which has a dithering effect.
 >
 > I'm using web-safe colours but when viewed in a browser, either on the
 > Mac or on a PC, the .GIF files have been made up from a mix of colours
 > that are nothing like the originals seen in Quark.
<snip>

I'm not a Quark user but there are some general rules.

If the background contains any color gradients, fading surfaces and the
like it is doomed to cause problems with GIF. The GIF standard only
allows a maximum of 256 different colors. For complicated grafics use
JPEG.

GIF does a great job on images with large surfaces of the same color and
hard lines with sharp contrasting edges like screenshots, line-drawings,
clipart (as long as it doesn't have gradients). In these cases GIF can
create sharp and small files. Extreemly good for detailed screenshots
that can be scaled down to 16 colors.

JPeg is better with complex fillings or photo's. However JPEG is bad at
"Hard lines" as they exist in line drawings and screenshots. The
compression process generates noise at the sharp edges.

If your background features both hard edges and gradients there is little
hope that an automated process will give satisfying results. Best you can
do in that case is to export it with an extreemly high resolution to a
lossles format. Then resampele the output to the target resolution with a
paint program (using bicubic or some other smart resampeling algorithm)
which will produce nice anti-aliased edges and can be saved to JPEG
without too much loss. Not sure if quark can do that, but I guess it does
a better job on the printing press than on the web.

Good luck

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