Our designer is a print designer and doesn't know a thing about the web so I hope someone here can help us out.

The designer created a great logo, consisting of a line drawing and type, in Illustrator. She gave us a gif, which I believe she saved directly from the ai format. The gif looks crisp and perfect but when we reduce the size, using photoshop, the quality suffers. I thought that since gif is a lossless format, that wouldn't happen, especially since the original gif looks so good, but obviously I'm missing something.

Since resizing gifs don't seem to work, is there another format she can give us that would allow us to reduce the size w/o quality degradation? Or would it be better for us to get gifs of various sizes? We'd prefer to be able to reduce it ourselves, but don't have illustrator. And we're working with photoshop 6, for now.

Also, are gifs the right format for us to be using?

Thanks very much for any help.

Ellen

to reduce size i actually use the tool which come from photoshop call " save for web"

you can convert your pic png format rather then gif

Originally Posted by ellentk

Our designer is a print designer and doesn't know a thing about the web so I hope someone here can help us out.

The designer created a great logo, consisting of a line drawing and type, in Illustrator. She gave us a gif, which I believe she saved directly from the ai format. The gif looks crisp and perfect but when we reduce the size, using photoshop, the quality suffers. I thought that since gif is a lossless format, that wouldn't happen, especially since the original gif looks so good, but obviously I'm missing something.

Since resizing gifs don't seem to work, is there another format she can give us that would allow us to reduce the size w/o quality degradation? Or would it be better for us to get gifs of various sizes? We'd prefer to be able to reduce it ourselves, but don't have illustrator. And we're working with photoshop 6, for now.

Also, are gifs the right format for us to be using?

Thanks very much for any help.

Ellen

She can give you the native file if she designed it in Illustrator so ask for the .ai file and when you open it up in Photoshop, there will be a prompt for sizing - you can adjust the size before it is rasterised so it loads up in Photoshop and if you're happy, just go to File > Save for the web and save it as either a PNG (if more than 256 colours in your design) or GIF (256 colours or less).

Actually, it might be better to ask her for the logo in EPS format. You can then open the EPS file in Photoshop, resize it to what you need for your site and keep the quality that you need, THEN save it as GIF, PNG or JPG, whatever fits your purpose.

I posted a message last month titled, "Any way to reduce vector graphic in photoshop and keep high quality?" I was unable to reply due to illness (I'm fine now) and was surprised to find the thread locked. Why is that?

Anyway, thanks to all who replied. I haven't tried opening an eps file and will.

Just opening the ai file in photoshop (in photoshop's native psd) degraded the quality. I ran the psd through "save for web" and oddly, the jpg was better than the gif, but both were not as good as the gif our designer sent us, which she created in Illustrator.

SaveAs from the psd as both gif and jpg produced pretty much the same results as "save for web."

The graphic is a fine line drawing with a few words of text.

I haven't tried any of the online tools that were recommended in other threads, and may. But I'm thinking that the answer is that photoshop's rasterization of vector graphics degrades them. Wondering if my conclusion is correct?

Thanks.

Ellen

Unfortunately it became a target for spam bots.

I'll merge these two and leave it closed for now.

Don't open the AI file - You need the file in EPS format, NOT AI. Opening the AI file just converted it to a raster graphic. The alternative is open it as a SmartObject.