2015: Exporting Jpeg: Resolution and edge-quality issues?
-
I'm on 2015. Moderate file, very little textures or fancy business. Exporting \2D Graphic\Jpeg. I have one of the Competition Winner styles with sketchy edges and "whiteout border". When I export the jpeg, the style does not get applied correctly. This particular style has sketchy edges and in the jpeg, all the sketchy edges are not rendered...they are more-or-less hidden edges. The textures and the whiteout border are fine, so it's not rejecting the style parameters altogether.
If I try to export a jpeg based on a standard sytle like Architectural Design Style...the edges are almost hidden, but there are tiny hints of sketchy lines. If I print to pdf and then convert the pdf to jpeg, it works.
What I have discovered is that when exporting 2D Graphic\Options: If I check the box for "Use View Size", I get the proper edges, but even though I have the resolution slider all the way up to "Better quality", the resulting image is pretty pixelated and will not print well at 11x17 or if projected. So the further I bump the pixels/resolution up, the finer the detail, but the more I lose edges. At 5000 pixels width, I have lost about half of my edge quality. At 9999 width (the max), when I get very good image quality, just about 99% of the edge quality is gone.
Anyone have experience with this or suggestions?
-
My guess is that it is a consequence of jpeg rather than an issue with SketchUp per-se. Jpeg was designed to compress natural scenery images in ways that in effect fool the eye into not noticing the degradation. In particular, the compression generally discards very fine details. This makes jpeg a poor choice for drawings with fine lines an details. Other than exporting a non-compressed format, the only answer I can offer is to experiment until you are happy with the results, realizing that due to the nature of jpeg they will never be perfect.
-
Yeah but I'm talking the difference between Sketchy Lines 9fairly thick usually) and HIDDEN lines! This is not a minor reduction of line quality. If I want the sketcy line appearance, I get mightily pixelated jpegs- not even suitable for 8 1/2 x 11 printout. that's at Use View Size (checkbox). If I want a decent print, or to project, I need to bump up to MAX jpeg size supported= 9999 pixels wide.
It seems extremely primitive to accept the fact that normal quality jpegs will be pixelated on an 8 1/2 x 11 print, or that I will lose my line type.
FWIW, the exact same scenario plays out if I export a 5000 width TIF file too.
I'm at a loss. -
edges are measured in pixels.. so if your style has edges set to 1px and you export an image 10,000px wide, the lines are going to appear tiny in the export.. if you want to export at that size with fatter lines, increase your profile settings in the style.. for instance, if your workspace is 1000px wide and you have edges set to 1px, you'll have to make your edges 10px to appear the same at 10,000px wide.
with sketchy styles, there's a problem if i understand correctly how they work.. the sketchy edges are raster images so if they scaled according to your export size, they'd look horrible/pixelated when blown up.. they'd look the same as if you exported a jpg at 999px wide then in an image editor, increased the size to 9999px wide..
i don't know if it's possible but you might have to create a custom sketchy style with really thick linework -or- really high resolution in order to export a giant JPG which inherits the sketchy style.. (like so thick that when viewing in the model space, it will look bad with way-too-big edges.. but when exported at 5x size, they look normal/good)
Advertisement