New Mac and CC ... Saving for Web looks awful now!

Great question ... I've been meaning to ask and even tried googling with less than stellar results.

Tiff ... I am struggling with this too (for a few months now). I really can't get used to how small it appears in Photoshop. And I don't feel like my pages look as sharp as they used to. And it just doesn't look right to me either using Cheryl's save for web anymore or anything else I try ... would love to hear how others are saving for web after CC. I think it was a fairly recent CC update that changed everything... CC 2015 maybe?

 

Hmm- I haven't noticed a big difference. I don't always use save for web though. I made my own resizing action (with a high pass overlay to sharpen) and then only save for web if I need the size smaller. Usually it's only at other stores- most of my tlp layouts I just resize, sharpen & save around an 8. Sorry I guess I"m not much help! :/

 

I don't have a Retina display on my iMac but am considering upgrading my machine when the new ones come out (whenever that is, I'm not in a hurry) so have done research on the Retinas. You need to save your images at 2x the pixel width that you used to save. So if you typically were saving at 600px wide, save at 1200px wide. That makes it wide enough for the Retina and other HD type of displays, but most browsers will automatically resample down for regular displays.

 

I do have retina. And actually now that you mention it being linked to the retina display, that is when the problems started ... I think I upgraded to CC 2015 at that time too. So those two things are when I noticed issues. I just thought it was linked to the legacy > save for web in CC because it was an obvious change from the previous version.

I really don't view them in Finder other than a tiny thumbnail ... so I'm not experiencing the blurry finder images. But I feel like my saving for web is jacked up. If I saved at 600 pixels with any of my old methods ... either manually or with a save for web action ... it looked awful. I've just been trying to tweak and not really happy with anything.

So @mollyc ... the research shows saving at 1200 pixels? How then do we get the files sized for the galleries properly? I am not the most technical person.

 

I don't think the gallery has a max pixel size anymore (it did in the past). I think now we are limited by over all file size (in terms of kb). If the image is larger than the gallery you can click on it now and it just opens a larger pop up version of it.

 

Also, I don't know if it's 1200 px. specifically....I just used 600/1200 as an example. But double the width of your previous save for web routine.

 

Oh, I just checked and it does say 800px max (and 1MB).

You could also do 800px wide and up the DPI to 200 or 300; most web actions save at 72dpi. That essentially accomplishes the same thing but keeps the actual px size within the parameters.

So maybe try 800px @ 200DPI and see how that looks.

 

I completely agree with this thread!!!! I have been complaining about the bad save-for-web versions too!!

I was on a windows laptop for years but recently bought an 27 inch iMac with Retina 5K display. That's also when I had to switch to CC. I have been wondering if it's just me and the fact that my screen is just so much bigger and clearer when I am creating my pages that when you use the Save For Web action just is a too big of a change and therefor you see all the imperfections.

I am just wondering if other people view my pages as blurry or whatever. If only we can see a change, but other people can't, then I am ok with that.

Also I'm going to try saving them differently as suggested above.

 

OK... so doing everything the old way doesn't effect anything for anyone else, it's just those of us on Retina displays may notice a difference.

I will try some of Molly's ideas. I'd kinda like to have the best of both worlds too... looks good to me (and other Retina users - they are my pages and memories after all) and also looks to the rest of the displays. Hopefully we can find a happy medium.

Thanks @Tiff for running the experiment on the old iMac and the new Retina display. It helps to "know"!!! And thanks @mollyc for researching the suggestions on how to get the save for web pages to look better for us!

I'm so glad you asked this question Tiff!

 

It's not a CC thing, it's a Retina thing (or an alternate HD type of screen for Windows based people). I have read of photographers returning Retina screens because they hated the way the web versions of their photos look. This was in the early days of Retina before people really figured out what was going on and how to fix it.

 

Yes, good to know and thanks Molly.

 

kiss

 

@jenn mccabe I am fine with save for web with cc... I use an action that I downloaded for free here at the Lily Pad https://the-lilypad.com/store/resize-for-web-photoshop-action.html by paislee press and Cindee Bae and it works pretty well for me. I am on cc 2015.5.

 

Did any of you ever come up with good settings? I just updated my computer to a 5K Retina iMac and despite my previous research and comments above on how to fix it, can't find settings for this site that look right. Oddly, my images for FB (and another site I post photos on) all look the same (clear, as I see them in PS), but here they are super blurry to me, even adding extra pixels or resolution.

 

I'm not a MAC user, but I have also noticed this with PC...I have no idea how to fix it and it really makes me wish we could find the CS5 CD.