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Scribus => Raster and Vector Graphics => Topic started by: OccasionalUser on December 30, 2025, 03:52:24 PM

Title: JPEG Export blurry-ish
Post by: OccasionalUser on December 30, 2025, 03:52:24 PM
Hi,
I've set up a template with a grid of image boxes, "adapt to frame" checked, "proportional" unchecked (I'm translating on the fly from another language in the GUI so apologies if some things are not 100%) but proportionality is seldom a factor, if not for a pixel or two.

I'm dragging and dropping some image files, either in JPEG or PNG format, of a different - bigger - size (thus some resizing always occurs, but there's more data than needed for the output resolution) and then exporting the whole document as an image in JPEG format, 100% quality.

I've done the same thing in Photoshop, except it's a lot more cumbersome because I have to manually transform and align the pictures.

Now the issue: the output for Photoshop noticeably crispier than Scribus' (the output files are the same dimensions in pixels thus resolution is not a factor, both JPEG max quality, and file size is almost the same - same ballpark anyhow).

I have all previews at High in Scribus, and I also tried exporting as SVG and exporting from Inkscape (same blurry-ish result... I know my problems are with raster images, but wanted to see if e.g. JPEG compression was different).

Quality when previewing the result in the Scribus software at 100% magnification is far higher than the output.

I'm fairly certain it's either a resizing issue (maybe the algorithm is bad for resizing to a lower resolution i.e. bicubic smoother vs bicubic sharper in PS) or an encoding issue (JPEG compression).

Batch-resizing images is unfortunately not an option due to the fact that it would slow down the workflow and require additional space - and I think it would be useless anyway because the preview displays better than the export.

Thoughts? TiA

Edit: tried exporting 400% size then resizing 25% in PS and saving JPG (clunky, I know), baseline optimized, max quality and the blurriness is no longer there... so yeah... either resizing algo or jpg compression "issue".

Edit 2: tried exporting as TIFF and it's still blurry, so I guess I narrowed it down to the resizing algo. Can it be tweaked in the preferences?
Title: Re: JPEG Export blurry-ish
Post by: a.l.e on December 30, 2025, 04:36:28 PM
The export from Scribus as an image is meant for creating previews, not production ready images.

Your best bet is to export to PDF and then use a different tool for converting each page of the PDF to a PNG.
Title: Re: JPEG Export blurry-ish
Post by: OccasionalUser on December 30, 2025, 06:15:26 PM
Quote from: a.l.e on December 30, 2025, 04:36:28 PMThe export from Scribus as an image is meant for creating previews, not production ready images.

Your best bet is to export to PDF and then use a different tool for converting each page of the PDF to a PNG.

Ouch, I see...

Thanks for the reply, I'll try as you suggest!

Edit: I tried, and while the results are better (no compression in images etc.), the best results so far are exporting to image 4x the size and then resizing and compressing in PS. This can also automated as a batch, so I think I'll do that going forward.
Title: Re: JPEG Export blurry-ish
Post by: AdmFubar on December 31, 2025, 04:50:16 AM
You may want to check ImageMagick, a command line tool for image conversion.


https://imagemagick.org