Considerations When Planning Graphics

These are just some of the reasons why your document's graphics require careful attention:

• Image Resolution: in the printed document you will want high resolution graphics (300-600dpi) that will print well, whereas your Help and HTML outputs only require screen resolution (usually 72dpi).
• File Size: the size of the graphics used to create the printed document is not all that important, however in a Help system and especially in HTML it is very important to keep sizes as small as possible.
• File Format: in the printed document you have quite a large selection of file formats to choose from, including OLE objects. However WinHelp and HTML are limited to only a few specific formats, and there is not one format to fit all bills. Author-it now lets you use one source file and specify the different output file formats to publish
• Image Transparency: this issue alone will probably be enough reason to have different formats of your graphics. You will have to do some careful reading on transparency and the tools required to achieve it
  • A printed document always assumes the page is white and therefore white is transparent.
  • In WinHelp, transparency is mapped to a color at a specific palette location in the BMP file. Background colors are often not white.
  • In HTML, each area of transparency is specifically tagged in the GIF file.

In summary, it is almost inevitable that you will end up having several different formats and resolutions of the same image. For maximum control, you can do the conversion work yourself with your favorite graphics tool, and keep one of the graphic formats as the master. Alternatively, you can let Author-it do most of the conversion work for you.