Having trouble making a thumbnail of a site

hey,

thats usually what i do....screen shot and paste. usually sharpening the image helps (for any thumbnail). try varying amounts of sharpness. see which one is best.

what size is your thumbnail? is it too small?

:)

Hit "Print Screen" then go into your graphics/photo editing software, such as Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop, and then go to "Edit - Paste - Paste as New Image" or just hit "CTRL + V". You will then see a screen shot of the site. No Resize the image to the size you want. If the site doesn't look as you wish, try using a "Sharpen" filter. Then save it.

Hi,

You could also use AU2HTML to create thumbnail webpages.

http://www.filehouse.com/au2html/

But I think screenshots would be more applicable for websites/pages as it's larger 200x200 or smaller pixel and produce a clear image. If it's an image/photo, then thumbnail 80x80 pixel would be appropriate.

before you follow the practices described above ....

... open the web site for which you need a thumbnail pic and reduce the browser window size to the smallest you can while still seeing the full width of the page. That way the page copy you make can have a lot of space 'outside' the browser window removed, so that the size reduction needed to get the thumbnail is less which is likely to make the thumbnail a better looking image.

>>what size is your thumbnail? is it too small?<<

150 pixels wide. Tried sharpening but still bad quality. I've seen other web designer display thumbnails of web sites they have done and theirs look fine.

Hi Andy. Tried what you sugested but I end up copying my desktop as well. The quality is still bad.

Check out these thumbnails. This is what I'm trying to do:
http://www.dollartemplates.com

Gavin

miracles take a little longer:)

I drag my browser window down to around 640 px wide. PrintScreen (yes it grabs the whole desktop), I forget how to get a selected window ... shiftPrtScr or altPrtScr or something.

Open Photoshop, new file, paste. Then trim the unwanted parts of the desktop and crop the image down to 640 px wide or so - so far it's at the same resolution and clarity as the original page. Now image size>>reduce to 200 wide and save as either JPG or GIF, playing around with the %compression or the number of colours to get the best combo of file size and clarity and save it.

30 second-example: http://www.halfadot.com/temp/thumb1.jpg

Just tried what you suggested Andy but still very bad quality. I'm using Paint Shop pro maybe I should use Photo Shop? I will now try it with Adobe Photo Shop.

Gavin

Eureka!

It works in Photo Shop. The quality of the thumbnail is ok.

I think I will get rid of Paint Shop and start using Adobe Photo Shop.

Gavin

I find a size that doesn't look too bad, then I use it for all the images.. Like so:

img
{
Width: 250;
Height; 250;
}

Then I just use the basic link.