Decreased Quality in Saved/Imported Images

[Colin]

Whenever I save my .jpg (converted to .bmp using the worlds worst graphics editor, paint, on a side note why can't EAGE open .bmp's) as a .fsh the quality of the image goes way down. This is also the same when I import the image into a exsisting bhed. I don't mess with any of those .fsh saving options, except for label which is changed to bhed when saving. What I think happens is the bpp goes down for some reason, so I tried saving it as 16 bpp as opposed to 8 bpp. The image looked even worse so I tired saving it as 4 bpp and it was entirely black. The two faces (original, and saved bad quality) look like this, it's my cyberface. The original is the left, and the bad quality is the right.

[Colin]

Oh, and I do have the latest version of EAGE, re-downloaded it yesterday to make sure.

[Brien]

Whenever I save my .jpg (converted to .bmp using the worlds worst graphics editor, paint, on a side note why can't EAGE open .bmp's) as a .fsh the quality of the image goes way down. This is also the same when I import the image into a exsisting bhed. I don't mess with any of those .fsh saving options, except for label which is changed to bhed when saving. What I think happens is the bpp goes down for some reason, so I tried saving it as 16 bpp as opposed to 8 bpp. The image looked even worse so I tired saving it as 4 bpp and it was entirely black. The two faces (original, and saved bad quality) look like this, it's my cyberface. The original is the left, and the bad quality is the right.

There are many ways to accomplish this. Your instructions are not too specific so forgive me if I misunderstand you.

1. open the viv file and view the cyberface.
2. export the whole fsh file to your hard drive.
3. open the exported fsh and use EAGE to save it as a bmp
4. Close EAGE and open a picture editor (photoshop or paintshop)
5. Edit the extraced bmp (which is a 24 bpp file)
6. Open EAGE and open the extracted fsh file.
7. View the electronics arts version of the cyberface.
8. use the EAGE import wizard to import your new bmp to that position

There will be some loss of image quality. the file will be saved to DXTC format which is a "lossy" image format. For every 4x4 block of pixels, DXTC only stores two colors. If there are 16 unique colors in that block, then there will be a significant loss of image quality. This can not be helped, it is the nature of DXTC compression. Also, jpg is a "lossy format". Only use raw bmps with the highest bit qualilty possible so that the quality loss will be less evident.

You can also use FshED. It uses the most current compression algorithms available yielding the best DXTC quality. [shameless self promotion ]

Also, EAGE opens and saves bmps just fine. In fact, it is one of the few editors available that can actually create and view 32 bit bitmaps.

[Colin]

Also, EAGE opens and saves bmps just fine. In fact, it is one of the few editors available that can actually create and view 32 bit bitmaps.

As I said I re-downloaded EAGE the other day and always get a "stream read error" when opening a .bmp, I'll give FSHed a try too, thanks.