Bridge Output slideshow low quality?

[Emma]

My Bridge slideshows look terrible, very grainy, noisy, or with artifacts, I'm embarrassed to show them to clients. The most recent one I did is the worst, and now I'm "shopping" for alternatives. Are the Lightroom slide shows any better? I didn't like the 500 image limit because of weddings or photo series (like multiple shoots for baby's first year), or photojournalism events, so I went back to my Bridge/ACR combo.

Take a look, tell me what I can do. Thanks!
http://emmapal.com/bowleslesley/
http://emmapal.com/mcdougald/

Here's one I did with LR 2 trial
http://emmapal.com/bowleslesley/bowleslesley/

The previews are much better using the same images, no retouching in LR (I did these in ACR and PS and just imported them to LR) so I'm not sure why all the Bridge ones look terrible. My OLD Bridge CS 3 slideshows regarding preview image quality are far better than those I'm creating now in CS 4.

Help!

[DoublyDan]

When you say slideshow do you mean slideshow or are you using the Web gallery output in Bridge or Module in Lightroom?

What size are your images when using this Gallery. If they have to upscale the images this may cause the noise.
Tell us a little more about the workflow leading up to the bridge output.

I use the simpleviewer Flash Gallery in Lightroom (check it out here) because it makes the images a certain size that doesn't scale with the monitor size. When I scale my monitor up (mine goes up to 1920 x 1080) your images scale as well. This may or may not be an issue.

You can find other Lightroom Web Gallery options here

[mmuhlenkamp]

I've never used Bridge/ACR, but make sure that the settings aren't making the jpgs super low quality. It just looks like they've been heavily compressed. Other than that I have no idea.

[Emma]

I've never seen any options in either ACR nor Bridge about how much to compress the quality. I go straight from my RAW files to the Output tab.

In LR I choose High Quality slider for the web galleries.

What is the standard for Bridge output? I don't know. I thought it used the same modules as LR???

In Br I'm using Extra Large preview with Medium thumbnails. The Large/full screen version looks slightly better, but still not very good.

[DoublyDan]

I would play around with it a little.
Of course your RAW files are huge so I would try using smaller images JPG and around 1000 pixels wide and high (at most).

You can do this easily from Bridge by selecting your preferred images and choosing Tools-Photoshop-Image Processor. Photoshop will open if it isn't already. You will then have some options to choose from. As stated above I would use JPG 1000 X 1000 and you want to keep aspect ratio, also 12 is the best compression so use that number I think 10 might be the default. The images will not come out 1000 X 1000 but depending on if the image is landscape or portrait the largest size possible would be 1000 pixels on one side and the other side would size to maintain the aspect ratio...
You could also use another size if desired but I would not go much higher if going out to the web. I think that these Galleries compress them accordingly so that may be where you are getting the noise. Just play around with it and let us know what happens.

[S-Man]

Personally I never use these features. It's nice to know the option is there though!
I like iPhoto's slideshows. If I'm showing a client in person I'll use iPhoto, but online, my Smugmug gallery makes great full-screen slideshows.

I'm curious to see what you guys figure out.

[Emma]

yay, another step to my workflow if I have to convert them to JPEG beFORE they go online! Many of those images WERE JPEG before going online as this was an event I shot in JPEG to get the prints made faster. Only the first few were RAW, and they actually look better, I think, maybe.

The poor quality doesn't look like overcompression to me, which is usually blocky pixellations. Some of the images have JPEG artifacts, but what I can't figure out is the speckly, amost sparkly look, like they're oversharpened, but still that's not quite right. I've never seen this effect in any other output, only Bridge web galleries in CS 4.

There are no compression options I can find anywhere in Br.

However, I rendered the same images into an LR gallery (that I can't get online for some odd reason), but the local copy of the Br and the LR galleries are light years apart. The LR images look great, the Br like what you see in the online one.

The LR web gallery options are really poor: only one Flash slideshow, and unattractive with a 500 image limit. I'd love to be able to get my Br galleries looking good. I really prefer the ACR/Br combo to LR in general. The work flow seems faster to me.

[DoublyDan]

Emma I know what you are saying about using bridge! I love using it. I have so much control over my images cause I mainly use photoshop as well. I do use Lightroom for my galleries cause I find it much more friendlier in that department.

I will be taking a class on file management over at the Art Institute Online (photography major class) and I know that they use Lightroom because it is a cataloging software as well as non-destructive editing. So I have been familiarizing myself lately.

As far as your issues with your images are concerned I see what you mean. I didn't think that it was a compression issue either but thought that it wouldn't hurt if you tried to bring in smaller files. I honestly don't know what it is. I am just trying to help out (I figure that if I can shake the leaves and something presents itself then I have been of help). I cannot think of what it may be.

I tried to duplicate the noise and was not successful...

I noticed that some of the images have a lot more noise than others, do you think that ISO settings along with the software may have something to do with it.