C4E blurry banners

[audra_agnelly]

Has anyone come up with best settings/tools for creating C4E banner images to avoid blurryness? I've created a banner in Canva with the recommended 5:1 ratio. Everything looks nice and crisp in Canva and in the thumbnail on the course settings screen, but after saving and reloading my homepage everything is blurry. I've tried ratios from 1000:200 to 4000:800 and different Canva fonts and stickers, but nothing I've tried results in a crisp resolution in Canvas. A vector graphic would be ideal, but Canvas doesn't accept .svg files for the banner so I'm using a .png. Are people creating crisp, clear banners for C4E? What are you using?

[greydon · Accepted solution]

Hello Audra,

Thank you for contacting Canvas Support. We're sorry to hear you've been experiencing issues with you C4E banner images. It sounds like you have exhausted and tried many different picture types and ratios. It is true that we don't accept .svg for the banner but .png and .jpg etc. The 5:1 ratio should be working as intended. It may be the image itself that you have. There is a small update regarding the banner size and you can get specific pixel suggestions here: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-for-Elementary-Archived/Project-Update-June-25/ba-p/470584

Because of the complexity of the issue, and the need to view the specifications of your images, it would be best if you contacted Canvas Support directly to pinpoint the source of the issue and provide a resolution:

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Basics-Guide/How-do-I-contact-Canvas-Support/ta-p/389767 

[chadscott]

We are also having this issue - I've tried several files (all 5:1 ratios) ranging from 1000px to 4000px and all look blurry. I've used banners I've found on Google and ones I've created myself with Photoshop. I've attached an example.

Cheers,

Chad Scott

[audra_agnelly]

I was delayed getting back to this, but I was working with some of our summer school templates this morning, and it definitely seems something has changed in the way these image files are getting processed upon upload. The attached screenshot shows the same file set as a banner image in 2 different courses. The top image is a course I worked on back in March and everything is nice and crisp. The bottom image is the course I was working on today and even though I used the same image file, the text and graphics are blurred. I did submit a ticket to support about this behavior this morning.

[audra_agnelly]

Update for those following: When a banner image is added on the Settings screen Canvas is now compressing the image file, resulting in the blurryness. In my above screenshots, the image is 227 kb. When I added it to a template course in March, the upladed file size and the file size in Files both reflect 227kb and the image is nice and crisp. In the courses I have worked on more recently, where the banner appears blurry, the file size in Files is now 67kb. To my knowledge, there is no current workaround for this. My update from support yesterday: "Kindly note that our internal engineering team is aware of the issue that is affecting banner images across Canvas courses, and is currently investigating. I have attached a tracker to your case and I am putting your case on hold so that you will be notified of updates from our engineers regarding the issue."

[FrankieKirk]

Thanks for the update!  C4E will be turned on in August for our district.  It would be awesome if this blurriness issue with the banner image is resolved by then.