Dithered empty space....

[Atlas]

Hi there,
I'm struggling to understand why an inserted picture into A Word 2003
document that has EMPTY white zones, when printed appears with whites as
slightly dithered gray; slight but unfortunatelly noticeable.

The inserted picture is a PNG and photoshop states it is a RGB/8 bit per
channel file.

Any hint?

 

[Eric]

Drives you crazy when it happense, doesn't it?

A couple of checks you could try. First, make sure your original PNG does
have a white background, and that your RGB or CYMK codes are correct. I'm not
a Photoshop expert--prefer Corel--but I sometimes have to work in PS or
Illustrator. The double check is worth it.

Second, check your png image's resolution (dpi). Sometimes if you save the
image at too low a resolution, you'll see spurious grey dots. Remember that
96 dpi is the maximum resolution needed for screen images or web postings
(although 72 dpi works as well), but depending on your printer, you may want
to be at 150 dpi or higher. I have been told that you do not need to set the
dpi to the same dpi as your printer (example, if you have a 1200 dpi printer,
your images don't need to be 1200 dpi in the document). I find that for most
conventional print jobs, 200 or 300 dpi are very good.

Third, are you enlarging the image in your document? If you are, you may be
enlarging beyond the PNG quality, so your grey is actually jagged edges from
resizing. I find that it's always advisable when exporting png or jpg to
resize the image to the size you'll use in your Word document. The import may
come in larger in the document (for reasons known only to software
engineers), but when you resize it, it's crisp.

The last test if the others don't work is to try to make the white
transparent. If there are spurious pixels in grey after you make it
transparent, you're not getting a clean export to png.

Hope this help.

 

[Atlas]

Drives you crazy when it happense, doesn't it?

A couple of checks you could try. First, make sure your original PNG does
have a white background,

It hasn't got any background; I've selected with the lazo tool all the
unwanted area and cut it away.

and that your RGB or CYMK codes are correct. I'm not
a Photoshop expert--prefer Corel--but I sometimes have to work in PS or
Illustrator. The double check is worth it.

How do I acheive that in PS?

Second, check your png image's resolution (dpi). Sometimes if you save the
image at too low a resolution, you'll see spurious grey dots.

(CUT)

funny but 299,99 DPI.....

Third, are you enlarging the image in your document? If you are, you may
be
enlarging beyond the PNG quality, so your grey is actually jagged edges
from
resizing. I find that it's always advisable when exporting png or jpg to

(CUT)

No resize; the pic is imported as it is

The last test if the others don't work is to try to make the white
transparent. If there are spurious pixels in grey after you make it
transparent, you're not getting a clean export to png.

I've tried both: setting 300 DPI and making the picture transaprent.....
Nothin, still there those bloody dots.
It may be the PNG format? I've never had problems with jpgs and bmps........

 

[Eric]

I'm not sure how you find the colors in Photoshop to check the actual CYMK or
RGB. In Illustrator, on the menu bar, go to Window > Color. Then on the Color
window, there is a little button with a triangle on the top right even with
the word "color," click that and select either RGB or CYMK. Make sure the RGB
is 0-0-0 and the CYMK is 0% in all four windows next to the color sliders.

Try saving with a white background, and then make the background transparent
in Word...see if that works.

I just thought of another idea. OK, this is kludgy, but it worked when I
tried it. Paste the image with the faulty background. Right click on the
figure, open the Object Toolbar. From the Wrapping button, select "Edit Wrap
Points" and use the bounding box to ignore the background area and follow the
figures actual outline. Then open the Object Editing window. Under Layout,
Advanced, select Square or Tight, on the Text Position tab, select whehter
you want to wrap on the left, right, or both sides.

"Tight" will place text adjacent to your bounding box wrapper, and will give
you a margin following the shape of the figure .. "square" gives you the
conventional box, but the background is transparent because of your bounding
box.

Maybe that will work because it trims the spurious pixels out of the figure.

If it doesn't work, I'm out of ideas. The reason a jpg doesn't give you the
same problem is that you can't make a jpg's background transparent until it's
placed in Word.

Hopefully this will help.

Eric

 

[Atlas]

I'm not sure how you find the colors in Photoshop to check the actual CYMK
or
RGB. In Illustrator, on the menu bar, go to Window > Color. Then on the
Color
window, there is a little button with a triangle on the top right even
with
the word "color," click that and select either RGB or CYMK. Make sure the
RGB
is 0-0-0 and the CYMK is 0% in all four windows next to the color sliders.

The palette is in RGB mode. Using the color picker on the "should be white"
parts, it states RGB:255,255,255 and CMYK: 0,0,0,0

Try saving with a white background, and then make the background
transparent
in Word...see if that works.

The image is only on one "layer" (background)

 

[Eric]

Atlas,

I'm sorry, I didn't make my explanation clear ... what I meant was, bring
the figure into photoshop and put it on a white background (2 layers). Then
when you export to png or jpg and re-import the picture into Word, use the
"Transparency" tool on the Object Toolbar to make the white transparent. It
will definitely be one layer from the export.

Other than that, I am out of ideas. Have you tried putting the figure into a
blank document with no other text or images? Do you still get the grey spots?

Eric