Do I understand how Word deals with graphics?

[Ed]

I have written reports on product testing for several years. Many of these
reports rely heavily on graphics, especially photos. I'm a writer, not a
photographer or graphic artist. But since graphics are a part of my
reports, I have tried to wrap my brain around what happens when a graphic is
inserted into Word. I'm now trying to write up some of what I've gleaned
for my coworkers, most of whom have less of a clue about this than I do!

These are my opening paragraphs. I would appreciate any comments as to my
understanding of the way things work. Or if anyone has or knows of a basic
"primer" article on this subject that can be shared, I would be most
grateful.

Ed

************

In the years that I have been writing test documents, one of the biggest
problem areas has been dealing with graphics. While Microsoft Word provides
some tools for working with graphics, few people - myself included - have
understood what happens to the graphic and the document when a graphic
element is imported and then adjusted in any way.



It's even more important to consider this now that three things have
changed: (a) many Test Directors have their own digital cameras, (b) Word
has become more complex and saves much more metadata in each document, and
(c) more documents are being sent and stored as electronic documents, rather
than printed only. A Test Director will take a 6 inch wide by 4 inch high
digital photo at 600 dpi, making the image 3600 pixels wide by 2400 pixels
high. When imported into Word, which defaults to either 72 or 92 dpi, that
photo (at 72 dpi) is still 3600 by 2400 pixels, but is now 50 inches wide by
33 inches high! Word will dutifully increase the memory required by the
document by enough memory space to contain the full-size photo. After
cropping and resizing by the writer, Word has now also saved all the
metadata required to show the photo at the adjusted size.

 

[Jezebel]

A couple of tidbits to throw in:

1. Word's default resolution for imported pictures is accessible on Tools >
Options > General : Web options. (For later versions of Word. Prior to ?2000
it was fixed at 96 dpi.)

2. The displayed size of an imported picture is the effectively the picture
size in pixels divided by Word's display resolution (which is sort of what
you describe). There is no increase in memory involved.

3. Word is lousy at manipulating graphics. By far the best approach to
handling graphics is to prepare them using a graphic editor: make any
display adjustments like contrast and brightness, then set the size and
resolution that you want to end up with in your finished document, then save
the graphic as a gif or jpg, then import that into Word. Never put a picture
into Word by copy-and-paste from another application.

 

[Ed]

Hi, Jezebel. I appreciate your comments. My responses are after yours.

A couple of tidbits to throw in:

1. Word's default resolution for imported pictures is accessible on Tools

Options > General : Web options. (For later versions of Word. Prior to ?2000
it was fixed at 96 dpi.)

I checked mine (Word 2000) - it's actually 120 dpi. But if I copy a graphic
and paste it into a graphics program, the new graphic is usually 72 or 96
dpi.

2. The displayed size of an imported picture is the effectively the picture
size in pixels divided by Word's display resolution (which is sort of what
you describe). There is no increase in memory involved.

Maybe "memory" is the wrong word. I'm talking about when you import a 200k
graphic andf your document size balloons up by a few megs! The space
required for the document has now increased.

3. Word is lousy at manipulating graphics. By far the best approach to
handling graphics is to prepare them using a graphic editor: make any
display adjustments like contrast and brightness, then set the size and
resolution that you want to end up with in your finished document, then save
the graphic as a gif or jpg, then import that into Word. Never put a picture
into Word by copy-and-paste from another application.

Actually, that's part of what this is supposed to do - get management to
realize that we need a separate graphics program. But while those wheels
slowly turn, at least my coworkes can understand some of what's going on and
what not to do.

Thanks again for chiming in. If you can point me to any good write-ups on
this topic, I'd appreciate it.

Ed

 

[Ed]

Thanks for adding to my understanding, though I'd like to get some
additional clarification, if you've got the time.

Based on your original post, my impression is that print quality is not as
much a concern as file size

Correct. Most of our docs, while they will be printed out at some point,
are stored on servers and emailed everywhere. I've seen hand-drawn diagrams
scanned on a full-page flat bed scanner, saved at 600 dpi, then inserted
into a document and cropped and resized at leisure. And everyone wonders
why their hard drives are sagging!

What Jezebel is referring to is the resolution at which Word _stores_ the
graphic for print purposes. It is always _displayed_ at 72/96 ppi (not dpi,
which is a printer measurement which _does not_ correlate on a 1:1 basis)
because that is all the monitors are capable of - 72 ppi on Mac, 96 ppi on
Windows. If you copy & paste, you are copying the displayed (low res) image,
not the stored image whose res may be higher.

So then the metadata (?? - may be the wrong term) in a document does store
two different sets of information for each graphic - the original size and
resolution, and the displayed size and resolution?

Cropping & Resizing in Word don't change anything about an image, itself.
The first essentially 'masks' the peripheral part of the image which the
user doesn't want to display or print, but doesn't _remove_ any of the image
content - you can stretch it back again with the Cropping Tool to display
the whole image any time you want. Likewise, 'resizing' would be more
accurately termed 'scaling' as it also simply determines what amount of
display space the image is allowed to occupy in the doc. It doesn't change
the size of the image, either.

But you have also just added more information Word needs to store, right?
Whereas if the graphic had been resized from 6 x 4 at 600 ppi to fit the
space in the document at a lower resolution before Inserting, Word would
have much less info to save, resulting in a smaller doc size, yes?

Digital Cameras don't set the print dimensions as a part of the image
format, they simply capture a certain number of pixels (. . . . )
A per above, the number of pixels remain the same, but the print dimensions
aren't influenced in any way

I was referring to the displayed size of the photo when Inserted into a
document, because that's what will cause them to reach for the crop tool and
the resizing handles. When talking about the display, is my reasoning
correct (because the number of pixels are the same, but the display
resolution is much smaller, the displayed size of the photo will grow
proportionately)? If not, then what causes the display bloat?

I am often given reference documents and told to use the graphics in it for
my report. Is that when you use the "Save As Web Page" trick? Will that
yield the image at the original size and resolution, versus the displayed
image captured by Copy?

Thanks so much for helping!
Ed

 

[Jezebel]

I am often given reference documents and told to use the graphics in it
for
my report. Is that when you use the "Save As Web Page" trick? Will that
yield the image at the original size and resolution, versus the displayed
image captured by Copy?

All graphics within a Word document are stored internally as WMFs. Using the
Save As Web Page trick will yield a graphic file, but not the one you
started with. Hence the importance of inserting from file, and keeping those
files...

 

[Ed]

Hence the importance of inserting from file, and keeping those

files...

I heartily agree!! Unfortunately, I am not always provided with access to
the original files. Sometimes I'm fortunate if I get an electronic copy of
the reference doc! *sigh* If only we were always provided with everything
we need to accomplish what they want us to do . . .

Cheers!
Ed

 

[Ed]

Thanks for all the time! This has been a great discussion!

If the file containing the image can be opened in Word, that is one option.
Another is to rt+click the image and choose Save as Picture (I believe Word
'02 & '03 offer that, I'll check tomorrow), then use the newly saved image
file to place in the new doc.

I've got Word 2000 on my main machine, and Word XP on a laptop. If I have
to, I can use the higher version to accomplish this.

Thanks again ever so much. Cheers!
Ed

 

[CyberTaz]

And unfortunately the option I suggested to Save As Picture is only available
on the Mac, not the Windows version. Sorry

Another is to rt+click the image and choose Save as Picture (I believe Word
'02 & '03 offer that, I'll check tomorrow), then use the newly saved image
file to place in the new doc.

Regards |:>)

 

[Keith Howell]

I have been creating a website trying to encourage people to draw using Word
itself and have used the Save for Web option in Photoshop to massively
decrease the size of any pictures I have used in my web pages. If you have
any clout within Microsoft then I would ask you to try for the following:

1) to stop the cursor from flying to the nearest paragraph whenver you delte
a drawing object.

2) to provide a facility to link edit points from 2 different drawing
objects so that complex items can be built up from simpler ones

3) a save for web function for pictures similar to Photoshop

I have an example of a high graphic & picture content on my website
(www.drawingwithword.com) on how to build an air hockey table and it has
become a sizeable file. When I get around to it I want to try and reduce the
picture sizes by converting them with Photoshop and see exaactly what
reduction can be achieved.

 

[Bob Buckland ?:-\)]

Hi Keith,

That's impressive Word graphics work on your web site
http://drawingwithword.com

Some of the 'limits' or 'possibilities' of what you can do with Word or dedicated graphic programs to 'create' things can come from
the users artistic capabilities, including how they perceive shapes, or the patience to do the rendering. For example, your
step-by-step wineglass tutorial for Word in 'Let's Draw' shows a relatively easy and fun thing to do in Word (for some) while for
others, finding a clipart wineglass to use as Insert=>Picture=>From file or 'paste' into a Word document takes out some of the fear
of having people think it was 'done wrong' by a non expert <g>.

On your suggested changes list, it has been forwarded to some Microsoft folks, but you may also want to post those suggestions on
the WebLogs for some of the Word and Office team handling the next version(s). There are links to a number of these on the upper
right of the 'Office 12 zone' page at the Office Zealot site
http://www.officezealot.com/office12/

and Microsoft is showing some of the graphics changes through
http://microsoft.com/office/preview


For the current versions of Word -

Item 1 has been discussed in another recent thread in this group. Basically if you picture a 'floating' graphic being a picture you
hang on the wall, (the wall being your page) when you remove the picture from the wall the focus jumps to 'the nail' you were
hanging it on.

Item 2 - are you referring to still being able to use wrap/edit points on individual elements of a grouped graphic once the group
has been created?

Item 3 you can affect with the settings in Tools=>Options=>General=>Web Options=>Pictures, depending on how the picture was created
and its original properties so that when you use File=>Save as web page=>Filtered you can get 'browserfied' graphic files that Word
generates, but it was nice when Word 97 did have an option to save the graphics out separately with a right click <g>.

=======
>>
| I have been creating a website trying to encourage people to draw
| using Word itself and have used the Save for Web option in Photoshop
| to massively decrease the size of any pictures I have used in my web
| pages. If you have any clout within Microsoft then I would ask you to
| try for the following:
|
| 1) to stop the cursor from flying to the nearest paragraph whenver
| you delte a drawing object.
|
| 2) to provide a facility to link edit points from 2 different drawing
| objects so that complex items can be built up from simpler ones
|
| 3) a save for web function for pictures similar to Photoshop
|
| I have an example of a high graphic & picture content on my website
| (www.drawingwithword.com) on how to build an air hockey table and it
| has become a sizeable file. When I get around to it I want to try and
| reduce the picture sizes by converting them with Photoshop and see
| exaactly what reduction can be achieved. >>

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I agree that the drawings are impressive. One note on the bell: it will
never ring because the clapper is outside the bell.

Hi Keith,

That's impressive Word graphics work on your web site
http://drawingwithword.com

Some of the 'limits' or 'possibilities' of what you can do with Word or

dedicated graphic programs to 'create' things can come from

the users artistic capabilities, including how they perceive shapes, or

the patience to do the rendering. For example, your

step-by-step wineglass tutorial for Word in 'Let's Draw' shows a

relatively easy and fun thing to do in Word (for some) while for

others, finding a clipart wineglass to use as Insert=>Picture=>From file

or 'paste' into a Word document takes out some of the fear

of having people think it was 'done wrong' by a non expert <g>.

On your suggested changes list, it has been forwarded to some Microsoft

folks, but you may also want to post those suggestions on

the WebLogs for some of the Word and Office team handling the next

version(s). There are links to a number of these on the upper

right of the 'Office 12 zone' page at the Office Zealot site
http://www.officezealot.com/office12/

and Microsoft is showing some of the graphics changes through
http://microsoft.com/office/preview


For the current versions of Word -

Item 1 has been discussed in another recent thread in this group.

Basically if you picture a 'floating' graphic being a picture you

hang on the wall, (the wall being your page) when you remove the picture

from the wall the focus jumps to 'the nail' you were

hanging it on.

Item 2 - are you referring to still being able to use wrap/edit points on

individual elements of a grouped graphic once the group

has been created?

Item 3 you can affect with the settings in Tools=>Options=>General=>Web

Options=>Pictures, depending on how the picture was created

and its original properties so that when you use File=>Save as web

page=>Filtered you can get 'browserfied' graphic files that Word

 

[Keith Howell]

Hi Bob,

What I meant in item two was, if you have drawn one freeform line (that has
edit points) then you draw another (that also has edit points) it would make
life so much easier if you could link the end edit points of each freeform
line so that you now get one much longer freefrom line. In all projects it is
essential to be able to break things down into more manageable chunks. It is
the same with drawing. I am in the middle of creating some Health & Safety
cartoons with many figures and if you want to draw say a jacket, it would be
much easier if you could draw say sleeves or other parts seperately then join
them up.

Regarding your comment about clip art I agree bit don't forget the whole
reason for my website is to try and encourage folk to have a go at drawing.
The wine glass exercise is tied in with "bendy lines" and showing folk how to
manipulate edit points rather than what is being drawn.

Suzanne made the point about the bell not ringing, it is a similar point.
the journey there is the essence, not the final product - also, it doesn't
matter as the important thing is recognising something that is
representational. If you look at the car wheel, if one was really made like
that all the air would come out of the tyre because the holes in the steel
wheel are directly into the inside of the tyre
It's the same with the rose, in reality they don't look like that. These are
all methods developed to encourage folk to have a go and to build confidence
in using the tools.

Best regards

Keith