Fuzzy Graphics in Word when printing

[Olivier]

We are using Macs/PC in our sales department. I used to create all
graphics with a Mac, save it as bmp (as Word used to handle this
perfectly) and then import it into Word.

Now this works perfect for the PCs, but for approx. 2 weeks, the Macs
rint these graphics very fuzzy, even though on the screen this looks
perfect.
I tried all kind of graphic formats, but I haven't found one (beside
bmp) that is compatible for PC AND Mac. Funny enough, all the graphics
I imported into the word files a long time ago (also bmp's) print
fine. It's only the new ones that causes problems.

Did anything happen to the word files
-since Office 2003 PC was introduced?
-becasue of one of Apples updates?

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word]]

Hi Olivier:

Yeah, quite a few things changed in Office 2003: but one of the most obvious
would be the resolution of the bitmaps it captures and how Word stores them.

The problem is that Word assigns both a size and a scaling to the bitmap,
and honours both. It has always been a "challenge" getting bitmaps cleanly
out of Word because of this. The only product I have ever found that was
able to copy a bitmap out of Word cleanly and reliably was Microsoft Photo
Editor, which was an accessory in all versions of Office from 97 to 2002.
But the most disastrous change in 2003 was that Office 2003 removes
Microsoft PhotoEditor in favour of the inane new Picture Editor, which is
not even close in functionality.

You can put PhotoEditor back, and I have on all of my PCs. Be very careful
doing this: install ONLY PhotoEditor, or you will damage your Office 2003
installation.

Then you can simply copy the bitmap from Word, Open PhotoEditor, and Paste
as a New Image. Having done that, you can save from PhotoEditor as a bitmap
of your choice (I suggest GIF if it's a screen shot, JPEG otherwise) send
the file to the Mac, and embed it there.

To use a different graphics editor to do this, you need to edit the picture
in Word and set its Scaling to 100 per cent (exactly). Click RESET to do
this. This usually enables other graphics applications to copy the picture
without fuzziness. Sometimes you have to try a couple of times, because the
100 per cent must be exact. The fuzziness is caused by aliasing, due to the
fact that the PC and the Mac have different screen resolutions.

Hope this helps


This responds to article <[email protected]>,

We are using Macs/PC in our sales department. I used to create all
graphics with a Mac, save it as bmp (as Word used to handle this
perfectly) and then import it into Word.

Now this works perfect for the PCs, but for approx. 2 weeks, the Macs
rint these graphics very fuzzy, even though on the screen this looks
perfect.
I tried all kind of graphic formats, but I haven't found one (beside
bmp) that is compatible for PC AND Mac. Funny enough, all the graphics
I imported into the word files a long time ago (also bmp's) print
fine. It's only the new ones that causes problems.

Did anything happen to the word files
-since Office 2003 PC was introduced?
-becasue of one of Apples updates?

--

Please respond only to the newsgroup to preserve the thread.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[M. Katz]

I've got 4 suggestions I hope will help.

1) Never copy and paste graphics into Word documents, tempting though
it may be. Always use the menus to Insert > Picture from File... It
takes longer but you'll get better results.

2) Consider using PNG file format. PNG works great on both Mac and PC.
Microsoft seems to play nice with PNG, and you get the benefits of
GIF-type compression in a perfectly lossless file format that supports
grayscale or millions of colors.

3) In Word X, always start fresh from a New Document. If you open up a
document created in the OS 9 version of Word, then empty the contents
and start working away, I have found that graphics will be limited to
72 dpi. I found this out the very hard way, and it has been confirned
on this newsgroup. You'll be able to test the printing quality on you
Mac by outputting to PDF for a quick image resolution test (Print
menu, then Print to PDF, and save as a file you can open and zoom-in
on in Preview.)

I use all kiinds of image sizes, re-sizing, scalings, effects,
whatever and I've had perfect success by strictly following
suggestions 1-3, above. John's advice, while it may be true (I don't
use the programs he suggests) seems to me to be overly restrictive.

4) I don't mean to be harsh about this, please don't take this the
wrong way. Before you post a (perfectly legitimate) question about
bugs deficiencies and quirkiness in Word, search for your problem in
the archives of this newsgroup on Google Groups, for example. Hundreds
of people are experiencing the same, wonderful,
microsoft-must-really-love-us, MS Word flakiness, and these topics
seems to get asked and answered over and over again. Searching will be
hours faster than posting and waiting. For example, the keywords
"Fuzzy Graphics" returned 41 postings. "Low-resolution graphics"
returned 21.

Good luck,
M. Katz