Image quality in ON

[Hanc]

Hi!

I love OneNote, best MS product ever (except for WinXP).
But with increased usage there are several features that I found missing for
my personal use of OneNote and some limitations.

I have no idea HOW ON stores my images in those .one files (and I actually
couldn't care less, from a users point of view) but the thing that bugs me
is the quality of those images.
No matter how you get them in there (copy-paste, drag/drop, screenclipping),
the quality of the images in onenote is noticeably lower (especially for
images with text).

What makes me like OneNote so much is the flexible way it can be used. And
one thing I would have liked ON to do for me, is keep track of images and
notes attached to them etc... but if I have to store every image separately
in its original file, then the advantage of using ON for it is mostly gone.
I don't care for harddisk-space, and if it were a memory/performance
problem, I would be content if ON just stored the image in it's notebook
folders and used a lower quality image for display - As long as the original
quality/data is still THERE. (much like the dialog/options when you
drag/drop a ppt or doc file into ON, where you can either have a link or
copy it into ON's notebook folders)

Oh and a second issue directly related to the above is:
An easier way of getting images OUT of onenote again (in their ORIGINAL
quality). Dragging and dropping would be nice. And this is where the storage
method comes in again: So far I only managed to copy/paste it into a
graphics application and save it there, but that leaves me with having to
chose a format etc... I just want it OUT of ON in the same format/quality
that I got it IN there in the first place...

Maybe I missed something and ON is capable of doing the above already??
Changing the option for size of document images didn't do anything for
"real" images; they don't change the size they appear in when pasting them,
let alone the quality of the images...

Would be great if this could be incorporated in a service pack or patch or
at least in Version 2. The reason I actually wrote this in here was the way
SP1 responded to customers wishes and issues so quickly and efficiently
(hyperlinks, subpage naming, and tab resizing, to name the most inportant to
me), which really impressed me. I would be really glad and it would save a
lot of time to manage images in OneNote.

I already posted that on the feedback site mentioned in one of the posts
further down, but I wanted to see if there is already a solution to this or
what other users feel about the issue.

thanks in advance, great product!

 

[Chris_Pratley \(MS\)]

Hanc,

Can you describe what you feel is the low quality of the images? What
resolution are the images you are using?

OneNote stores the original image at full resolution, so when you copy/paste
out of Onenote you get all the data you started with...(be sure to select
just the image when doign your copy/paste)

Chris Pratley (MS)
OneNote team

 

[Hanc]

Hi Chris, thnx for finding time to look into my "issue"

I already wrote quite a reply when I started testing again. The issue is now
a little different from where I started in my first post:

To sum it up: The problem is resizing!

You can still best see the difference with text (open anything with text in
IE and screen-clip it).
Now what made me think that ON didn't store it in its original quality was
that ON doesn't like to resize its containers when you paste but rather
resizes the image (it does in fact resize the container if it's too small to
hold the image, but it also resizes the image).
My screen clipping is configured to not paste it into ON rigth away but to
just store it in the clipboard for manual pasting (that way I can drop it
wherever I want in ON). But if the container is smaller than the size of the
source, ON tends to paste the image at a lower resolution (smaller size).
Most of the times I just click into empty space on an ON page (creating a
small container) and then using paste.
I now tested a bit further and used a container I widened BEFORE pasting, to
a size which is broader than the source image (length/height is not an
issue).
I got an image to display at its source quality in ON for the first time!
BUT: As soon as you resize this image in ON, you will never get back to that
same quality again, even if you resize it back to the source size. Quality
is lost in that process somewhere.

That same thing applys to pasting images (either with copy/paste from say IE
or with dragging an image file into ON).

Further testing revealed that with larger images ON always resizes. I
widened the container over the edges of my maximized ON on 1024/768, the
image i used was 842x595, the container was much wider than the image, still
ON pasted it at a much lesser size. In the process of resizing it dropped
the quality...

So resizing is the problem it seems. You CAN circumvent it for smaller
images (I didn't check for a threshold) by widening the container that is
supposed to hold the image BEFORE pasting or dropping it.
If the container's width is less than the source or the image is larger than
? by ?, ON decides to resize the image and loses quality which can not be
restored (haven't found a way yet).
Container height does not make a difference.
PLUS: You must never resize the image in ON (which can happen quite easily
if you resize the container...)

Solution?:
- An option to LOCK an images size (either for each image separately or as a
default for any image in ON).
- A function to restore an image to its original size and quality once
resized
- Different handling of container resizing/image resizing when pasting it
into ON, so as not to change the images size.
- Or anything that the experts can come up with

I hope that can help you to help me

greetz Hanc

 

[Chris_Pratley \(MS\)]

I see. Keep in mind that the entire high quality image is in fact being
stored. If you copy and paste the image back to an image processing tool (or
even just Paint), you have not lost anything.

OneNote is resizing for you to make the image easier to handle in "scrapbook
form", to fit on the screen, and to print predictably. Other tools such as
Word do this too to make a photo fit on a page and people find it very handy
since it saves the the step of resizing manually.

Are you saying that you would prefer images that do not all fit on the
screen to be pasted (by default)very large so that you could not see all of
them at once?

Another note: when you resize back to "original" size, it is most likely the
size is off by one or more pixles, so that causes OneNote image resampling
algorithm to be used, which will make pixelated images such as screen shots
look a little less crisp (the alternatuve is to lose entire comuns and rows
of pixels - much worse). What I hear you saying is you want a way to cause
images to "snap" to their orginal size. Is that correct?

Chris

 

[Hanc]

Ahh

I tested the pasting into a graphics app (again?) now and you are right, the
quality is there. I have no idea how this eluded me earlier on...

This is a relief, since I now know that my images are stored in their full
quality. Thanks.

Regarding your question whether I wanted images not to be resized even if
they were too large to fit on the screen: No, since I now know they are in
the .one file in full quality, I don't mind them being resized.
HOWEVER: I would appreciate a function to bring them back to original
quality/size, since manually resizing them to "original" size is tricky
(pixels). Something like right clicking on the image in ON and having
"Restore to original size".
Oh and it would be nice to be able to configure a "maximum size before
resizing", but that's really not important.

And for the ON wish list: (from my first post) Drag and drop an image out of
ON and have it copied/moved (maybe an options dialog after dropping?) to the
location I dropped it. This would be very very handy.

Thanks a lot!
That solved my "issue" and I can now rely on ON to store most of my images.
I still don't know how the pasting into another app eluded me earlier on,
sorry for that.
Oh, and in my first post, I forgot to praise "Screen Clipping". THE killer
function of SP1! (plus the hyperlinks, but that was not really like adding
something new, but adding something that had obviously been "forgotten").

Greetz Hanc