Inserting PDF image results in low res image

[Sleepy]

Hi, Ive been trying to embed pdf images in a word doc but when I do it
seems to defaults to an unacceptably low resolution picture. I cannot
find an import setting for this. Any advice would be helpful.

mike

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Mike:

You have not told us which version of Word or operating system you are
using, so we cannot answer your question.

Generically, Word displays the bitmap preview of a PDF but it should print
the underlying EPS version of the graphic.

To get a more acceptable display, try converting your images to WMF or EMF.

Cheers

Hi, Ive been trying to embed pdf images in a word doc but when I do it
seems to defaults to an unacceptably low resolution picture. I cannot
find an import setting for this. Any advice would be helpful.

mike

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[Nate Goldshlag]

John, I wish you would try what you suggest before suggesting it. Word
X and now 2004 has *never* handled PDFs properly. PDFs that print fine
in Acrobat Reader print jaggy and low resolution (fuzzy) with Word X
and now 2004. It does not print properly. I have reported this many
times, to Microsoft tech support and here, and it is still not fixed.
This to me is the most disappointing thing with Word 2004. I was sure
that it would be fixed by now.

And your comment about converting images to WMF is PC centric. How are
you supposed to do this? Graphic Converter does not do this properly.
If a graphic is created in, say, OmniGraffle how do you get a WMF?
That program can export to JPEG, TIFF, PNG, EPS, PDF. Not WMF. I
would challenge you to give a step by step instruction on how to get
graphics from OmniGraffle to print properly in Word.

The only clumsy workaround I have found is:

1. Export as EPS (no preview)
2. Use Graphic Converter to insert a TIFF preview in the EPS file
3. Insert into Word and a low resolution, jaggy preview appears but
it prints OK.

Nate

 

[Elliott Roper]

John, I wish you would try what you suggest before suggesting it. Word
X and now 2004 has *never* handled PDFs properly. PDFs that print fine
in Acrobat Reader print jaggy and low resolution (fuzzy) with Word X
and now 2004. It does not print properly. I have reported this many
times, to Microsoft tech support and here, and it is still not fixed.
This to me is the most disappointing thing with Word 2004. I was sure
that it would be fixed by now.

And your comment about converting images to WMF is PC centric. How are
you supposed to do this? Graphic Converter does not do this properly.
If a graphic is created in, say, OmniGraffle how do you get a WMF?
That program can export to JPEG, TIFF, PNG, EPS, PDF. Not WMF. I
would challenge you to give a step by step instruction on how to get
graphics from OmniGraffle to print properly in Word.

The only clumsy workaround I have found is:

1. Export as EPS (no preview)
2. Use Graphic Converter to insert a TIFF preview in the EPS file
3. Insert into Word and a low resolution, jaggy preview appears but
it prints OK.

Round here, even that is no good. Graffle's eps export seems broken. It
appears[1] to rasterize on the way out. Its PDF is OK, but GC
rasterizes that on input. Freehand refuses to eat Graffle's eps.
Importing the Graffle pdf to Freehand works OK for the fonts, but mucks
up the shadows. Apart from that, Freehand is the only application I can
find that exports the eps text correctly in a form that Word can print
(and a truly jaggy preview on screen)

I'd give up on eps and pdf and export from Graffle as Tiff with an
outrageous resolution. I can't get Word to print 1200 dpi tiffs but
600 is not too bad. Note that in Graffle, if you are exporting a
selection, don't forget the border or you will lose the shadow on the
righmost object.

1.If you have Illustrator you might do better with Graffle's eps. but I
would not give short odds on that.

My tests were done with OS X 10.3.4, Word v.X, Omnigraffle 2.2, GC 5.1,
and Freehand 10.0

Standards are such a wonderful thing. Everyone should have their own.

Hope that helps. At least it confirms that you are not alone, swimming
in that polluted mess.

 

[Nate Goldshlag]

John, I wish you would try what you suggest before suggesting it. Word
X and now 2004 has *never* handled PDFs properly. PDFs that print fine
in Acrobat Reader print jaggy and low resolution (fuzzy) with Word X
and now 2004. It does not print properly. I have reported this many
times, to Microsoft tech support and here, and it is still not fixed.
This to me is the most disappointing thing with Word 2004. I was sure
that it would be fixed by now.

And your comment about converting images to WMF is PC centric. How are
you supposed to do this? Graphic Converter does not do this properly.
If a graphic is created in, say, OmniGraffle how do you get a WMF?
That program can export to JPEG, TIFF, PNG, EPS, PDF. Not WMF. I
would challenge you to give a step by step instruction on how to get
graphics from OmniGraffle to print properly in Word.

The only clumsy workaround I have found is:

1. Export as EPS (no preview)
2. Use Graphic Converter to insert a TIFF preview in the EPS file
3. Insert into Word and a low resolution, jaggy preview appears but
it prints OK.

Round here, even that is no good. Graffle's eps export seems broken. It
appears[1] to rasterize on the way out. Its PDF is OK, but GC
rasterizes that on input. Freehand refuses to eat Graffle's eps.
Importing the Graffle pdf to Freehand works OK for the fonts, but mucks
up the shadows. Apart from that, Freehand is the only application I can
find that exports the eps text correctly in a form that Word can print
(and a truly jaggy preview on screen)

I'd give up on eps and pdf and export from Graffle as Tiff with an
outrageous resolution. I can't get Word to print 1200 dpi tiffs but
600 is not too bad. Note that in Graffle, if you are exporting a
selection, don't forget the border or you will lose the shadow on the
righmost object.

1.If you have Illustrator you might do better with Graffle's eps. but I
would not give short odds on that.

My tests were done with OS X 10.3.4, Word v.X, Omnigraffle 2.2, GC 5.1,
and Freehand 10.0

Standards are such a wonderful thing. Everyone should have their own.

Hope that helps. At least it confirms that you are not alone, swimming
in that polluted mess.

Elliott,

I use OmniGraffle Pro 3.1.2 so it may be different from version 2 (in
fact, I think EPS export was broken in version 2). Its EPS export is
fine but has no preview. Graphic Converter 5.1.1 can insert a TIFF
preview (low resolution). This EPS inserted into Word prints fine and
looks like crap on screen, and can be resized fine in Word with no loss
of print resolution.

You are absolutely correct that GC rasterizes PDFs on input. If you
use GC to convert, say, from PDF to EPS and put that into Word it
prints OK but if you look closely you will see little fuzz around the
text - it was a bitmap as you say.

The problem with your high resolution TIFFs or PNGs is that printing is
horrendously slow and the files become very big with this approach.
Word should at this point just handle PDFs and also EPS files. The
system now handles converting PostScript to PDFs - just double click a
PostScript file and Preview will open it up as a PDF. Word should be
able to do the same thing. Instead we get a $200+ upgrade that does
very little.

Nate

 

[Elliott Roper]

Elliott,

I use OmniGraffle Pro 3.1.2 so it may be different from version 2 (in
fact, I think EPS export was broken in version 2).

Yes, I should upgrade. It is a fantastic tool .

The problem with your high resolution TIFFs or PNGs is that printing is
horrendously slow and the files become very big with this approach.
Word should at this point just handle PDFs and also EPS files. The
system now handles converting PostScript to PDFs - just double click a
PostScript file and Preview will open it up as a PDF. Word should be
able to do the same thing.

I absolutely agree with that. Word still appears to lack the ability to
import and export documents electronically so that the reader sees what
the author intended. I send two. One Word for editing. One PDF for
reading and searching. That is plain wrong. I know it is extremely
difficult to turn an arbitrary PDF or .ps back into something editable,
but grabbing eps or PDF graphics should have had a much higher priority
than fiddling about with cutesy-pie ruled notepads.

Can you confirm that Word 2004 now prints eps to PDF correctly, or is
it still sending the eps preview?

 

[Nate Goldshlag]

Yes, I should upgrade. It is a fantastic tool .


I absolutely agree with that. Word still appears to lack the ability to
import and export documents electronically so that the reader sees what
the author intended. I send two. One Word for editing. One PDF for
reading and searching. That is plain wrong. I know it is extremely
difficult to turn an arbitrary PDF or .ps back into something editable,
but grabbing eps or PDF graphics should have had a much higher priority
than fiddling about with cutesy-pie ruled notepads.

Can you confirm that Word 2004 now prints eps to PDF correctly, or is
it still sending the eps preview?

Elliott,

No I am sorry to say (but not surprised) that this does still *not*
work correctly in Word. None of these types of major deficiences has
been corrected in Word 2004, near as I can tell. Word prints the jaggy
low res EPS preview - it looks like crap. If I take that same EPS file
and Place Image in OmniGraffle and print to PDF it looks great.

Print to PDF does not always work for all applications, though. A
clumsy workaround is to print to a PostScript file, double click the
..ps file, and then when it opens in Preview save as PDF. *That* PDF
will look and print fine.

Nate

 

[Nate Goldshlag]

Can you confirm that Word 2004 now prints eps to PDF correctly, or is
it still sending the eps preview?

Incidentally, if there is no EPS preview in Word so there is just the
bounding box and you print to PDF you get only the bounding box and no
image.

Nate

 

[Elliott Roper]

Elliott,

No I am sorry to say (but not surprised) that this does still *not*
work correctly in Word. None of these types of major deficiences has
been corrected in Word 2004, near as I can tell. Word prints the jaggy
low res EPS preview - it looks like crap. If I take that same EPS file
and Place Image in OmniGraffle and print to PDF it looks great. bugger!

Print to PDF does not always work for all applications, though. A
clumsy workaround is to print to a PostScript file, double click the
.ps file, and then when it opens in Preview save as PDF. *That* PDF
will look and print fine.

That's a good trick. It is what I do too. I have letterhead templates
with eps logos etc. They print OK, and the ps-PDF two step is *far*
more conventient than having two sets of templates for print and PDF
delivery.
*Bad* Microsoft.

 

[Sleepy]

Incidentally, if there is no EPS preview in Word so there is just the
bounding box and you print to PDF you get only the bounding box and no
image.

Nate

Well I guess you guys have answered my original question. Thanks.

So its confirmed that there is no way to get word to print PDF
properly. The way I have been doing it is to export to WMF in
Illustrator then import to Word. Not a very satisfacory solution.

I had been using word X and now 2004. It is more than a bit
disappointing (but not surprising) that Microsoft couldnt be bothered
to make the necessary enhancements to play nice with what has become
the primary graphics object on the Mac platform. So glad I didnt pay
anything for this stupid 2004 "upgrade".

m

 

[John McGhie]

Don't go away just yet.

My understanding was that Word 2004 could print EPS to a PostScript printer,
but can display the preview only if it is PICT or TIFF.

I am checking this. Sorry...

Cheers

Well I guess you guys have answered my original question. Thanks.

So its confirmed that there is no way to get word to print PDF
properly. The way I have been doing it is to export to WMF in
Illustrator then import to Word. Not a very satisfacory solution.

I had been using word X and now 2004. It is more than a bit
disappointing (but not surprising) that Microsoft couldnt be bothered
to make the necessary enhancements to play nice with what has become
the primary graphics object on the Mac platform. So glad I didnt pay
anything for this stupid 2004 "upgrade".

m

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[Nate Goldshlag]

John,

Word 2004 *does* print EPS correctly to a PostScript printer. The
issue was printing to PDF via the print dialog, which does not work
correctly. That puts the low res TIFF preview in the PDF file. I gave
a workaround in this thread.

Nate

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Nate:

Thanks: That's what I thought.

OK, not our problem then The Print and File Dialogs in Word are part of
Mac OS X, and the mechanism in use is made by Apple Word does not even
draw the dialogs for those functions, it simply calls the System function.

Cheers

John,

Word 2004 *does* print EPS correctly to a PostScript printer. The
issue was printing to PDF via the print dialog, which does not work
correctly. That puts the low res TIFF preview in the PDF file. I gave
a workaround in this thread.

Nate

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[Nate Goldshlag]

I know, John. Never Word's fault.

Then why can I place this same EPS with TIFF preview into OmniGraffle
and say print to PDF, using the same system print dialog, and it comes
out looking great? Yet Word uses the low res TIFF preview.

Nate