Poor image quality in Microsoft word

[Axel Krings]

When I insert an image in "Microsoft Word X for Mac" it shows up fine
on the screen, but when printing it to a pdf file the resolution is
horrible. Somewhere word compresses the original good resolution to a
low res. Checking in newsgroups I found that people say that word
uses a default of 96dpi resolution for images. However I cannot find
an option to change this default (if it really exists). I found out
during hours of wasting time that one can "edit image" and then exit
out of it again and suddently it works - no idea why - I don't do
anything but open and close.

But the real question is: how does one disable this absolute annoying
"feature" of compressing the image in the first place?

Is this one of those defaults that contributed to making me so sick of
Microsoft products that I bought a Mac, which lowered my tolerance
for the lousy quality of Microsoft products even more? Yet, I am still
fighting with Word X for mac [thank God there is LaTex for many
uses :-]

Thanks (and please forgive my outburst of affection

Axel Krings

 

[Elliott Roper]

When I insert an image in "Microsoft Word X for Mac" it shows up fine
on the screen, but when printing it to a pdf file the resolution is
horrible. Somewhere word compresses the original good resolution to a
low res. Checking in newsgroups I found that people say that word
uses a default of 96dpi resolution for images. However I cannot find
an option to change this default (if it really exists). I found out
during hours of wasting time that one can "edit image" and then exit
out of it again and suddently it works - no idea why - I don't do
anything but open and close.

But the real question is: how does one disable this absolute annoying
"feature" of compressing the image in the first place?

Is this one of those defaults that contributed to making me so sick of
Microsoft products that I bought a Mac, which lowered my tolerance
for the lousy quality of Microsoft products even more? Yet, I am still
fighting with Word X for mac [thank God there is LaTex for many
uses :-]

Thanks (and please forgive my outburst of affection

Heh!

Word "should" respect the dpi of the imported image. It seems to forget
how much it scrunched it to make it fit. Thus an enormous image at 72
dpi, squashed to 1/10th of its original dimensions, is still treated by
Word as a mosaic made from old beer bottles.

Get the image approximately the right size and dpi before importing it.
The less chance you give Word to have its wicked way with your images,
the better they will look.

PS Which LaTex are you using, and can you point me to wizard wheezes
for handling images therein. (I have been playing with TeTeX, since it
is one of the few that does not shove Computer Modern fonts at me quite
so relentlessly)?

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Axel-

re: But the real question is: how does one disable this absolut­e
annoying
"feature" of compressing the image in the first place?

Sorry I can't offer any better news, but I don't believe there is any
way to change that particular aspect of how Word operates. That simply
points up the fact that the program is not really designed for your
intended purpose. Virtually all word processing programs are exactly
that... The key phrase here is "word processing". They handle graphics
on a "limited" basis. Word 2004 has improved things a little, but there
are still some posts here as well as the Apple Discussions that suggest
not everyone is satisfied with the graphics handling just yet.

IMHO, a desktop publishing program is necessary to get high quality
graphics output. Apps like QuarkXpress & InDesign are well worth the
price if you want quality printng of graphics... even if you're not
outputting to an imagesetter. They also offer so much more in terms of
versatility, manageability and accuracy.

The way it was put to me many years ago was "Choose the right tool for
the job". I've found that to be sound advice.

Sincerely hope this is of use to you|:>)

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Axel:

When I insert an image in "Microsoft Word X for Mac" it shows up fine
on the screen, but when printing it to a pdf file the resolution is
horrible. Somewhere word compresses the original good resolution to a
low res.

Um, no -- Word does not change the original image file, it simply stores it.
The real problem is a bit more complex than that.

Checking in newsgroups I found that people say that word
uses a default of 96dpi resolution for images.

It uses the resolution set by your operating system to "display" images. On
modern Macs, that resolution is 96 DPI, same as a PC.

However, when Printing, Word uses the original graphics file. It
down-samples or up-samples that file to the specified "size" of the picture.
If you store 900 dpi JPEGs in a document (as I do) and set them to print at
100 per cent of their original size, they will indeed print at 900 dpi.

However I cannot find
an option to change this default (if it really exists).

It doesn't.

I found out
during hours of wasting time that one can "edit image" and then exit
out of it again and suddently it works - no idea why - I don't do
anything but open and close.

OK. Word X and Word 2004 are completely different in the way they handle
graphics. Neither of them does their own graphics handling: both of them
use the OS X graphics display widgets. Word X uses the "Old Mac OS X"
system, Word 2004 uses the latest one.

A Word document is in layers, like a Dagwood sandwich. The text is on one
layer, graphics on another. Word compiles a low resolution "Display" image
on a different layer. To speed up scrolling, it stores this "display
header" in the document so it doesn't have to make it fresh every time. Due
to a bug, sometimes Word can't "find" the original graphic, and prints the
low-res version instead.

Opening and closing the image in Image Editor forces Word to rebuild the
display image. When it does, it corrects the pointer to the original file
(which is stored at the bottom of the document, just below the last
paragraph mark). Next time you print, Word prints the correct graphic file.

But the real question is: how does one disable this absolute annoying
"feature" of compressing the image in the first place?

If they had found a way yet, they would have done so! It only happens
sometimes to some pictures in documents created on some machines by some
versions of Word.

By the way, the name of the behaviour is a "layering problem", rather than
"compression". Word also compresses text and images if it can to save disk
space. A Word document is typically compressed about ten to 1 before being
stored on disk. That's not the behaviour you're talking about: that's a
valuable feature.

Is this one of those defaults that contributed to making me so sick of
Microsoft products that I bought a Mac, which lowered my tolerance
for the lousy quality of Microsoft products even more? Yet, I am still
fighting with Word X for mac [thank God there is LaTex for many
uses :-]

Word X has a heap of problems, none of which can be fixed. The history to
this is that Apple was not in good shape financially around the time OS X
came out. None of the other major software vendors would produce anything
for OS X, because they all thought Apple was going to go broke. Apple knew
that if they didn't get Microsoft Office onto OS X "right now" they were in
serious trouble. So a deal was done, and in my opinion, Office X was rushed
to market before either it or OS X was ready for prime time. It happens:
more often than you think. For similar commercial reasons, Word 2002 was
NOT a good year on the PC

The rest is history: With Microsoft Office available to Mac OS X, and
Microsoft Corporation committed to supporting it, all the other software
vendors had to bite the bullet and bring their products over or face being
cut out of the market. OS X, and Apple, now had a viable future. But
Microsoft got stuck with having to support Word X in a fairly buggy state,
and with sales very slow, there was little money coming in to fix it with.

Office 2004 started the fix-up. It's a much stronger and more capable
product, and they managed to hold that one back until they felt it really
was ready. Still not perfect -- no software ever is -- but for most users
most of the time, Office 2004 fixes nearly every bug that hits them.

Unfortunately, it has a bug in its picture handling that is proving very
difficult to nail down. That's the one you are seeing. I know there is
some serious work going on, on both the Apple and Microsoft side, to fix it;
but it's a major problem and I suspect the fix might take some time yet.

Meantime, go up to 2004 if you can: it's not "perfect", but at least for me,
I get a lot less trouble than I did with Word X. Word 2004 is reliable
enough for me to use for my commercial work (long documents) whereas Word X
was not.

Hope this helps

--

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

 

[krings]

John,

thank you for the detailed description!

Actually there is a great paper (10 years old but still very valid)
which addresses the balance of loosing market shares if you test
software "too" long and the adverse affects of faults escaping into the
field, which addresses exactly what you are describing below. I think
he calls it "operating under the threshold of pain". I used this paper
as an opening for a fault-tolerance class.

Just in case you don't have it, the reference is: Top Five Challenges
Facing the Practice of Fault-tolerance, R. Chillarege, Hardware and
Software Architectures for Fault Tolerance, Lecture Notes in Computer
Science, Volume Editors: Michel Banatre, Peter A. Lee, Springer-Verlag
Series 774, p3-12, 1994.

-- Axel

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Thanks Axel:

I can assure you that the folks at Microsoft have a keen understanding of
"the threshold of pain" although I doubt that many of them would claim that
they spent the majority of their working day "under" it...

I wish that paper were online somewhere, I would love to read it.

Come to think of it, I would love to take your course

Cheers

John,

thank you for the detailed description!

Actually there is a great paper (10 years old but still very valid)
which addresses the balance of loosing market shares if you test
software "too" long and the adverse affects of faults escaping into the
field, which addresses exactly what you are describing below. I think
he calls it "operating under the threshold of pain". I used this paper
as an opening for a fault-tolerance class.

Just in case you don't have it, the reference is: Top Five Challenges
Facing the Practice of Fault-tolerance, R. Chillarege, Hardware and
Software Architectures for Fault Tolerance, Lecture Notes in Computer
Science, Volume Editors: Michel Banatre, Peter A. Lee, Springer-Verlag
Series 774, p3-12, 1994.

-- Axel

--

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

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410