What's the best format for pictures used in Publisher?

[Mr. Analogy]

This thread suggests PNG is the preferred format
http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...361-66ba89766785&cat=&lang=en&cr=US&sloc=&p=1

What's the best format?
1. TIFF
2. PNG
3. JPG

Also, is it better to LINK the picture or EMBED the picture?

 

[Ed Bennett]

What's the best format?
1. TIFF
2. PNG
3. JPG

PNG is best for non-photographic data or data that need to be modified
many times. JPEG is a good format for photographic data that is not
modified much, provided the image is not overcompressed. Publisher does
not recompress JPEGs internally, so no data is lost on import, but PNG
is generally both more efficient and better-looking for non-photographic
data. TIFF is generally larger than PNG and as far as Publisher is
concerned does not normally do anything that PNG won't.

Also, is it better to LINK the picture or EMBED the picture?

If the data will be changed regularly and you want Publisher to
automatically update to the latest version of the image, then Link.
Otherwise, embed - Publisher embeds a copy anyway (so that the layout
isn't corrupted if the source file is moved/deleted).

 

[Mr. Analogy]

I dimly remember having problems with JPG images not printing very well
(resolution issues and, I *think*( problems with transparency) in Publisher
2003 (or maybe it was the older 2000 version) so I've been using TIFF files.


So... if it's photos that might change a little, what's the best format?

 

[Matt Beals]

TIFF.

JPEG files use JPEG image compression which deletes what it determines
to be redundant bits of data in order to achieve greater levels of
compression. The higher level of compression the more data gets deleted.
The lower level of compression the more data is preserved.

If you've ever seen little "blocks" in a picture that in a checkerboard
like pattern that is JPEG compression artifacts. If you need to use JPEG
compression always choose the highest quality setting. You'll get bigger
files but you will also preserve the image better. Each time an image is
saved after being modified the JPEG algorithm goes through and
re-processes the image to find the redundant data to delete. So the
problems grow each time the image is saved. Whereas with TIFF there are
basically three kinds of compression; none, ZIP/FLATE, and LZW.
ZIP/Flate and LZW are "lossless" forms of compression. Meaning they do
not delete data whereas JPEG is a "lossy" compression scheme. ZIP/Flate
and LZW compression do not achieve as high level of compression though.

Imagine making a ZIP file, that uses JPEG compression, that you are
sending to a colleague of an important document containing very specific
language for a business deal. When they get it and open the ZIP file
they notice that some of the "the"'s are missing. Not a good idea...

Matt Beals
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[Mr. Analogy]

Sorry, I probably wasn't specific enough:

I realize the limitations of the formats themselves (lossiness, etc.) my
question was about how PUBLISHER handles those formats.

As I mentioned, I seem to remember that Publisher didn't resize (reducing
the display size) JPG and GIFs very well and when the document printed
worse than the original JPG or GIF would have printed from a graphics
program. This problem did not happen with TIFFs.