Poor Picture Quality in Microsoft Word

DH
Posted By
David_Hollomon
Aug 8, 2004
Views
981
Replies
6
Status
Closed
I process my digital photos in Photoshop Elements before inserting them into my real estate appraisal program. When they are inserted into my appraisal reports the quality is very good. However, when I insert those same photos from Photoshop Elements into Microsoft Word documents the quality is very poor. What gives . . . what am I doing wrong? Thanks for any help or suggestions. Dave

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SB
Stu_Bloom
Aug 8, 2004
Have you tried different formats?
MM
Mac_McDougald
Aug 8, 2004
Using Insert/Picture/From File ?

Mac
DH
David_Hollomon
Aug 8, 2004
Yes, I have also tried saving in PSD format but there was no difference in quality. Would TIF perhaps be better?
DH
David_Hollomon
Aug 8, 2004
Yes, I am using Insert/Picture/From File.
MM
Mac_McDougald
Aug 8, 2004
Yes, I’d stay with TIFF.

I don’t know what the state of .psd into current Word version is; Word 2000 won’t even do .psd.

Also, make sure you have 220-300ppi at actual print size in the Word doc, assuming you ARE printing the document.

If you’ll set the image size/ppi in PS first and save, Word will honor the TIFF tag so you don’t have to drag for size in Word.

Mac
A
Ade
Aug 9, 2004
Hi

Sorry this is a long post, but I can’t say it in less :o)

I don’t know the technical reason but I do have the answer. Word seems to be very picky about how it is going to show images. I write training material for a large manufacturing company in the UK. We dedicated many days to this as the results we were getting were grim to say the least. We were also increasingly concerned about the size of the documents we were creating when the images were added.

—-
Before I get on with how we do it, I should just point out that the following only affects Word. If we were doing any other image work we wouldn’t use the formats or the methods.
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We tried many formats comparing both an insert from file version and a copy and pasted version and found ultimately that there were two clear winners:

GIF – is used for any screenshots of programs (Word screenshot for example) To do this we also spotted that the best result we needed to set the screen colours to 256. Though GIF is a 256 colour format we were finding that screenshotting in 32 bit colour was causing the grainy results when reinserted in Word.

JPG – is used for any images where more than 256 colours are needed. Photos for example (remember this is only where Word is concerned) We found that JPG with no compression (100% quality) gave the best performance when viewed in the finished document. Increased compression caused the artifacts to be greatly exaggerated when inserted as a file into Word.

TIFF along with others gave us the same grainy results. Like I say, I don’t know the technical reason, but I do know this works for us and is now the corporate standard worldwide for creating training material.

Hope this helps

Ade

wrote:
Yes, I’d stay with TIFF.

I don’t know what the state of .psd into current Word version is; Word 2000 won’t even do .psd.

Also, make sure you have 220-300ppi at actual print size in the Word doc, assuming you ARE printing the document.

If you’ll set the image size/ppi in PS first and save, Word will honor the TIFF tag so you don’t have to drag for size in Word.
Mac

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