OT: Best Resolution Image File to Import into Word?

I have an ongoing design notes doc, almost the diary of a design, that is 80 pages by now, with about one pic per page. The Word file is 6.4 Mbytes, which is microscopic in these days of terabyte drives. I haven't seen the problems people are referring to.

I don't use cell phone pics! I have real cameras. My typical jpeg file averages maybe 150 Kbyte after tweaking. Unless you have a serious setup, good lighting and a rigid tripod, multi-megabyte image files are silly. It's appalling, the megabyte blurry pics that my customers send me.

I am sort of the company photographer. I tweak and trim pics in Irfanview before we use them for anything else.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
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John Larkin
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I opened the doc and deleted around half of the pics, and saved that. The file size dropped about in half. Word does not seem to hang onto the deleted pics.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
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John Larkin

Den tirsdag den 6. februar 2018 kl. 17.17.22 UTC+1 skrev John Larkin:

unless you work in a dark dungeon cellphones take can take great pictures and why waste time tweaking picture just to save a few MB, that also means you can zoom in on details

Reply to
Lasse Langwadt Christensen

If you keep the images relatively small I don't think there is a problem. You will be quite safe with images under 1MB each. Where it gets hairy I am not quite sure but 6+Mpixel cameras JPG images ~3MB in the wrong hands do seem to create monster files of insane sizes after a while. I get asked to delouse such things from time to time.

My recipe for what they wanted longer term was print to PDF before archiving and periodically start from an ancient template report before the thing implodes in a terminal catastrophic mess. Otherwise it just grows like topsy until it falls over irrecoverably (on a good day a rival look-alike product will sometimes open the bad file).

I think the sequence that causes trouble is select an image in the existing document and then paste a new one onto that selected location. I was never able to entirely reproduce the sort of monstrosities that I was asked to look at. I tended to get called in after things went wrong.

The sorts of things that were involved were long term environmental tests of corrosion of coatings and material exposed to the elements.

I never saw a problem using just Insert Picture from file it was strictly one or other of copy&paste or drag&drop that was implicated in the chaotic behaviour. My work around solved their problem and I never went back to it, but I clearly remember seeing the crazy file sizes.

The MSKB is suitably vague about the scope of this problem and the causes but in some circumstances in a corporate environment exponential file size increase is possible. They admit as much for Excel see:

formatting link

It may well depend on exactly what format the image being pasted was in and/or the exact versions of Word that the document has previously been edited in. Things I couldn't control in the wild. I do know that my script which fixed things there for a long while stopped working when Office2007 came along. After that the dross would remain in the file.

Hence the later print to PDF work around (still in use).

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Regards, 
Martin Brown
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Martin Brown

I crop, play with colors, sharpen or blur. Pic size is a minor issue.

My cameras are all set to take less than max resolution. A 12 mpix photo makes no sense. You can't zoom much on a blurry, shaky cell phone pic.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
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John Larkin

Den tirsdag den 6. februar 2018 kl. 18.41.58 UTC+1 skrev John Larkin:

if it is just design notes and not for customer consumption why waste the time

so don't take blurry, shaky pics

Reply to
Lasse Langwadt Christensen

In electronics. however, a lot of pics are sharp, macro shots of circuit elements. etc. I have a nice camera for that, and would like for someone examing my document to be able to zoom in on an included pic.

Good shots need to be at original resolution.

Put them on Imgur and link to them in your document. Yeah... that's the ticket.

Reply to
Long Hair

Word is OK if you turn off practically all of the helpful features, and don't use styles or macros or automatic anything.

Piling big images on top one another could be bad.

Excel is just to be avoided.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  
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John Larkin

That depends on the kind of image. For schematics and mechanical drawings I export PNG at 300dpi from the CAD. Usually monochrome because most recipients do not use color printers for such documents. That looks crisp and clean, even when zoomed or in a PDF rendering of the Word file as I usually use for clients.

Of course, nothing will ever match the cleanliness of the old HPGL format that Word 5.0 for DOS could still import. MS ditched that format from the import options later. IMO that was a mistake.

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Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/
Reply to
Joerg

I treat all pics pretty much the same way. My pics go into manuals and our web site too.

Do you mount your cell phone on a tripod?

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  
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John Larkin

Den tirsdag den 6. februar 2018 kl. 21.33.29 UTC+1 skrev John Larkin:

no, just handheld

Reply to
Lasse Langwadt Christensen

HPGL is basically G-code for a a plotter abused as a file format

try SVG

Reply to
Lasse Langwadt Christensen

I hard-mount a camera for serious pictures, to get the perspective and lighting right, and to avoid shakes. A big heavy camera with a giant lens has a lot more angular momentum than a cell phone.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  
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John Larkin

Bullshit.

I have done NFL football schedules and had a team helmet AND logo pop up for each team. It was nearly 100 embedded images, and several locations that popped one of the images in as each week or team was observed.

Excel is excellent for making signs too, because the user gets pixel level image registration and print job adjustments. Flawless. Almost like pdf on repeatability.

Word is using points and placement is done internally and automatically and adjustments require digging through menus.

Reply to
Long Hair

Well, I need something that CAD can easily generate and is standard. Abuse or not, it worked better than anything that came later. The only thing you had to remember was to add a "pen down" command, else the inserted image would be blank. I made myself a DOS batch file for that.

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Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/
Reply to
Joerg

EMF seems to import quite accurately.

Unfortunately my CAD programs can't "print" to EMF... at least I've not been able to find an EMF "printer" that prints to a file ??? ...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     | 
| Analog Innovations                               |     et      | 
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Jim Thompson

IIRC that's the next iteration of WMF but I've got no software that can generate that.

What are you trying to do? Create a super-ritzy White House dinner invitation on glossy print? Worried that someone might see a jagged edge when zoomed up 2000%?

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Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/
Reply to
Joerg

Naaaah! Just schematics that don't have missing lines when viewed on-screen. ...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     | 
| Analog Innovations                               |     et      | 
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Reply to
Jim Thompson

kicad will plot directly to an SVG file, libreoffice imports just like any other image format and you can basically zoom infinitely with no pixilation because it is a vector format

I believe Eagle can export with a script, and you can drag-drop into Word

Reply to
Lasse Langwadt Christensen

Mine never have missing lines when imported as PNG at 300dpi. The only time I see missing lines is when an IC designer insisted on publishing in this %^*#!! postcript format.

I am writing two module specs in parallel to schematic designs right now and everything goes in as PNG except for datasheet excerpts and photos.

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Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/
Reply to
Joerg

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