Anti-aliasing of pictures in Word 2000

[Ron-s]

Does anyone know how to disable anti-aliasing of pictures
in Word 2000? Using Insert-Picture to add screen captures
to a manual results in fuzzy graphics. They are OK to
print, but produce bad results going to PDF.

Thanks

 

[garfield-n-odie]

I use screen captures a lot. My advice is don't use Insert Picture for
this. Instead, place a screenshot into the Windows clipboard by
pressing PrtScr to capture the whole screen, or Alt+PrtScr to capture
the active window. Paste the screenshot from the Windows clipboard into
Word by pressing Ctrl+V (Edit Paste). With this method, you can only
copy and paste one screenshot at a time, but the graphics quality is
much better when printed to paper or PDF. Another possible reason for
poor graphics quality in PDF is that too much compression and/or not
enough resolution are selected as options in Acrobat.

 

[Ron-s]

Thanks for the suggestion. We do a lot of cropping of
screen shots, so Alt+PrntScrn won't work for most
situations. I've pasted images from the Clipboard into
Word before, and I don't think that fixes the blurring
that anti-aliasing causes. But I will try it again.

 

[garfield-n-odie]

You can use the cropping tool on the Picture toolbar in Word to crop the
pasted image.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If you use a lot of screen shots, may I recommend SnagIt from TechSmith
(www.techsmith.com)? This is an excellent screen capture program that
includes cropping and editing tools, plus an impressive array of special
effects (which you may think you don't need until you get hooked on them).
You can save the captures in a variety of file formats; I usually use GIFs
because I'm using them for my Web pages, but many others are available.

 

[Ron-s]

Suzanne,

SnagIt is great, you're right. I use Paintshop Pro 5 these
days ... it's got all the functionality I need for free.

It's just the Word anti-aliasing that's causing me grief.
I can get the clips -- full screen shots, partial screen
shots, logos ... whatever -- looking fine in the source
graphics package, but when you add them to Word, they are
blurred by the "helpful" anti-aliasing feature. No way I
know to get around this.

If I used FrameMaker it would be a non-issue. But this
job -- and lots like it -- are for small shops that only
use Word for long document production.

Thanks

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I just checked the KB and can't find any article at all that refers to
anti-aliasing, and a search for "picture quality" didn't turn up anything
useful, either. You'd think there would be some way to control this, but
unfortunately I'm deeply ignorant about graphics issues. Perhaps Bob
Buckland will post here with a much more knowledgeable answer.

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi Ron-s,

It's just the Word anti-aliasing that's causing me grief.
I can get the clips -- full screen shots, partial screen
shots, logos ... whatever -- looking fine in the source
graphics package, but when you add them to Word, they are
blurred by the "helpful" anti-aliasing feature. No way I
know to get around this.

Have you tried saving in various file formats? *.wmf, Word's
"native" vector format comes to mind as a possibility. I
think anti-aliasing would only be applied to raster formats?

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun
8 2004)
http://www.word.mvps.org

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any
follow question or reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail

 

[Ron-s]

Hi, Cindy.

Thanks for the suggestion. I was pretty sure that Word
anti-aliased .wmf files as well. So I tried a test, and
found it was the same result whether I used a .gif
or .wmf. I prepared a quick graphic that shows the
difference between viewing a .wmf screenshot in Paintshop
Pro versus Word. But I don't know how to attach a file to
a newsgroup posting.

Cheers ... /Ron

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi Ron-s,

Thanks for the suggestion. I was pretty sure that Word
anti-aliased .wmf files as well. So I tried a test, and
found it was the same result whether I used a .gif
or .wmf. I prepared a quick graphic that shows the
difference between viewing a .wmf screenshot in Paintshop
Pro versus Word. But I don't know how to attach a file to
a newsgroup posting.

that's OK, they're generally frowned upon in these groups
Thanks for confirming this for me, though. I'm not
really a graphics-oriented person, I just happen to
recognize "anti-aliasing" and know that - no matter what
application I'm in - when I want it, it doesn't happen; when
I don't, it does <g>

The only other thing that occurs to me is, that you might
get a different reaction if you "link" the file in, so that
Word is always using the appropriate graphics filter to
display it? (As opposed to embedding, or "insert and link"
that also stores the graphcis data within the file)

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun
8 2004)
http://www.word.mvps.org

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any
follow question or reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail

 

[Tim Murray]

Does anyone know how to disable anti-aliasing of pictures

in Word 2000? Using Insert-Picture to add screen captures
to a manual results in fuzzy graphics. They are OK to
print, but produce bad results going to PDF.

The fuzz in the PDF is probably a function of your PDF settings, not Word's
antialiasing. I use FrameMaker and (and I have to) Word, and my shots come
out clear all the time. But I have Distiller's subsampling disabled.

If you are not using Distiller you may get substandard results. For example,
PDFWriter is a nonPostScript device.

Finally, if you're using JPEGs, stop. The size-reduction algorithm can cause
noise in areas of smooth color. TIFF with LZW compression gives an excellent
result with small file size. (Note that there was a version of SnagIt that
had a defective LZW module.)

 

[Bob Buckland ?:-\)]

Hi Ron,

In Office 97, there was a combination of lack of pallette
management in Word and a built in smoothing algorithm for
pasted graphics that would dither the edges or the pictures.
It was improved in Word 2000, but you may want to see if
you get better results using Edit=>Paste Special and choosing
Picture (Enhanced Metafile) as your choice.

It can also be an issue in how 2 different programs are using
the clipboard for transferring the information. If you save
the picture in your editor to file and use Insert=>Picture from
file and on the [Insert|v] button choose 'link' from the drop
down choice do you get better results than you do when pasting?

========
Suzanne,

SnagIt is great, you're right. I use Paintshop Pro 5 these
days ... it's got all the functionality I need for free.

It's just the Word anti-aliasing that's causing me grief.
I can get the clips -- full screen shots, partial screen
shots, logos ... whatever -- looking fine in the source
graphics package, but when you add them to Word, they are
blurred by the "helpful" anti-aliasing feature. No way I
know to get around this.

If I used FrameMaker it would be a non-issue. But this
job -- and lots like it -- are for small shops that only
use Word for long document production.

Thanks >>