Creating logo freehand and saving it solid

[Essa Adamms]

I have created logo exactly as wanted using Publisher. Now to save all the
parts so they never move again, print in high quality color, can be resized
withthe nudge of the logo itself.... Tried to imprt with Document Imaging
and the OCR says no text read and nothing saves back to my files either.
Tried to send it as a print from Publisher to Imaging and same results. Been
at the save in a solid format for 8 hours..... Please get me out of this
office tonight with one little itty bitty thing done... Thank you!

 

[Essa Adamms]

Using Publisher 2003 from Office Professional

 

[Ed Bennett]

I have created logo exactly as wanted using Publisher. Now to save
all the parts so they never move again, print in high quality color,
can be resized withthe nudge of the logo itself....

I'm not sure I properly quite understand what you want.

Do you have a compound shape consisting of multiple shapes, that you've
created in Publisher, that you want to apply a fill to?

This is not possible in Publisher. You should really be using a draw
application for this task, as Publisher isn't designed for operations like
this.

If you don't have a dedicated draw application available to you, you could
try learning to use one - Serif DrawPlus 4.0 is a free download from
www.freeserifsoftware.com, and there is also a Draw utility in
OpenOffice.org, available from (surprisingly enough) www.openoffice.org.
If you don't want to learn to use a draw application, I could probably do
this task for you in a couple of hours. E-mail me off-group at the
UNDERSCORE nerd AT mvps DOT org (replace the obvious with the obvious, don't
post the address back to the group for obvious reasons) to discuss this
further if you want to pursue this.

 

[Essa Adamms]

Thank you for trying to help, Ed ....

The logo consists of two clip art from Microsoft Office clips and one text
box w text in it, 27% transparent. Text box is in order of front of clip
art.

Arranged exactly as I want them, special color choices and all.

I used the imaging before to do a logo w/o text and that worked for me. But
no instructions I follow to send this 'document' through imager works. Isn't
this a document - saved in Publisher - started it on a blank publication.

 

[Mary Sauer]

Have you selected all the objects, right-clicked and saved as a picture? There are
various formats you can select.

 

[Ed Bennett]

The logo consists of two clip art from Microsoft Office clips and one
text box w text in it, 27% transparent. Text box is in order of
front of clip art.

Arranged exactly as I want them, special color choices and all.

I used the imaging before to do a logo w/o text and that worked for
me. But no instructions I follow to send this 'document' through
imager works. Isn't this a document - saved in Publisher - started
it on a blank publication.

Right... you have the logo exactly how you want it... what's the problem?
Why are you trying to run it through the Image Writer?

The main problem here is your semitransparency. Publisher won't print
semitransparency properly; even if you were to leave your logo as a
semitransparent object in Publisher and copy/paste it into other documents,
the documents would still need to be exported as an image in order to
preserve the transparent effect (although there would be no transparency in
the final document). Compounding this is the fact that you seem to want to
export this as an image; Publisher will not export images with transparency.
If there are images with transparency in the document, then the whole
document is rendered as an opaque object that looks the same as the printed
publication on white paper - the transparency is lost, so you cannot place
the document on top of another one.

One solution here is to print (not Save As) an EPS file of the logo, and
then place this object in all future publications. This option requires you
to print all future publications to PDF before printing them to your printer
(printing would then be done through Adobe Reader and your PDF file). This
should preserve the transparency, although I cannot guarantee it (Publisher
is tetchy about printing semitransparency).

Another solution is to keep the logo in Publisher format (Ctrl+A
Ctrl+Shift+G to group the logo together) and then copy/paste it into all
future publications. You will need to convert any ClipArt objects to
Drawing objects before doing this if you have not already done so, otherwise
you risk file corruption. You will also need to export future publications
as images, and print the images, rather than printing from within Publisher,
as the transparent effect is once again lost when you print in Publisher.

When exporting logos as images, you don't use the Image Writer (used for
creating Document Images to share with other Office users without Publisher,
a similar format to (but more restrictive than) PDF); you would export as a
vector image format. Vector formats include WMF and EMF, and store lines,
curves, fills, etc., meaning that the image can be scaled to any resolution
without quality loss. Raster formats, such as BMP, PNG, JPEG, GIF, TIF, use
an array of pixels (dots) to store image information, meaning that scaling
the image merely increases the size of these dots, reducing the overall
quality and leading to pixellation (blockiness).
Draw programs (CorelDraw, Serif DrawPlus, Adobe Illustrator, etc.) deal with
vector files, paint programs (Adobe Photoshop, Serif PhotoPlus, JASC/Corel
Paint Shop Pro, etc.) deal with raster files. Publisher is a DTP/layout
program which is capable of exporting vector and raster formats, but is not
designed to create either - it is designed to place both onto one page along
with other objects to create a publication.
You are best off creating logos in a draw program, for the reasons I
described above. In general, you are best off creating logos without
semitransparency, as otherwise there is always the risk of the target
program not supporting it.

 

[Essa Adamms]

I HAVE A LOGO !!!! I HAVE A LOGO! I HAVE A WONDERFUL AND BEAUTIFUL LOGO....
That did it.....
Had all the pieces and parts on a page in publisher, hit select all, then
save as and chose GIF
Then saved it and went to paint. Under the crop square I used that and
outlined all the logo and the rest of the page was out of my way. The logo
copy and pasted in one solid piece iwth full color. Thank you Mary and Ed!
And w/o imaging.

The definition of insanity - doing the same thing over and over and getting
the same results. ": }

Thanks again - and hope my problem helps someone and saves their mind for a
day at least.

 

[Ed Bennett]

Had all the pieces and parts on a page in publisher, hit select all,
then save as and chose GIF

Please note the following:
- If you resize your logo beyond the size it was created at, or print with
a commercial printer, or even on a high-end desktop printer, you will see
blockiness in the printout.
- Your semitransparency will be broken.
- If your logo is rich in colour, it will be halftoned (and look quite bad,
even on a low-end printer)

 

[Essa Adamms]

You are right about the semi transparency, it isn't looking so good. So I
went w plain white and no border. Copied it as a gif then jpeg and will do
the tiff next. Which do you think will work best? Still having problems
cropping this as it copies and pastes on the same page but I can't get it off
the page. I don't know what I 'm doing and don't have a book or
instructions. Grew up on Aldus. I have no excuses....

 

[Ed Bennett]

You are right about the semi transparency, it isn't looking so good.
So I went w plain white and no border. Copied it as a gif then jpeg
and will do the tiff next. Which do you think will work best?

A GIF will have a low colour depth, but will be transparent if you edit it
in a graphics application. It will pixellate when resized.

A JPEG is completely unsuitable. It will have fuzz around the edge, and
does not support transparency. On top of that, it wil pixellate when
resized.

A TIFF may support transparency, but not in Publisher. It will pixellate
when resized.
A PNG could support transparency if edited in a graphics application, but
the transparency is not guaranteed to print. It will pixellate when reized.

A WMF file should not pixellate, should have the full colour depth of the
original, and should be properly transparent. Publisher does not always
export WMF files properly though, and it may therefore not be transparent
and may pixellate.
An EMF file will not pixellate, will have the full colour depth of the
original, and will be transparent where there are transparent areas. (Note
transparent and not semitransparent, semitransparency is not supported).

Use an EMF file.

In future, I would SERIOUSLY consider using a draw application for creating
logos - it's what they're there for!