dpi in Pub 2003

[Pownal]

Thanks Matt and Mac. follow up:

Basic problem: a book with many pictures. Pub2003 file size gets huge, even
when I link pictures. Solution (says Microsoft) is to size images, then
“Save as Pictureâ€, then “Change Pictureâ€. This produces a smaller jpeg and
Pub03 file. BUT dpi drops.

Matt Beals thought maybe I was increasing image size. But that was not it.

So I did this test to see how Pub2003 behaves: 1. Opened fresh page. Linked
a jpeg of scanned photo and sized it at the 4x7 original scanned size. This
had 300 dpi, same as scanned. Horray. So far so good. 2. Then I did “Save
as Picture†followed by “Change Picture.†3. The new image on my screen
(still 4x7, same size) was now only 240dpi. I had lost about 20% resolution.
:-(

Even if I follow Matt’s advice and do Postscript and PDF at the very end,
I’m still creating these huge Pub2003 files.

Any further thoughts please? Does Publisher 2007 work any differently in
this respect?
Craig

 

[Matt Beals]

If you really want to do it right then what you need to do is to size the
images in PhotoShop with "resample" off. This way the image resolution is
increased as you scale the photo smaller. Then once it is at the desired
size you then click "resample" back on, plug in 300 dpi, save it as TIFF
and then place it into Publisher at 100%.

That will create the most efficient document possible because you are using
PhotoShop to get rid of the extraneous image data. Do not save an image out
of Publisher unless you *have to*. We don't know what Publisher is doing to
the image when it saves it out. Besides that it's making a JPEG which tosses
out image data in order to achieve high levels of compression. If it's
taking the image down to 240 dpi and all you did is export it from Publisher
doesn't that tell you that you shouldn't be doing that? Especially since it
didn't ask you to and you didn't tell it? You have to keep in mind what
program you are working with here...

Is there a problem with these "huge" PostScript files? Once converted to PDF
they will be down sampled to 300 dpi and either have ZIP or JPEG compression
applied. Either of those will go a long ways to making the PDF smaller.

I don't see what the problem with the file size is. Yes, there are practical
limits to file size depending on any one of a plethora technology reasons.
But that has more to do with transporting the file rather than converting a
PostScript file to PDF. Even then you can streamline that process by using
the PDFMaker plug-in for Office.

When Publisher 2007 makes a PDF via the XPS/PDF plug-in it is assumed that
300dpi is desired. Converting to CMYK will also make it bigger either from
Distiller or Publisher.

Why the emphasis on file size and not image quality? Even at 240 dpi you can
still get a good quality printed picture *if* you start with a good quality
picture.

Matt Beals
Consultant
Enfocus Certified Trainer
Markzware Recognized Trainer
(206) 201-2320 - Main
(720) 367-3869 - eFax
mailto:[email protected]

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