How do I improve the quality of images imported from Word?

[Guest]

I'm hoping someone can help.

I am using Word to create documents that are then imported into RH9 to create CHMs.

I have gif images in Word (Flowcharts) that display perfectly in Word and PDF and print very well.

When I import them info RH9, they become fuzzy and when I look closely it looks like there is shading (speckling) behind the text and lines. Therefore, looks poor in CHM and print.

I have tried saving the image in different formats, and used different settings in Word, but it makes no difference to RH.

I can't find any settings in RH that would help.

Does anyone else have this problem, or know how to fix this?

Thanks!

[Captiv8r]

Welcome to our community

I don't believe you will be able to coax the images in to suit you by importing. The only way I'm aware of to obtain suitable images is to save them separately from Word. Then import them into RoboHelp as a separate process.

Cheers... Rick

Helpful and Handy Links RoboHelp Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form Begin learning RoboHelp HTML 7 or 8 within the day - $24.95! Adobe Certified RoboHelp HTML Training SorcerStone Blog RoboHelp eBooks

[Peter Grainge]

Do you have the 902 service release applied?

I would like to see what level of degredation you are seeing if you are willing to share a Word document with me. See the Contact page on my site. It's OK to attach the document to your email.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Guest]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the reply - yes, I have updated to v902.

I’ve attached an example flowchart, that looks fine in Word and PDF and also prints fine without being too big.

When the image is displayed in RH, it looks like the text and lines have a speckled background – which isn’t there in this document.

We import hundreds of Word documents into Help and they all have flowcharts, it just makes the overall appearance of the help look quite poor.

Any suggestions on improving them would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Margaret

[Captiv8r]

Hi Margaret

If you replied by email, please note that attachments don't survive the trip to the forums.

Please try again and post the image using the camera icon as described in the link below.

Click here to view

Cheers... Rick

Helpful and Handy Links RoboHelp Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form Begin learning RoboHelp HTML 7 or 8 within the day - $24.95! Adobe Certified RoboHelp HTML Training SorcerStone Blog RoboHelp eBooks

[Peter Grainge]

It was a Word document that Margaret also emailed to me.

Margaret - The problem is simple. Save the image in the Word document as a gif file and then open it in an image editor. Note the size, you can just about get one circle of the flow chart on the screen. Word has massively reduced it and when you get to that level of reduction you are going to have problems. You need to get the image down massively.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Guest]

Hi Peter,

Yes, I have tried many solutions:

- reduced the image size in Word (tried many different sizes)

- saved the image in other formats

- change the image size before taking into Help (so if it worked I could run a macro to modify them all)

But, no matter what I do, I can’t get sharp images in RH.

If I reduce the size of the image and capture to 100%, I don’t get the speckled background, but I then don’t get smooth circles or text. Also, if I do this, I then end up with very poor images in Word.

We have so many images that I can’t store two versions, so I would like to keep a good clear version in Word (that I can print and PDF and keep looking professional) and do a straight import into RH.

If there is some way I can reduce the image to suit RH better, I can write a macro to run through the documents before I import, but I can’t see what to change that will actually improve them in any way.

Thanks,

Margaret

[Peter Grainge]

Are these images created in Word?

Have you saved one of them from Word using Save Picture As and then opened it in a graphics tool to see the size there? It really is mind blowingly large and it is how the image is created that needs to be looked at. Tell us more about that.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Peter Grainge]

Margaret

I saved the image from Word as a PNG image and opened that in Photoshop. The size is 3488 by 3702 pixels! That is what is being created by whatever you use to start with. In Photoshop I then reduced the image size to 800 pixels wide and then imported that image into RoboHelp.

If I then print the topic there are some dots around the circles but nothing like as bad as at first. At a quick glance you might even miss them.

Hope that helps.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Peter Grainge]

In addition to the above, I have now pasted that image into a Word document and imported that. The fuzziness is back. I can hear Rick saying "told you so, import the graphic and it's fine, import it in a Word document and this is what you will get". My experience is that is sometimes true, sometimes not.

I still believe the root cause is the massive resizing and if we can get the first image to be smaller, the problem can be resolved so back to needing to hear some detail from you on that.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Peter Grainge]

OK ignore that. I had resized the image and saved it as a JPG. When I resized it and saved it as a GIF, then imported the Word document, it was a lot better. Still a little fuzzy but much less so and no speckled dots.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Guest]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for trying this out – I am reaching the stage of accepting poor images in Help.

The only way I can see to fix it, is have two images in the Word document – one to use for PDF and print and one to import into Help.

The best image I can manage to get in the Help is a gif captured at a size that’s not resized by word or help. Although this image is extremely poor in Word, print and PDF it is slightly better in Help (still far from perfect). Figure 2 of the attached document.

I have tried loads of options, everything I can think of.

At the moment, Word is our master (where all edits are made) Help is created by running a few macros in Word and then a straight import into RH9, so I want to avoid any edits in Help or changing images manually. Plus the volume of Help generated is too great to allow manual changes at this stage.

I just thought there would be some way to import a good quality image from Word into RoboHelp, but it just doesn’t seem to work.

Thanks again,

Margaret