How do I make the images look clear in PDF when converted from MS Word?

[Smetacube]

Hi

When I convert an MS Word-2010 file (which  contains  images also) to PDF through Acrobat X Pro, some images which are of bigger size do  not look very clear. Is there any workaround for this problem? Please  reply. It's quite urgent.

Thanks

[willyjp]

Hi,

How do you convert word into pdf?

using acrobat robbon or using print to pdf?

[Guest]

The images may have lost resolution if you scaled them up in Word, or it could be your Adobe PDF Settings. Depending on how you are creating the PDF you can change the PDF settings, the Standard (default) settings might be applying too much compression. Try changing your PDF Settings (joboptions) to High Quality Print:

If using PDF Maker in Word

• (Office 2007 & 2010) In the Acrobat ribbon, click Preferences.
• (Earlier versions of Office) Choose Adobe PDF > Change Conversion Settings.

Choose High Quality Print

If Printing to the Adobe PDF Printer

• Open Printers from the Start menu (typically in Control Panels).
• Right-click the Adobe PDF printer, and choose Printing Preferences.

Choose High Quality Print

[Smetacube]

Hi

Thanks for the responses I tried Print to PDF. In that images look better although they are little distorted. However, I cannot use print because the Table of Contents prepared in Word does not work when we use Print. Secondly, the PDF file size becomes too large when using Print to PDF.

While directly creating PDF from word using Acrobat, I changed settings for Images (in Preferences) turning downsampling off after changing it to 1800 pixels but that did not help either. Is there anything I am missing out or  Is there any other resolution?

Else is there any setting in PDF so that after conversion we can show the images more clearly, maybe if someone hovers over the image it becomes big or clicking on it makes it look bigger.

Looking forward to make this problem resolve.

Thanks

[Bill12]

The table of contents should not be an issue with Print to PDF. You do need to select the printer and then use ctrl-A to select the document and F9 to update the TOC for proper pages. Then print to PDF and it should be fine. The printer should be the Adobe PDF printer. The PDF file from "create PDF" or PDF Maker should not be any smaller unless you selected a lower order job settings. PDF Maker adds information to the PDF (links and bookmarks) that are not included in the print option. That may be what you mean by TOC problems with the print. The PDF file size when using the print should generally be smaller than using PDF Maker, so I am not sure what is going on.

[Smetacube]

Hi Bill

Thanks for your response. I tried Print to PDF once again following the instructions ("select the printer and then use ctrl-A to select the document and F9 to update the TOC for proper pages"), but this time although file size after conversion was reduced but TOC did not work.

[Guest]

Smetacube,

You are correct. TOC entries with links are not preserved when printing to the Adobe PDF Printer. You do need to use Create PDF from the Adobe PDF Ribbon bar in Word or through the Adobe PDF menu in Word (depending on your version). If you have disabled downsampling of images all together, when creating the PDF file, then your resolution problem is in the original placed images. The only fix for that is to re-place (or re-import) higher resolution versions of those images.

[Bill12]

That was the point at the end of my post. The links are not preserved with printing. However, the TOC should still be correct in the view, just as on paper as would be the case if you actually printed to paper. The links are an added feature with the PDF Maker.

[Smetacube]

Hi Kelly, Bill

I think there is no possible solution to this problem. The images are of high resolution only but when imported in word, they reduce in size. Is there any way that after conversion, in the PDF if we mouse-over or click on the image it becomes large? That seems to be the only possibility.

Thanks

[Guest]

If the images are high-resolution to begin with, the problem may be how they are importing them into Word. If they use Copy & Paste they will get a 72 ppi image (because it travels through the computer clipboard). Make sure they are using Insert > Picture > From File.

If they started high-res and were then scaled up in Word, the resolution will go down proportionally. There is not much you can do about that, except starting with even higher res images.

The process to create a high-resolution roll over image is long an cumbersome and would not be a recommenced fix. It involves building button form fields that are hidden over every image and triggering them to show on roll over. (I've never seen this done for such an issue).

[Smetacube]

Hi Kelly

Thanks for your response. I am not copying and pasting the images in word, I am importing them using Insert->Picture->File. It seems the problem is with Word only which scales down the images.

I believe I am taking the pictures on the highest resolution on my system which is 1280 by 720. Will taking the screens on a higher resolution than this, make the images look better when converted to PDF? If you are sure about this, please let me know.

Thanks

[Bill12]

In my experience (not necessarily the best), I find it best to rescale image copies with a graphics package before importing into WORD or whatever. Resize and then set the resolution to about 600 dpi before you import. The issue of using the clipboard appears to be an issue with WORD 2007 and such. I clipped a 300 dpi image into my technical word processor and then back to a graphic editor and all was preserved. I did the same with WORD 2007 and everything got messed up and the resultant image looked terrible. In fact, in WORD I got the same result if I imported the picture or clipped it from my graphics package. So it appears there are some strange issues with WORD itself.

I am not trying to make any claims here, but just making an observation. The original image was at 300dpi. WORD also changed the 8-bit B&W photo to a 24-bit photo and reduced the number of pixels from 774 per width to 252 per width about a factor of 3 reduction in pixel resolution when clipped. When I expanded the image size in WORD, then the clip size increased also. When I do the same expansion of the image size in my word processor and then clip back to IrfanView, the original image is retained. My only conclusion is that OFFICE 2007 plays around with graphics and it does not seem to make any difference if you clip the image into WORD or import it, WORD still messes around with it. My guess this is just a general MS thing.

Some folks a year or 2 ago got me to looking at nice sunsets in PPT. There were all sorts of issues with creating the PDF (AA8) from the PPT to get a reasonable result. The image obtained from the MS converter seemed to keep the picture nice. The images obtained from PDF Maker and printing to the Adobe PDF printer gave slightly different results and tended to break the image into smaller parts that often left little lines in the picture if you zoomed in. Folks were blaming this on Acrobat and yet using the same version of Acrobat with OFFICE 2003 the sunset came out great.

This post is a bit jumbled, but the jist is that a lot of the graphics issues with WORD files seem to go back to WORD itself  and possibly with hooks MS put into OFFICE (OK, no proof on that and probably impossible to prove) to mess up Acrobat conversions. It would be interesting to see if the same result for the PDF is obtained from other converters, or if it is just something that OFFICE 2007 does "nicely" for Acrobat.

Sorry for going off the deep end, but I just have a major annoyance with OFFICE starting with 2007, particularly for things like this. They couldn't get equations right either, just one more thing that they messed up. As far as I am concerned, a lot of the issues stem from MS and not Acrobat.

Just for the heck of it, I ran the PPT picture through Open Office and used both the PDF export and the print to the Adobe PDF printer. Both retained the full image. However, when clipping from OOP to Irfanview, the resolution was 96dpi. The result seemed to be dependent on the zoom. So there are definitely some issues with copy and paste, at least with how some packages handle it.

[Guest · Accepted solution]

Bill,

Thank you for the very detailed research and some great technical notes. I think I've found the culprit, see below.

Smetacube,

You are using the proper method to get the images into Word.

If you are working with images that are 1280 x 720, is that at 72 ppi? The width & height are only the dimensions of the image there is a 3rd number of Resolution for the image. Working with higher res, such as 150 ppi or 300 ppi should produce a better result, but it sounds like Word is doing more behind the scenes here, that may be fighting your best efforts. I believe the steps in this article will fix your issue:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2002066

Quoted from the article:

"This issue occurs because PowerPoint, Excel, and Word perform a basic compression of images on save. It is not possible to recover pictures that have already been compressed."

"For future saves, compression can be disabled on a per-file basis using the following steps:"

1. Click the Office Button, and then click Save As.
2. Click Tools, and then click Compress Pictures.
3. Click Options.
4. Click to clear the Automatically perform basic compression on save check box.
5. Click OK.
6. In the Compress Pictures dialog box, click Cancel.
   Note:  Clicking OK on this dialog will not prevent the issue from occurring.

"You can also modify the following registry setting to prevent basic compression from occurring by default."

[Bill12]

But compression should not be an issue unless it is lossy (like with JPegs). Compression like used in TIFF files is not lossy and such compression should still retain all of the image content. I had given some observations, but that does not mean I really know what is happening. I do believe a lot of the problem is in WORD itself and maybe the link you gave addresses that adequately. I will try to look at the link later.