Bad image quality when importing from word

[Guest]

When importing from MS Word 2003 to RH X5.0.2, embedded images are converted to jpg whith an obviously quite moderate compression qulity. This is particularly evident for screenshots. Is there a way to improve the image quality?

[Peter Grainge]

There's a topic on my site about graphics. Perhaps that will help.

[Guest]

Hello Peter, thanks for the fast reply. That topic covers resizing issues allthough the size of the imported images is actually fine. Its really the compression of the jpg itself which causes the problems (with the resulting characteristic dots and specles). I should also add that here are simply too many images to do much hand work on them after importing.

I noticed that when importing from a PDF, I can select the image type (gif, png, jpg). Something like that might be a great help but I don´t seem have those options when importing from word.

[Peter Grainge]

I am not in a position at the moment to run any tests. Set up a Word document and insert various image types, jpg, gif, png etc. Do they get changed or do they import according to their original type?

[Guest]

Peter , these images were copied and pasted directly in to the Word-document (using the Print Screen button) but I did find out something. RoboHelp generates two image files of the types PNG and JPG for each Word image (named, e.g., image102.png and image103.jpg). Regretably, the lesser quality JPG is always referenced in the topics instead of the much better PNG. Sometimes the two images greately differ in size (pixel size), but most of the time they are about the same size.

So the task might be to change the references in all topics using a script and then manually checking the images for their size.

An observation: Any GIF images in the Word file (i.e., real *.gif files that were inserted over the Insert menue) remain GIF files after the import, they are not converted and maintain a good quality.