copy picture out of word with full resolution?

  • Thread starter Thread starter William Bernat
  • Start date Start date
W

William Bernat

ENVIRONMENT
Word 2007 SP1. Windows XP SP2.

SCENARIO
I paste a high resolution picture into Word. I shrink the picture to fit my
document. Now I do not have the original, but I need to edit that picture as
a high resolution image. I right-click inside of Word and click copy. I
paste it into a graphics program. The graphic is now low resolution.

QUESTION
I know Word has the high resolution version of it. I just don't know how to
copy it out. Is there a way?

ty,
-billb
 
Save the document as a Web Page and the picture will be placed in a
subfolder bearing the filename of the document in the folder into which you
save the document.

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP
 
Hi William,

First, reset the picture scaling to 100% in Word (Format|Picture|Size).
Next, if necessary, change the paper size to a size that whole picture fits on.
Finally, Save the document as a Web Page.

The picture will be given a name like 'image001.jpg' and will now be in a sub-folder with a name based on the name of the document
(eg if the document was named MyFile.doc, the folder will be named MyFile_files), in the folder in which the document was saved.
 
There are also settings in Word's options that will help. See
http://www.gmayor.com/extract_images_from_word.htm

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

macropod said:
Hi William,

First, reset the picture scaling to 100% in Word (Format|Picture|Size).
Next, if necessary, change the paper size to a size that whole picture
fits on.
Finally, Save the document as a Web Page.

The picture will be given a name like 'image001.jpg' and will now be in a
sub-folder with a name based on the name of the document (eg if the
document was named MyFile.doc, the folder will be named MyFile_files), in
the folder in which the document was saved.

--
Cheers
macropod
[MVP - Microsoft Word]


William Bernat said:
ENVIRONMENT
Word 2007 SP1. Windows XP SP2.

SCENARIO
I paste a high resolution picture into Word. I shrink the picture to fit
my document. Now I do not have the original, but I need to edit that
picture as a high resolution image. I right-click inside of Word and
click copy. I paste it into a graphics program. The graphic is now low
resolution.

QUESTION
I know Word has the high resolution version of it. I just don't know how
to copy it out. Is there a way?

ty,
-billb
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Why are you pasting the picture into Word in the first place? Just
placing the image in Word can cause damage and the act of saving the
image using the web page option will create a jpg even if the original
image was not jpg (note that the compression model used when creating
a jpg is applied EVERY time it is saved and that compression causes a
loss of image quality that progresses with every save).
To preserve image quality you would be better served saving the image
in the native format of your image editor, modifying the image there,
saving a copy for your document, and then inserting the document
version of the image.
 
Reitanos said:
Why are you pasting the picture into Word in the first place? Just
Click to expand...

I believe you read the post too fast...:
placing the image in Word can cause damage and the act of saving the
image using the web page option will create a jpg even if the original
image was not jpg (note that the compression model used when creating
a jpg is applied EVERY time it is saved and that compression causes a
loss of image quality that progresses with every save).
Click to expand...

Do you mean that if I save a document one hundred times, the quality of the
images therein will gradually lower to the point of being almost useless? I
thought that if the JPEG compression scheme was already applied, it won't be
applied again.
 
No, jpg compression is progressive. Try it out, each time you save the
image it is compressed again. That's why I suggested saving it in a
native format and exporting as jpg. Also, Word will damage the image
any time it resizes, but I'm not sure if the damage (which is visually
apparent, often as "fuzziness") is applied to the image permanently so
that an exported image (via save as web page) would degrade or be kept
in its original state. Does anyone know? I guess I'll have to
experiment right now!
 
In a very smart move, Word keeps the original image and a version that
represents any changes that you've applied, so saving a document with
a single image will generate a web page with 2 images. If I had
thought about this I would have realized that this is necessary to
allow the reset command to work with an image, duh. Nice job MS.

But, my original suggestion to do your image editing in an image
editor is still your best bet; not only do you have better tools, but
having a high resolution version of an image hiding inside a document
that only needs a small version creates a great deal of document
bloat. Also, the resizing algorithms of image editors are much more
precise than the one in Word.
 
Reitanos said:
No, jpg compression is progressive. Try it out, each time you save the
image it is compressed again. That's why I suggested saving it in a
Click to expand...

In a Word document, I inserted a Tiff image (line art content, which really
shows loss of quality very clearly).
Then I ran code that opened the document, wrote a short paragraph to the end
of the document and closed/saved it. I put that code in a loop to run 250
times.

I did not see any loss in quality, even when zooming in at 500%

Then I tried again with a colorful jpg image. Same result.

So, I am not sure I understand what you are trying to explain regarding the
progressive loss of quality in images when saving a document. Would I need to
save it a 1,000 times to see that effect? In that case, it is not such a big
deal...
 
Hi Reitanos,
Just placing the image in Word can cause damage and the act of saving the
image using the web page option will create a jpg even if the original
image was not jpg (note that the compression model used when creating
a jpg is applied EVERY time it is saved and that compression causes a
loss of image quality that progresses with every save).
Click to expand...

That's not true. Whilst re-saving a modified jpeg degrades it, any decent graphics program will test whether the image has been
changed (eg edited or a different compression ratio) before re-writing it.

Images embedded in Word are not re-written in this way (unless they're opened for editing) - even when the scaling or the
brightness/contrast is changed. All that Word does is to modify the way the embedded image is displayed.
 
Sounds like save as HTML is the only way (if high resolution source not
available elsewhere). Thanks for the feedback all!

-billb
 
Actually, I think a couple of you misunderstood what I stated after my
experiment; Word keeps the original (albeit in png or jpg format) so
that it can track the changes to create a new image. In other words,
no matter how many modifications to an image you make, Word does not
have cumulative damage after the first save.

And back to the original questioner, the Save as Webpage option will
work, but using an image editor to resize the image will give you the
best results (Photoshop or The Gimp have much better tools for
manipulating your images) and will allow you to save in a format other
than jpg if you have a quality image to start with.
 
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