Re: Desperately Seeking Graphics in Word Expertise

[Ginna Watts <gwatts -at- PIM -dot- BC -dot- CA>]

.....I changed it to 640 x 480
> with 256 colors and redid the screen captures. The file size dropped
> significantly. (I believe the number of colors was the significant
factor,
> not the resolution.) In both cases I inserted the captures by copying
them to
> the Clipboard from Windows Paint, and just pasting them into the Word
> document.

I had a hundred page manual just the other day that had many, many screen
captures, and the beast was becoming unwieldy.  I did two things:  Since I
had all the original capture as bitmaps, I went into Paint Shop Pro, and
reduced them to grey scale. (Some dropped from 1.5M to 200KB!  Then I used
insert picture, and linked to the picture file instead of saving it with
the graphics intact. This means more files to keep track of, but it made
saving the file a whole lot faster, especially over a network.

> I have been told that using OLE inflates the file size, because it stores
the
> graphic in two or three formats, so when you want to edit it, it can give
the
> editor its choice of formats. I have no direct experience with that,
though.
> I have used the Insert Picture method a few times, but only on one- or
> two-page data sheets, so the file size wasn't significant, and I didn't
> notice any problems.

As I pointed out, Insert Picture itself is really no different if you save
the graphic with the file in subsequent saves -- the real difference comes
when you only link to it.


Ginna Watts  |  gwatts -at- pim -dot- bc -dot- ca
Pacific International Mapping Corp.
4218 Commerce Circle
Victoria, BC Canada V8Z 6N6
Tel (250) 727-0727 Fax (250) 727-3153
maps3d -at- pim -dot- bc -dot- ca