Help! Poor image quality when converting from MS Word doc to PDF

Just wanted to give a update:

One of the jpeg images in my word document is 1.2 megabytes. When I convert the document to PDF the file size is only 164kb. The file size should be MUCH larger.

Hopefully someone here can help me through this.
Thanks

I THINK I found a solution. Hopefully other people who have this issue can test it to see:

1) In Word (im using 2007) at the top tab go to the Acrobat tab and click Preferences.

2) Under the SETTINGS tab, click ADVANCED SETTINGS

3) In the IMAGES folder, change the drop down menu for COLOR IMAGES and also GRAYSCALE images to "Average Downsampling" (mine was set to Bicubic Downsampling). I also have the JPEG image compression set to HIGH.

4) Click ok and convert to PDF.

My PDFs now look crip and fuzzy-free.

I'm converting from a Word 2007 document to a PDF document. I have the same problem with two graphics that are in the header and the footer. I changed the settings as recommended and it improved a touch, but is still unacceptable. I increased the resolution of the images to 300 dpi.

I did not have this problem in previous versions.

Any help appreciated.

slvanalyst, I agree previous versions never had this issue. Its pathetic that this still hasnt been resolved.

I have learned that even though it looks a bit pixilated on the computer screen, it almost always looks clear when printed. Other than that, I have yet to find a solution but if you or anoyone else reading this knows of one please share it.

I tried printing to see if it was better, it was, but still fuzzy. Extremly crisp in Word

I realize this is an older post, but I wanted to offer some information that may help.

Office 2007 uses a new graphic engine for handling pictures and we've seen complaints when images were placed and scaled down (which is the opposite of what should happen, scaling down typically improves image quality).

Also, I recommend you change your PDF settings to High Quality print. That will give you less image compression and higher resolution. For Line Art images, changing the downsampling to Average is also another good setting, to prevent the anti-aliasing halo that works well for photographs, but not for drawings.

On the quality issue, Microsoft has a tech note that may help resolve the issue:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2002066

Quote 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."

The problems associated with raster image compression and degradation cited by Kelly above are not limited to Office 2007. They also occur and are even worse with Office 2010! The manifestations are two-fold:

(1) Obviously, the unexpected downsampling of images itself can eliminate or fuzz out detail in a raster image.

(2) The other problem that has been seen is associated with RGB grayscale images. RGB grayscale images? What are they? Very often, especially in non-graphic arts environments, what you think are grayscale images are really RGB images in which for every pixel the R, G, and B values match (i.e., R=G=B). Many images in the enterprise / office environment are like this. Although in theory, such raster images would output as grayscale or effectively CMYK=(0,0,0,K), in fact ICC color management doesn’t quite work that way and such images will print out either directly from Office applications or from PDF created by Office with rich black / gray. Such rich black / gray not only can look terrible in terms of unexpected color casts, but also can cause “smart” printing devices that have different “click charges” based on whether a page is fully monochrome or not to register as a color page. A new feature of Acrobat X and Reader X by default (except for PDF/X files) automatically intercepts any R=G=B text, vector, smooth shades, and raster images and for PostScript printing, outputs these as CMYK=(0,0,0,K), effectively true grayscale. This eliminates the undesirable color casts and unexpected color print click charges. However, to some degree with Office 2007 and especially with Office 2010, the image compression used “ruins” such RGB grayscale images such that it is no longer true that for every pixel, R=G=B. Thus, the PostScript grayscale correction output feature of Acrobat X / Reader X is defeated for such imagery.

The solution pointed to by Kelly on Microsoft’s website appears to resolve these problems including the RGB grayscale image problem.

The solution offered was for Office 2007. In summary, if you clip the following and put them in a .reg file, you can ready apply the fix to Word 2007, Excel 2007, and PowerPoint 2007 in one operation:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Excel\Options]
"AutomaticPictureCompressionDefault"=dword:00000000
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\Options]
"AutomaticPictureCompressionDefault"=dword:00000000
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\PowerPoint\Options]
"AutomaticPictureCompressionDefault"=dword:00000000


For Office 2010 (either 32-bit or 64-bit editions), use the following instead:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Excel\Options]
"AutomaticPictureCompressionDefault"=dword:00000000
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Word\Options]
"AutomaticPictureCompressionDefault"=dword:00000000
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\PowerPoint\Options]
"AutomaticPictureCompressionDefault"=dword:00000000


We have also found that when inserting raster imagery into an Office document (whether it be Word, PowerPoint, or Excel), it helps to place via Link to File as opposed to the simple Insert in the Insert File file open dialog.

- Dov

Thanks Dov. I was hoping it wasnt something with the registry files because I'll need to now persuade the IT dept to look into this.

Thanks again