[Workaround] Improve imported image quality

Discuss the presentation application
Post Reply
badinsults
Posts: 3
Joined: Thu Nov 05, 2009 12:20 am

[Workaround] Improve imported image quality

Post by badinsults »

Hey, this has been driving me nuts, and my searches have been fruitless. I am creating a presentation in Impress, and the images I import are imported at a very low resolution and look terrible. I've tried importing with different image formats (png, gif, jpg), and they all have jaggies and defects when imported. Are there any settings to force Openoffice to import the images without decreasing the resolution?

As an aside, is there any way to force resizing of images and objects to maintain aspect ratio?
Last edited by MrProgrammer on Sun Aug 27, 2023 5:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Workarounds available
Openoffice 3.1.1 on Ubuntu 9.10 x86-64
User avatar
RoryOF
Moderator
Posts: 34586
Joined: Sat Jan 31, 2009 9:30 pm
Location: Ireland

Re: Improving imported image quality

Post by RoryOF »

Normally I find images of about half the screen resolution will stretch to full screen with OK quality, provided they are pictorial images, not fine-line detail. If I am preparing a presentation from very large resolution images I normally resample them in a bitmap editing program to 1.5 times my screen resolution (1024 x 768, so I import as 1536 x 1152 ish).

If you insert your image and drag a corner handle while holding Shift key it maintains its proportions.
Apache OpenOffice 4.1.15 on Xubuntu 22.04.4 LTS
badinsults
Posts: 3
Joined: Thu Nov 05, 2009 12:20 am

Re: Improving imported image quality

Post by badinsults »

Ok, I think I found the problem. I made these images for my masters thesis about 2 years ago, and I didn't realize how large they were (they were basically exported png files from original Corel Draw images). It seems that Openoffice has problems resizing images that large that contain text and lines. This problem isn't restricted to Openoffice, Gimp has the exact same issue. The workaround I have is to do a view resize in Gimp, take a screenshot of the window, then crop out the image at the size I want it. What a pain.
Openoffice 3.1.1 on Ubuntu 9.10 x86-64
User avatar
RoryOF
Moderator
Posts: 34586
Joined: Sat Jan 31, 2009 9:30 pm
Location: Ireland

Re: Improving imported image quality

Post by RoryOF »

I have Corel on one Windows machine as most of my graphics files are Coreldraw/Photopaint. I use Photopaint to crop, resampling the image down to the sizes given before, then import as tif or jpg (usually) into Impress. If I download a smaller image from the web I stretch it in Impress, but always check its quality before moving on (two screen setup). If the quality is too bad, I search again until I find a higher resolution, which I often can.
Apache OpenOffice 4.1.15 on Xubuntu 22.04.4 LTS
badinsults
Posts: 3
Joined: Thu Nov 05, 2009 12:20 am

Re: Improving imported image quality

Post by badinsults »

I tried exporting the presentation as a PDF, and the exported images look perfect. Go figure.

The only issue is that my presentation has custom animations in slides, and that doesn't translate well into a PDF. Is there any way to export it so that each animation is exported as a single slide?
Openoffice 3.1.1 on Ubuntu 9.10 x86-64
User avatar
RoryOF
Moderator
Posts: 34586
Joined: Sat Jan 31, 2009 9:30 pm
Location: Ireland

Re: Improving imported image quality

Post by RoryOF »

I can't help on the subject of the .pdf file.

With regard to your quality, it strikes me that your manipulations in Gimp are not the best. I'm not a Gimp expert, but you should be able to Import your Corel image, crop it to the content you require, save that as a new image, then finally Scale it to the resolution you need or better, before placing this image in Impress. Your loss of quality may be because you are capturing a View resize rather than directly manipulating your file.
Apache OpenOffice 4.1.15 on Xubuntu 22.04.4 LTS
User avatar
Cambirder
Volunteer
Posts: 647
Joined: Thu Nov 22, 2007 1:01 am

Re: Improving imported image quality

Post by Cambirder »

This problem isn't restricted to Openoffice, Gimp has the exact same issue.
Gimp can handle large files, so I suspect it may be your technique rather than a limitation in Gimp. Any chance you could upload one of these image files to a file sharing site such as MediaFire ?
OOo 3.3 on Windows 7 & 3.2.1 on Mint 10
jruhym
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Sep 20, 2022 10:11 pm

Re: Improving imported image quality

Post by jruhym »

badinsults wrote: Thu Nov 05, 2009 3:23 am I tried exporting the presentation as a PDF, and the exported images look perfect. Go figure.
That was the key for me. I then opened my .pdf in GIMP, selected 300 DPI anti-aliased, auto-cropped it, and converted it to a .png from there. Extra steps but it does look a lot better than the .png exported from, in my case, Draw.
OpenOffice 4.1.10 on Centos 7
John_Ha
Volunteer
Posts: 9583
Joined: Fri Sep 18, 2009 5:51 pm
Location: UK

Re: Improving imported image quality

Post by John_Ha »

badinsults wrote: Thu Nov 05, 2009 12:26 amthe images I import are imported at a very low resolution and look terrible. I've tried importing with different image formats (png, gif, jpg), and they all have jaggies and defects when imported.
That's because the images have too few pixels. You need images with more pixels. AOO does not change an image pixel count when you import it.
jruhym wrote: Tue Sep 20, 2022 10:16 pm it does look a lot better than the .png exported from ... Draw.
You can specify the image pixel count (actually the dpi) when exporting from Draw - you have specified too low a value.

See [Tutorial] Some useful hints on using images for a discussion on how best to handle images.
LO 6.4.4.2, Windows 10 Home 64 bit

See the Writer Guide, the Writer FAQ, the Writer Tutorials and Writer for students.

Remember: Always save your Writer files as .odt files. - see here for the many reasons why.
Post Reply