GETTING THE BEST IMAGE QUALITY

1. Print use (non-Adobe Acrobat):

(a) You will want high resolution .JPG files.

(b) The .JPG files can be re-sized with minimal loss of quality. Most publishing programs and word processing programs (including Microsoft Word) support .JPG.

(c) Example: To insert a JPG into MS Word, put your cursor where you want the image to go. Then, from the toolbar at the top of the screen, select Insert, Picture, From File. Then, find the image on your hard drive and click Insert. Your image will appear in Word. When you left click on the image, the image border will become visible and you can re-size the cartoon by placing the mouse over a corner of the cartoon and dragging the corner inward or outward until the cartoon is the size you desire.

2. PowerPoint use:

(a) The high resolution .JPG images will fill two screens when they are imported to your presentation page. To downsize the image to fit your page, left click on the image and then place the mouse over a corner of the cartoon and drag the corner inward until the cartoon is the size you desire. Be sure to test your presentation in advance.

(b) Screen Display Only: If you are displaying the presentation only on screen (no print outs), then the low resolution file you can grab by right-click-save from the web site should work fine. To download, follow the instructions in the below paragraph, "Web use".

(c) Printouts: All printouts should be done with the high resolution JPG images. (Otherwise, the lines on the images will be fuzzy.)

3. Web use:

(a) You will want low resolution GIF files. You can either download the GIF file directly from the website. My GIFs are usually 300 pixels (4.167 inches) wide and 72 dpi. Height varies.

(b) Download from website: Download GIF files by right clicking on the image directly from www.stus.com. Then select "Save Picture As" to save the file where you want on your computer, taking care to save the image to a folder where you can find it. OR right click on the image directly from www.stus.com, select "Copy", then Paste directly into an open MS Word document, PowerPoint presentation, Outlook email, etc.

(c) IF YOU NEED TO RE-SIZE, you should re-size the high resolution .JPG image and then convert it to GIF.

4. Adobe Acrobat use:

(a) You will want the high resolution JPG files. The low resolution GIF files produce unacceptable fuzziness.

(b) QUALITY DEPENDS ENTIRELY ON YOUR CONVERSION SETTINGS (see below).

(c) For conversion from Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Adobe Photoshop, click File-Print (select Acrobat Distiller)-Properties-Adobe PDF Settings-Edit Conversion Settings-Compression. Under the Grayscale Images option you will want to UNcheck the first box (regarding sampling or downsampling size). The second box defines your Compression and gives two sets of choices. I recommend you leave the first at Automatic. The second is for Quality, and the Medium setting works well. Save the new file.

(d) To convert just an image (as opposed to an entire document with cartoon illustrations), open the .JPG from within Adobe Acrobat. A new copy of the file will be created and automatically converted. All you need to do is save the new file.

If you have questions or if your situation is not covered above, feel free to email stu@stus.com.