Imported images from Word are blurry in FrameMaker Document

[Dustin Fleming]

I have a document that I imported into FrameMaker with images. The images in the Word document are perfectly clear but are hardly visible in FrameMaker Document. I have not tried printing these yet however, I am skepitcal when they look so degraded in the document. I have always gine by the garbage in garbage out philosophy but this seems backwards.. Imported to FrameMaker

Copied From Word

[Bob_Niland]

It would be worth saving to PDF just as a test. If the PDF has the full resolution, then what's happening is likely that the graphics file format is one that supports thumbnail/preview. For some such formats (EPS, PDF), FM shows the preview during edit, but outputs full res.

In any case, do you know what the original file formats were, and do you have access to them for re-import?

[Dustin Fleming]

I will give that a go. But yes the original images are .png and the originals are from the document I imported them from. So the are being copied and pasted in their original resolution.

[Bob_Niland]

In FM, when you right-click on the degraded images, what's reported for Object Properties?

[Dustin Fleming]

These are the properties for one of the images. The source image is a png but looks like it was converted to GIF when I imported it. 

The PDF version is more clear than the FM document but not as clear as the Word document. Not sure the best way to imprt the images in the highest quality possible the only way to get them is to screen shot them (works well in Word) so I am not sure how I can increase capture quality. 

[Bob_Niland]

It looks like FM has converted them to GIFs (thus the apparent indexed color), and the Copy-In is generally unwise for stewardship, starting with these image being unavailable for graphics edits. FM's open/import of Word format lacks both desired control options for filtering, and it would appear, even data on what its defaults do.

Whenever I have to deal with .doc or .docx conversion to .fm, I normally just copy out the entirety of the source text, and paste in as unformatted, then apply local formats. Any images are re-imported, by reference. If not available for re-import, various hacks can be used to extract them from the sources at sufficiently high res to preserve detail.

[Dustin Fleming]

What’s the best practice for the method you are suggestions I have had very limited success with copy and pasting from word to FM. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated as I am still very new to FM (been using it for a little less than 3 months) so any knowledge I can gain is a huge plus thank you

Dustin Fleming
[info removed by moderator]

[Hezy A]

Hi

I think that the best practice for importing graphics from Word to Frame, is to import them separately as referenced files, and not copy graphics from Word to Frame.  If the graphics were resized in Word, then Frame shows the resized graphic, which is then distorted.

If you do not have the source file, then you can simply right click on the .docx file and choose "Extract files". You will get one folder called word/media which contains all the graphic files in a good format.

You will then need to insert them one by one. However, you end up with good quality graphic files.

Also note that while Word is "What you see is what you get", Frame does not display exactly what you will get in the final file.

[Dustin Fleming]

Would I right click on the word file in a file explorer window? If not where do I get the file to a place where I can right click and extract files? 

[Hezy A]

Right click on the Word file  (if it is .docx) in the File Explorer Window. The .docx files are a sort of xml file and you want to really "unzip" it. Then you find all the graphics at a good quality and resolution.

If you have an older .doc file by any chance, then "Save as html" from the Word File menu  does the same thing.

Apart from that do you have the complete work flow for Word conversion set up OK?

[FrameMaker-dk]

One can rename the docx file from filenam.docx to filename.zip. Then it will be possible to open it in explorer and navigate to the folder containing the graphics. It is a better option than saving to html.

[Bob_Niland]

dustin.fleming: What’s the best practice for the method you are suggestions

I've had to convert-to-FM for any number of formats (paper, PDF, Word, Interleaf, Pagemaker), but none arise often enough to have developed any specific protocols. My focus in such efforts has always been to just get the raw text out of the source (using OCR scans if needed), and then locate, recover or regenerate the images at max quality.

Some of the other ACPs here run web sites that likely have tips on Word import specifically (and a couple of them are authors of books on FM, which would be worth having by anyone new to FM).

The key thing in any document port is having a well defined target for the layouts & formats. Your organisation's document architect should have provided you with FM templates at least, and failing that, at least a general organization style guide (although ideally a style guide specific to FM). Alas, the usual response from management is: architect? styleguide? what might those be?

[Dustin Fleming]

Oddly enough that's me. Our organization just transitioned from Word to FM (this why I am extracting them from word versions of documents) so I have the template/style guide established but re-authoring the "old documents" inFM is what I am in the process of doing. I've had some challenges but porting images over has been the last hurdle so to speak. This forum has certainly been an instrumental part of getting to this point for sure. Thank you for the help!