Wanted: Best practice "Screenshot -> MS Word -> PDF"

[Peter2]

I'm looking for a "Best practice / KB / Tips and Tricks / White paper" for the work-flow "Screenshot -> MS Word -> PDF". "Print Screen - Paste - Print" is well known for years, but now it's time to take a closer look:

- Which is the best resolution for screenshots? Settings in software versus resolution of screen?
- Which format to save the screenshot?
- Paste directly into Word or better import graphic?
- Image editing: Word features (cut, background, ...) versus editing in image-software?
- Resolution of PDF-creation: depending on screenshot resolution or not?

Who knows where to find infos regarding this questions? Links, pages, books, ...
Level: advanced (but no graphic designer ..)

Thanks

Peter

[cday]

To be clear: you want the optimal workflow to go from Screenshot --> [Image editing] --> PDF image file?

Or you need to put the screenshot into Word to [do something] and then output the resulting Word page as a PDF?

[Peter2]

...Or you need to put the screenshot into Word to [do something] and then output the resulting Word page as a PDF?

Yes, correct.

Peter

[XnTriq]

What's your version of Word, Peter? Which PDF printer are you using? Are the PDFs intended for screen display or print?

• Word to PDF Image Improvement
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[Peter2]

What's your version of Word, Peter? Which PDF printer are you using? Are the PDFs intended for screen display or print?

Hi XnTriq

thanks for you impressive list. I will look at it

- Word 2010
- PDF-XChange Pro
- Main purpose: Production of good-quality-training-handbooks

(Why PDF as intermediate step? Because as a side-effect I want to display it too and want to print it in a copy-shop)

Peter

[XnTriq]

- Word 2010
- PDF-XChange Pro
- Main purpose: Production of good-quality-training-handbooks

I have some experience working with PDF-XChange Pro 4 in combination with Microsoft Word 2000.
How do you send Office documents to the PDF printer: via File » Print or the toolbar button(s) of the add-in/macros?

In order to maximize image quality, you have to turn off Word's lossy picture compression first.

To keep the maximum picture quality, you can turn off compression for all pictures in a file. However, turning off compression can cause very large file sizes without an upper limit on the size of the file.

1. Click the File tab.
2. Under Help, click Options, and then click Advanced.
3. Next to Image Size and Quality, click the file that you want to turn off picture compression for.
4. Under Image Size and Quality, select the Do not compress images in file check box.

Note This setting applies only to pictures in the current file or the file selected in the list next to Image Size and Quality.

To compress a picture or set other picture quality or resolution options, see Reduce the file size of a picture.

I never insert raster images (be it graphics or photos) via copy & paste from the clipboard. Saving them to disk (in PNG format) allows me to prepare them with the proper tools. I remove all ancillary chunks (pHYs etc.) with the help of PngOptimizer.
If you import JPEG images into a Word document and then convert the Word document to PDF with JPEG compression, you'll end up with generation loss. Since we are dealing with screenshots, we want to avoid artifacts to ensure readability of text.

Another way to increase readability is to change your monitor's DPI setting and to turn off ClearType font smoothing.

PDF-XChange provides JPEG, ZIP, JPEG/ZIP, JPEG 2000 and JPEG 2000/ZIP compression for High Color/Grayscale Images. The term high color usually refers to 15/16-bit color depth. I assume this setting also affects true color (24-bit) images. In cases like this, I tend to go for ZIP (DEFLATE), because I do not know how to make their JPEG 2000 compression lossless.


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