Constrain Image Size on Word Document Template with Table Properties

[Taylor_Felt]

Hello,

I am wondering if it's possible to do this. I created a format rule for my images to be small, but they are very low resolution, so I would like to use large pictures but limit their size by having them be a cell in a Microsoft word document template. Any other workaround or advice is appreciated. 

[Joseph_Seddik]

When dealing with images, to preserve quality I would always provide the image ready with the correct size for each particular display or output. This is easy and can be automated via a script running on your images folder creating smaller correctly-sized copies in another folder for example. 

My favourite tool is ImageMagick, which provides a CLI and is as easy to use as: 

convert input.img -resize 125x125 output.img

ImageMagick can be downloaded for MacOS, Linux, Windows and even mobile phones. 

[Suvrutt_Gurjar]

ImageMagick iseems to be really interesting, capable tool @Joseph_Seddik . Thank you for sharing. Will explore more.

[Joseph_Seddik]

@Suvrutt_Gurjar Welcome dear friend!

Here is another great one for video processing: ffmpeg. 

[Taylor_Felt]

Does this actually keep the image resolution though?

Sent from my iPhone

[Joseph_Seddik]

With an image processor, you'll get the best results as it can be.

Scaling down an image will forcefully reduce its perceived resolution because you'll be backing more visual information using the same ppi density. Platforms, browsers, document generators, etc. tend to have generic algorithms to deal with images. This is not necessarily bad because you have to keep your core code optimized and focused on its core purpose, instead of bloating it to deal with every possible secondary capability like in our case image processing. Thus, when dealing with images, unless the code incorporates specific algorithms for every type of image formats, operations like resizing can result in suboptimal conversions and compressions that would result in information loss (visual quality reduction). Also, it is common that the employed algorithms use default compression settings that avoid generation of large file sizes on the expense of image quality. The difference in size of the generated file might not be big anyway, but as mentioned, the algorithms are generic.

An image processor on the other hand will know how to deal best with every type of image format and will understand the specific parameters like image ppi, dimensions, compression, colors, etc. and would perform lossless conversions and in many cases would perform operations like resizing without even any conversion. 

[SkrOYC]

---

@Taylor_Felt wrote:

I would like to use large pictures but limit their size by having them be a cell in a Microsoft word document template. Any other workaround or advice is appreciated. 

---

You can define a width for the cell and the image will be contained there at the size you determined.

I do this for the same reason as you noticed, format rules deliver a poor quality image