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I spent a healthy chunk of time on the phone with a very polite Microsoft support tech on Friday– and the answer is– Microsoft is intentionally and knowingly making it difficult to extract and edit an image embedded in Word and have it look anything like decent.
It isn’t a mistake or a bug, they know it’s a PITA and they don’t (bleep)ing care.
This only applies if you have a version later than Office 2K and, yes, it does still apply to the newest Office 2003. I made them check.
They have disabled "edit picture" on purpose, and every workaround suggested by their tech support produces posterized, over-compressed images that are basically worthless.
Without their help, I did come up with three scenarios that actually produce better quality images than anything they mentioned. (but still not as good as
I might like) Two of the three require something other than Office and an image editor be installed on your system.
The first, if you have PowerPoint installed, is to copy the image to the clipboard and paste it into a Power Point slide, then save the PowerPoint slide as a jpg. That file can then be edited in a decent image editor normally.
Of all the three options, this produces the best results with the least pain, and
it doesn’t assume you have a bunch of additional apps installed.
The second, if you have Acrobat or another PDF utility on your computer, is to
produce a PDF file from the Word document, and edit that document in PS You lose some quality, but it is infinitely better than anything MS had to offer me.
The third requires you to have a screen capture utility. It is more "brute force" but seems to work well for embedded screen captures of dialog boxes and other diagrams Increase your screen resolution as high as it will go. Open the document in Word. Zoom in as far as you can and keep
the entire image on screen. Capture the screen. Save that file . Restore your previous display settings. Open the file in PS and edit it there.
By changing the screen resolution, you can take a 400×400 image and boost it up to 2 or three times that– then when you resize down, some of the "crispness"
comes back. This is my least favorite of the three, but may be worth exploring
if all else fails.
It isn’t a mistake or a bug, they know it’s a PITA and they don’t (bleep)ing care.
This only applies if you have a version later than Office 2K and, yes, it does still apply to the newest Office 2003. I made them check.
They have disabled "edit picture" on purpose, and every workaround suggested by their tech support produces posterized, over-compressed images that are basically worthless.
Without their help, I did come up with three scenarios that actually produce better quality images than anything they mentioned. (but still not as good as
I might like) Two of the three require something other than Office and an image editor be installed on your system.
The first, if you have PowerPoint installed, is to copy the image to the clipboard and paste it into a Power Point slide, then save the PowerPoint slide as a jpg. That file can then be edited in a decent image editor normally.
Of all the three options, this produces the best results with the least pain, and
it doesn’t assume you have a bunch of additional apps installed.
The second, if you have Acrobat or another PDF utility on your computer, is to
produce a PDF file from the Word document, and edit that document in PS You lose some quality, but it is infinitely better than anything MS had to offer me.
The third requires you to have a screen capture utility. It is more "brute force" but seems to work well for embedded screen captures of dialog boxes and other diagrams Increase your screen resolution as high as it will go. Open the document in Word. Zoom in as far as you can and keep
the entire image on screen. Capture the screen. Save that file . Restore your previous display settings. Open the file in PS and edit it there.
By changing the screen resolution, you can take a 400×400 image and boost it up to 2 or three times that– then when you resize down, some of the "crispness"
comes back. This is my least favorite of the three, but may be worth exploring
if all else fails.
How to Master Sharpening in Photoshop
Give your photos a professional finish with sharpening in Photoshop. Learn to enhance details, create contrast, and prepare your images for print, web, and social media.