OmniGraffle to Word X best way?

[Joel Page]

In short, ummm, yes. =)

You can export directly to a high resolution raster (pixel) format, and 
for the most part you'll get the proper number of pixels, just the 
wrong (oversized) dimensions. Re-scaling in Word or whatever will fix 
this, but it really should be handled on our end, and there's a bug 
filed.

However, that said -- even at 600 dpi lines and text will not look as 
good as vector data. Objects with shadows will be okay, because of the 
shadows creating a screen (halftone dots when printed) but understand 
that commercial printers print text and hard-edged lines at resolutions 
between 1,200 and 3,386 dots per inch. It's especially noticeable when 
you have a mix of vector data and raster data. 300 dpi is perfectly 
adequate for anything that will get haltoned up to 200 lines per inch 
(newspapers print at 85 lpi, magazines at 133 lpi, coffee table books 
at 150, 175, and 200 lpi). Additionally, if there are rounded things 
like lines or ovals, they will suffer greatly at a resolution of 300 
dpi as opposed to rectangles and squares, etc.

Joel


On Jan 16, 2004, at 7:34 AM, Paul Davis wrote:

> Joel
>
> Just to review, to make sure I have things straight, if we want to 
> insert an OG figure into Word and have it sharp on screen and when 
> printed, I am confident that I can do this by (1) exporting to pdf, 
> (2) importing into something like PhotoShop or Illustrator, (3) 
> exporting in something like a 300 dpi Tif, and (4) inserting the 
> result in Word.  That works consistently.
>
> It consistently does NOT work if one tries to insert a pdf file into 
> Word, for reasons that you've discussed.  It is easy to miss the 
> fuzziness with some figures, especially on screen, but if you want a 
> high-quality printed version it will be obvious.
>
> Now, where I remain confused is with other options.  I believe that 
> some folks have said that you can go OG-->Preview-->file--->Word and 
> get good results.  I have not been able to reprdouce that.  To the 
> contrary, if I import into Preview an exported OG pdf file, and then 
> export it as a TIFF, the result is fuzzy.  The only options were a bit 
> mysterious to me, but I chose "best depth" and "PackBits."  So, 
> question 1, is there indeed a correct way to go through Preview and 
> get good results both on screen and printed?
>
> The other option is to export directly from OG into something like TIF 
> or JPEG, and then import into Word.  However, because of a bug in OG, 
> as I understand it, the export is in 72 dpi.  Thus, the figure 
> imported into Word is large.  When last I played with this two months 
> ago, I would have sworn that the resulting figure in Word was still 
> fuzzy, even if I shrunk the figure down to recover the full 
> resolution.  Today, however, I have consistently gotten good results 
> exporting to TIF or JPEG (at 300 dpi), importing into Word, and then 
> shrinking the figures.  Has anything changed in OmniGraffle, or did I 
> just screw up previously?  In any case, is this approach of exporting 
> directly to TIF or JPEG, importing into Word, and shrinking, solid?
>
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