Help! Printing problems...

[Starairi]

I have some trouble printing from Microsoft Word (yeah, I know...). Any picture that I put into the document prints really grainy and unclear, whereas the clipart from Word prints wonderfully, what can I do to fix this problem?

(I'm unsure if this is the right place to put this thread, excuse me if I've put it in the wrong place...)

 

[Jeff C]

I would guess what your pictures are too small. Pictures you get on the web are usually 72 DPI (dots per inch) print documents are ideally 300 DPI (at least).

Clip art in word is vector images that can be scaled infinitely. This is why they are always clear.

That's just a guess though. Can you post an example of a picture you are trying to print with the size you are trying to print at?

 

[Starairi]

This is one of them, and yes, I suppose some of my images are a bit small. I could try to make them higher dpi, thanks for the tip!

 

[Jeff C]

What's that from?

 

[exoray]

I could try to make them higher dpi, thanks for the tip!

That doesn't work! You need to rebuild the graphic if you want it higher quality, adjusting the DPI does nothing...

Since it's a basic black/white image it's pretty easy to vector it, even the automated vector programs will do a decent job with simplistic images like that... Once vectored the end results will be much better, but like everything the better it's traced into vectors the better the end result, nothing is better then hand tracing and correcting but it's time consuming vs running an automated trace...

A site like this Vector Magic Precision Bitmap To Vector Conversion Online will do 2 free autotraces, again not perfect but better than nothing, or you can hit up and surely find some software to do autotraces like VectorEye how to convert bitmap to paths it will do quite a few traces before the trial runs out and has lots of simple options to get better results...

 

[Starairi]

IneffablePolk: It's from an issue of the Daiily Prophet from the Harry Potter movies.

exoray: Oh, thanks a lot! I will try my hand at this!

 

[Superkrates]

Noticed the uploaded image is a .PNG file. Your software may be using a low res version to view with and not correctly interpolating the high res info for print (adobe illustrator had the same issue a few years ago). Resaving the image as a .tif, .eps or .jpg will alleviate the problem if this applies.

 

[Construct]

May I recommend Inkscape? It's a free vector graphics editor à la Illustrator so you'll be able to tweak the image after conversion (or trace the original manually if the automatic conversions aren't to your liking).