Printing from Word

[Andrew Ritchie]

could you not cut the image from Word and paste into say Photoshop or any other imaging software you use.

This will give you the raw image which you can the supply to whoever prints for you.

[Stephen Morriss]

You can copy and paste the lettering and image etc into CorelDraw and print it then.
If your asking is anyone capable of doing it for you I think the answer is yes, most people will be able to.

Steve

[David White]

Thanks Steve how do u achieve that

[Tim Painter]

BUT! If you copy and paste from word you usually end up with crap.

Image resolutions get altered sometimes and all vector / text will be RGB. Not CMYK so will need to be converted to CMYK.

It depends on what you are trying to do as to the easiest solution.

I still class myself as a signage newbie only doing signage for just under a year now but having done artwork for litho for nearly 10 Years with an Elec / Mech Engineering background prior to that. But this question does remind me of a recent thread about newcomers as some things are basic skills, I taught myself to do artwork for litho and very rarely get a complaint from any print co’s as I do it correct. I do feel some thou seem to expect others to help without atleast trying first. I may be wrong but just my 50p’s worth today.

[Alan Drury]

Make a pdf and that can be imported into Corel/Illustrator/Signlab or similar. PDF is already becoming the ‘bridge’ between progammes and either Acrobat or (the excellent value for money) Jaws pdf Creator should be a must for any professional signmaker or anyone generating artwork for others to have, from these a pdf can be made from virtually any programme that can print.
Alan

[Tim Painter]

BUT! The PDF is only as good as the settings the operator set it up to.

Not just seeing low res images suitable for web from clients these days…but loverly PDF’s with low res or vectors converted to Bitmaps.

Makes for an interesting day I guess……

[Stephen Morriss]

Forgot about pdf & I use it all the time. Try jaws pdf.

I quite often print posters provided in powerpoint from one customer, she tried Coral and couldn’t get on with it.

All I do is copy and past, as Tim said a very basic operation, I’ve never had a problem with image resolution altering etc, main problem I get with supplied artwork is the customer saying the artwork is A3 and you open it to find it’s A4 or similar things.

Dave just play around and find what works best for you, that’s all I did.

Steve

[Tim Painter]

When you cut and past isn’t everything RGB though?

If you use Acrobat you can create a PDF and then save it as an EPS and import into Corel or such. If the PDF was created correct vectors will stay as vectors and you can resize.

[David Rowland]

I often use Print to Acrobat Pro approach, works well.
Sometimes you might loose resolution on a picture… well just enlarge the picture in word and Print to Acrobat Pro, that gets back the resolution.

The PDF won’t be press-ready, so I suggest importing into corel and go over it.

[Tim Painter]

Dave If the original image doesn’t have high enough resolution resizing it won’t do anything surely? You can’t gain pixels.

If the setings are correct in Acrobat Pro why the need to re work in Corel Dave? Surely the whole point of PDF was to be able to creat print ready files with Fonts etc embeded. Or lower file size docs for web DLoad or email distribution.

[Alan Drury]

I only rely on pdf as being print ready if A. I generated them or B. I’m confident the person who generated them knows what is needed (Not many) I use pdf as a means of getting at the components from another formats. Word is always rgb so needs changing, I use Corel Draw but a low resolution image is always going to be a struggle, I use Photozoom (discovered here) for enlarging photos and the like but there is only so much you can do.
Alan

[David Rowland]

quote Tim Painter:

Dave If the original image doesn’t have high enough resolution resizing it won’t do anything surely? You can’t gain pixels.

If the setings are correct in Acrobat Pro why the need to re work in Corel Dave? Surely the whole point of PDF was to be able to creat print ready files with Fonts etc embeded. Or lower file size docs for web DLoad or email distribution.

Yeah, I but zoom in on a document in word if the designer has created 2cm x 2cm photo but looks great when zoomed in, then look at the PDF afterwards…. for some reason Word and Publisher doesn’t output the correct DPI resolutions as it seems to resample it, it always seems to strip it back a little. Even via clipboards, export from word, etc. I also understand Litho Tim, have also worked in Litho. Microsoft print drivers just seems to downgrade the output even if you have hi-quality press settings in acrobat

[Stephen Morriss]

I always print images as rgb anyway, I’m told there is a bigger colour gamut, but anyway from Corel I get more reliable results with rgb.
Some form of conversion takes place which ever colour space you use, I think it matters more what your system works best with, if your wanting a better colour work flow you’re probably best moving to a Mac.

I think word has a limit of A3 on the page size anyway so your only going to find small page sizes.

To answer the original question there is a few methods it seems.

PDF, most rips can print pdf’s

Copy and paste in to your normal editing program, I’d not noticed before but you do seem to lose resolution, as Dave said you could oversize the image in word and then resize in your editing program, then whatever conversion you normally do.

You may also find that some printers can take the output direct from word.
The Uniform cadet installs a printer and as far as I know it is linked to colorip for direct printing within windows.

Steve