Pixelation of PowerPoint graphics?

[esc]

Why do vector graphics imported into PowerPoint sometimes pixelate?

I just realized that when creating (simple) graphics with Adobe Illustrator, as e.g. a logo, and importing them via EMF into a MS Office application like Word or PowerPoint they are pixelating quit ugly on screen. While when I create this graphic via WordArt and export it to EMF, it will re-import antialiased and smooth. The same graphics will print correct to paper or PDF anyway. In the PDF document you can deeply zoom in, showing that the graphic is really a vector drawing.

So what makes the difference and how do I control this? Any ideas?

Erich

[Randall]

Illustrator might be putting a raster proxy into the file à la EPS (if EMF supports such a thing). No one other than Microsoft seems to have any enthusiasm for the EMF format -- the "Export to Microsoft Office" command in Illustrator actually outputs PNG files -- and it's undocumented anyway, so I suspect MS doesn't care.

This might be an alternative to Illustrator's EMF conversion: EmfPrinter (http://emfprinter.sourceforge.net). EmfPrinter is a virtual printer driver for Windows 2000 and higher (tested only on Windows XP so far), which allows you to create EMF (Enhanced Meta File) and WMF (Windows Meta File - the old version of EMF) vector images from any Windows application which supports printing. Randall

[esc]

Thank you Randall. After googling around the whole evening I've just found the answer. PowerPoint antialises imported vector graphics only if you ungroup them after importing. After this one might group them again.

Erich

[Randall]

PowerPoint antialises imported vector graphics only if you ungroup them after importing. After this one might group them again. :umm: ... I'll be generous and assume that it made sense to ... someone.

Hopefully that person is now heavily sedated and not allowed to use a computer without supervision.

Randall

[Mandi]

Erich, I've gotten around the poor graphic capabilities of MS apps by simply doing a screen shot, and either pasting it directly (then trimming as needing) or pasting into my graphics editor and saving it in a MS friendly format. I've had that trouble when web-unsavvy clientele send me logos, etc. embedded in alllll manners of documents!

[esc]

Hi Mandi! Thank you for your advice. In this special case the client asked explicitly to show him a way to import vector graphics into PowerPoint and MS Word. The graphics should be scalable, print sharp without pixelation and display in high quality on a beamer. This client runs a very technical enterprise with the need to do presentations with diagrams, etc. I just started the investigation of the problem with his quite simple logo.

Anyway, the problem is solved meanwhile.

Erich

[Mandi]

That sounds like the sort of client that ought to be able to grasp the need for the additional ungrouping step for sure.

[esc]

Yes, he definitely does. His company is producing software for semantic classification and structuring of legal documents using XML techniques. So probably I can learn quite a lot from them.

My problem is not communicating how-to, but that my client tends to use a lot of shareware and probably outdated commercial software for his simple image editing tasks and this is out of my normal workflow. So I had to dedicate quite some time on investigation what fits his needs.

Erich