Images in reports
Something that I've never really got to the bottom of, in Report Builder
(and Crystal Reports), is what are the rules of thumb that should be
used when adding images to a report, which most of our users will want
to do at some point. I think the essential problem is the tension
between the 96dpi that most screens run at and the 600(+)dpi used by
many images that are expected to be printed.
If a high dpi image is used in a report then the image component will
normally need to resize it, but then this can affect quality. If an
images is designed at 96dpi and is a good/correct screen size then the
image can often be accommodated by an image control with no resizing,
but then its also pretty poor when it goes to the printer.
Is there a WIKI article on this? Am I misunderstanding some fundamentals?
(and Crystal Reports), is what are the rules of thumb that should be
used when adding images to a report, which most of our users will want
to do at some point. I think the essential problem is the tension
between the 96dpi that most screens run at and the 600(+)dpi used by
many images that are expected to be printed.
If a high dpi image is used in a report then the image component will
normally need to resize it, but then this can affect quality. If an
images is designed at 96dpi and is a good/correct screen size then the
image can often be accommodated by an image control with no resizing,
but then its also pretty poor when it goes to the printer.
Is there a WIKI article on this? Am I misunderstanding some fundamentals?
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Since most screens are limited to 96 ppi, adding a "high dpi" image to a
report (or opening it in an image viewer) will simply give you a larger
image. If you need to fit the image in a smaller space, ReportBuilder
will need to scale that image so it can be fully viewed. RB does this
using the StretchDraw routine. Unfortunately the process of scaling an
image reduces its quality when zoomed out. This is true for any
processed image.
As a workaround, you could keep two copies of an image and hide/show one
for on screen, and another for printing.
Note that the down side of using a 96 ppi image on screen is that if you
zoom in higher than 100%, you will immediately loose quality.
Nico Cizik
Digital Metaphors
http://www.digital-metaphors.com
are was fielding for some suggestions on some good compromises that
users (or RB staff) have come up with over the years. These days I think
PDF output for email is becoming more and more prevalent, although the
same report should in principle be printable. Graphics has never been my
strongest area, I'm looking to see if we can pool any knowledge to come
up with some good rules of thumb for a "catch all" scenario. All
comments welcome. Perhaps I should kick of with a start question about
file size (bytes not pixels now) & image quality: lossy jpeg vs large
bitmap? And so on...
printing while on screen You use other, lower dpi image. If You can use
vector image (WMF, EMF...) than it is much easier as RB will properly
scale vector images without jagged edges.
In our application we use also customer logos on top of the page and
these are saved in some image retouching sw aka Photoshop and saved in
at least 300 dpi. So if the image is about 18cm wide that means around
2000 pix wide image to be used in RB.
Best regards,
Goran