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Horrible Word and profiles

ruttrutt Registered Users Posts: 6,511 Major grins
edited May 7, 2009 in Finishing School
I am writing a photo essay and want to embed my pictures into a Word document. I am doing this on a Mac and using Word 2008. The pictures display much darker in Word than they do in PS. I assume this is because Word is ignoring the profiles. Is there anything I can do to preview the images as Word will display them? What will happen when it prints them?

Is there a better alternative than Word for this job? I am absolutely not committed to it.
If not now, when?

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    ruttrutt Registered Users Posts: 6,511 Major grins
    edited April 23, 2009
    Well, hooray for Adobe! I saved my document from word as a PDF and opened it in Acrobat. Now the images look the same as they do in PS. So I guess I just publish as a PDF and everything will be fine.

    Still it would be good to know what MS is doing here.
    If not now, when?
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    mike_kmike_k Registered Users Posts: 153 Major grins
    edited April 23, 2009
    I don't know about the newer versions of Word, but I'm pretty sure the older versions (before Word 2007) would first convert any images to bitmaps before adding them to the page. I wouldn't count on Word handling your images properly. PageMaker would probably work better for you - and there are probably a bunch of other desktop publishing tools that would work (and not be as expensive).
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    JustPlainMeJustPlainMe Registered Users Posts: 190 Major grins
    edited April 23, 2009
    rutt wrote:
    Well, hooray for Adobe! I saved my document from word as a PDF and opened it in Acrobat. Now the images look the same as they do in PS. So I guess I just publish as a PDF and everything will be fine.

    Still it would be good to know what MS is doing here.

    It's been a long time since I've embedded color images into a Word file, I can say I've not had an experience like yours, but then again, I only use Word when I absolutely have to. :D Do you have InDesign or even Photoshop Elements? You would have to do your formatting by hand, but I would think that would be a much easier route because you have 100% control over your text boxes and photo placement. Each page would have to be a separate document if you used Elements, but you can create a single document as a PDF when you're done.

    Sarah
    Please ignore my opinions! And if I ask for constructive criticism, please give it to me. I have really thick skin! :huh
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    mike_kmike_k Registered Users Posts: 153 Major grins
    edited April 23, 2009
    rutt wrote:
    Well, hooray for Adobe! I saved my document from word as a PDF and opened it in Acrobat. Now the images look the same as they do in PS. So I guess I just publish as a PDF and everything will be fine.

    Still it would be good to know what MS is doing here.

    Interesting. I wonder if Word goes back to the original image file before rendering the PDF.
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    arodneyarodney Registered Users Posts: 2,005 Major grins
    edited April 23, 2009
    Word isn't ICC aware on all platforms I believe.
    Andrew Rodney
    Author "Color Management for Photographers"
    http://www.digitaldog.net/
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    pathfinderpathfinder Super Moderators Posts: 14,699 moderator
    edited April 23, 2009
    I wonder if Pages is color space aware?

    I cannot find a quick answer on the web ( anyone know the answer?), but quite colorful images look the same to my eye in Photoshop and in Pages, side by side on my monitor. I confess these were files of mine destined for the web, so they were tagged sRGB.

    Pages offers a "save as" a Word document.

    Or a pdf will work.
    Pathfinder - www.pathfinder.smugmug.com

    Moderator of the Technique Forum and Finishing School on Dgrin
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    arodneyarodney Registered Users Posts: 2,005 Major grins
    edited April 23, 2009
    pathfinder wrote:
    I wonder if Pages is color space aware?

    Well I just imported a number of images into Word, in differing color spaces and they all appear OK to me so I was off above. I'm using Word 2008 on Mac. Are you sure all the images have an embedded profile? I haven't tried to figure out what Word would use (I suspect sRGB or display RGB).
    Andrew Rodney
    Author "Color Management for Photographers"
    http://www.digitaldog.net/
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    ruttrutt Registered Users Posts: 6,511 Major grins
    edited April 23, 2009
    I made the mistake of converting my sRGB B&W images to grayscale before saving. Import these into Word and they display too dark. Save as sRGB and Word displays OK. Perhaps grayscale doesn't include a profile that Word can honor? Acrobat seems to manage, though.
    If not now, when?
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    ruttrutt Registered Users Posts: 6,511 Major grins
    edited May 7, 2009
    Mystery solved. The problem was that I was saving .doc (backward compatibility to 97) from Word 2008 for Mac. In that mode, it just plain gets the gammas wrong. I mean really wrong. Same goes for the pdfs it makes. Save as a docx and then as a pdf and both are good.

    And why was I doing this? Because there are lots of people who can't take docx files. I suppose that's why we have pdfs.
    If not now, when?
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