Extract pictures from a Word document

[sylvia1065]

Hello,

Do you guys have any idea how I can extract Word embedded pictures without quality loss? I've tried saving the page as html, some images were saved as jpeg and others as png. The png were good, but the jpeg were quite pixelated. Same goes when converting the .doc into .pdf.

Thanks for your suggestions,

Sylvia

[Vernon]

In some instances, you can click (or right-click) on an image to select it and copy it, open a new PSD file (assuming you are working in Photoshop), then pasting it - the PSD will usually open initially to the dimensions of the image that is help by the clipboard when you copied it.

The resolution of the embedded image will be whatever it was when it was pasted/inserted into the document - so, if the image was of a larger resolution, it should retain that formatting even if the image was re-sized in the document.
Copying and pasting it will return the image to the original resolution.

Thus, if you see an "extracted" image from a word document is pixelated, chances are that the original image was of a smaller resolution than what you are trying to set it to.

Hope that helps.

[igot2pman]

If Vernon's idea does not work. As a last resort, you can always take a screen shoot.

have the document selected>>> hold alt+print screen >>>copys your screen>>>paste in PS or paint>>>save

Hope it helps,
-Keven

[plugsnpixels]

I believe you can drag and drop from Word into a PSD doc (at least on the Mac).

[Aalandriel]

If you save a word 2007 (haven't tried with earlier verisons) as html, you will get 2 versions of the images in the word doc. The original image as well as an optimized version.

Originally Posted by Vernon

The resolution of the embedded image will be whatever it was when it was pasted/inserted into the document - so, if the image was of a larger resolution, it should retain that formatting even if the image was re-sized in the document.
Copying and pasting it will return the image to the original resolution.

Sorry Vernon but this is not entirely true. Upon inserting an image into word the image is instantly scaled to the settings in the word doc. This means that if you insert a 300ppi image into word and you afterwards copy paste it into PS the image is scaled to the 96ppi equivalent pixel dimensions.

example: a 1200x1200 pixel image @ 300ppi (4x4inches) is inserted into word. Image will take up 4by4" on a page as word works internally with physical measurements. But the image is resized to 96ppi on windows rendering the pixel dimensions to 384 by 384 pixels.

The only way to retain the original image is to save as a webpage and get the original versions from there.

If you cut and paste from a word doc you only get the optimized version. And by optimized I mean it's been through words internal image processor and have been resized to fit the new pixel proportions - not advisable as words' resampling algorithms aren't as good as Photoshops

If the quality of the images aren't good enough, chances are that the original wasn't good either.

[sylvia1065]

First of all, thanks to all of you for your input.

All my images come from screen captures and their quality is quite acceptable.
Unfortunately, when I drag them into a .psd in Photoshop, they lose a lot in terms of quality (I'm using Word 2003).

I could of course redo a screen capture of them, as Keven suggested, but I have hundreds of them, what a nightmare! On top of that they have to be converted to 300 dpi... so if you have any other idea, let me know.

Sylvia

[Aalandriel]

If your screen dumps doesn't contain gradients or continuous tones or those parts aren't the area of focus in your image, rescale the images using nearest neighbor resample algorithm in PS. This will produce the best result if you need crisp screenshots.
This is used for instance if you're making a program tutorial/guide where you need to be able to see what a button actually looks like.
For gradients or continuous tone images use bicubic smoother.

However it really doesn't have any effect whether you up size or not. I've printed A LOT of low res images due to either the images being screen dumps or the fact that the client simply couldn't provide better images. And low res is not the worst culprit when it comes to images. JPEG compression on the other hand is. So if you see a lot of JPEG artifacts in the images there's only one options, grab the screenshot again and save as a tiff.

[TommyO]

I recently experienced the same problem using Word 2003 in which my sibling scanned a color image directly into Word at 150 dpi. I thought it would be easy to extract the image at the same quality. However, there was obviously something else going on in Word that I could not figure out in the time I had. The best solution I found was to convert the document to a PDF, then import to Photoshop, crop, then increase both size and pixel count. After that, it did look acceptable.

Sorry, but I never went back and tried to figure out the real issue. But that was an acceptable work around. I know you said you tried the PDF. However, be sure to inspect your Acrobat/CutePDF conversion options as well to ensure they are set to 300 to 600dpi. (I think 300 is the default though.)

[Aalandriel]

Thing is about word. You can't go above 220 ppi in resolution. If you do, word and all the other MSOffice products including Publisher will down sample without asking you. It may not do it whil you work on the image, but as soon as you hit that export to pdf (which ever way you do it) button it will commit to those changes.

And due to the very limited program preferences you can alter, there is no way to alter this.

[TommyO]

Good to know Aalandriel. Thank you for sharing.

[wr1@hotmail.com]

Save the doc as a HTM or HTML file. It then saves the components into a htm or html file and a sub directory with the support items EG. your pics will be saved in the support directory created with the same name as the HTML page... Save it all to a temp directory or your desk top to make it all easy to find. Doing it this way does not require you to have an ACTIVE desktop and it doesn't matter what version of office or windows you have.