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Brigitte Johnston reports: <<Problem: the images of the forms are fuzzy... I
create the forms in Word 2000 and then create a PDF of each using Acrobat
4.0. A graphic designer scans the PDF and saves the image as a 'tif' file.
I insert the tif into my Word (2000) document (the manual).>>
If you've got the form in digital format, there's no reason whatsoever to
print and scan it; that only adds a step that degrades the quality. One
possibility would be to display the form in Word at the desired size (open
the View menu, select Zoom, and enter a magnification that produces the
desired size) then take a screen capture at that size. If necessary, you can
produce a temporary version of the form optimized (font size etc.) for
taking screen captures rather than using the actual form; that's cheating a
bit, but the goal is a good representation of the form, not the literal
truth.
Depending on what you're trying to show, it may also be possible to take a
screenshot of only part of the form and focus in on that. One particularly
nice trick if you've got time and skill is to produce a thumbnail of the
form (roughly an inch high), with an enlarged callout that magnifies the
particular area under discussion so that it's easily legible. The callout
points to the part of the form you're talking about (thereby providing
context), while the magnified portion provides the details.
<<Also, it doesn't matter whether the quality in the Word document is good
or bad, because the 'final' manual is PDF'd.>>
Ah, but will the PDF be used onscreen, or printed? If onscreen, then a good
screen capture would work best. If printed, you'll have to experiment with
sizes and resolutions to get an image that prints well. It may not be easy
to find a single bitmap image that satisfies both needs; vector-format
graphics work better in such cases.
--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada
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