Clipboard Size and Pasting to MS Word

[trisampson]

Hi all,

I'm confused. If I open the same jpg file (a 640x480 size image at 180 pixels/inch) in Microsoft Office Picture Manager and Paint.net, when I select the image (Select All), and copy it to the clipboard, the pasted image in MS Word will appear much larger when copied from Paint.net versus Microsoft Office Picture Manager. Why is this, and how can I force Paint.net to copy the image as a specific size?

In our company, we use images in work instruction documents. I use a 4 column-wide table on an 8.5x11 page with 1/2" margins. If my image is 320x320 (at 180 dpi), the image is sized perfectly when copy/pasted from Picture Manager. But from Paint.net, it is much too big.

How can I resolve this? I want our staff to use Paint.net because different digital cameras save at different dpi settings, and in Paint.net, I can adjust the dpi whereas in Picture Manager, I can't. I need a regimented process to format photos so our staff have a reliable way to format photos for our instructions.

Help,

Rob

[himself22]

In picture manager, does it copy how it looks, or the real size?

I don't know much about this so please excuse if it's a stupid question (But if its good it could answer your problem!)

[Ego Eram Reputo]

First thing to read: DPI and you

[trisampson]

In picture manager, does it copy how it looks, or the real size?

I don't know much about this so please excuse if it's a stupid question (But if its good it could answer your problem!)

Well, at 100% Zoom in Picture Manager the image tends to appear slightly larger than when pasted into MS Word...

[trisampson]

First thing to read: DPI and you

Okay, I read that. But note that when I open the *same* file in Picture Manager and in Paint.net and copy the image to paste it in Word, the image appears larger when coming from Paint.net. So regardless of the resolution, what's going on? The only clue I have is that when I select "Paste Special" from Word, the only option when coming from Paint.net is "bitmap" whereas when coming from Word, it says "Embedded File". Try it and tell me what I'm doing wrong. Open the attached file in Office Picture Manager and copy it into Word. Then do the same from Paint.net.

[Ego Eram Reputo]

I assume what's going on is that in PDN you're seeing the actual pixel data (because it's an image editor and you're working at a pixel level), and Picture Manager is scaling the image using the DPI/resolution in some way because it's an image manager more concerned with presentation.

When you cut & paste from PDN you get the full size, and from PM you get the scaled version. I think the resolution might be the key to the size difference in PM.

[Simon Brown]

All of these are the same size on screen for me:

• The attachment in Firefox.
  
• The image pasted from Firefox into Paint.NET.
  
• The image pasted from Firefox into Picture Manager.
  
• The image pasted from Picture Manager into MS Word.
  
• The image pasted from Paint.NET into MS Word.
  

http://tinypic.com/r/2093wja/6

[Rick Brewster]

The clipboard is notoriously bad at preserving DPI. At one point (I think it was a year ago?) I tried to implement this so it would work as you expect, but it just refused to preserve the DPI metadata.