Re: Import Vector Graphics to Word - Best Format
- From: John McGhie <john@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 23:10:44 +1000
Hi Matt:
I normally use CorelDRAW, but I have several other things I also use:
depending on what I am producing. I am not at all graphical ? I can't draw
a cheque, let alone a picture; so there's no point in my using high-end
software :-)
For the work I do, fonts just don't matter. In general, "fonts" simply
don't work cross-platform, and I need to get over it :-)
High-end graphics software such as CorelDRAW enable the choice of either
embedding the fonts, or converting them to curves. If I were intending to
convert to curves, I would strike WMF off the list: it doesn't have the
precision needed to do a good job with fonts smaller than about 24 points.
Most fonts these days are restricted so that they won't work if you do embed
them, so I generally don't do that. Fonts embedded in anything other than
EPS/PDF are probably never going to work, anywhere.
That means that for commercial work, either I have to use fonts I know the
target computers have, or I have to arrange for the customer to buy the
fonts. None of my customers have sufficient interest or patience to be
shopping for and installing fonts, so that leaves only "option A".
I often rely on font substitution to deal with the "edge" cases. Font
substitution is very reliable these days, and both Macs and PCs have a
wide-enough range of fonts installed by default that they will get pretty
close. I do ensure that I am using Unicode fonts and UTF-8 encoding:
character-set problems could really shatter one's professional reputation
:-)
Modern graphics practice increasingly is moving away from having text in
pictures. So the problem is going away, at least in my practice. I deal
almost entirely in the corporate space, where the customer wants to maintain
their own graphics, and requires them to work wherever they send them.
Consequently, as a rule of thumb I choose only those fonts shipped with
Microsoft Office, and I avoid having text in pictures as far as possible.
After all, the whole point of having a picture is to achieve a
communications goal that text won't do, so filling the picture with text is
sort-of missing the point a little :-)
Yes, I am well aware that there are still requirements that need far greater
precision than I offer. I refer such customers straight off to a graphics
house, and perhaps warn them that they need to entirely abandon any thought
of being involved beyond the "First Draft" stage. If the requirement is for
an eight-colour coffee-table masterpiece with high-end production values,
then the customer has to get used to handing the job over and then staying
out of the way while graphics professionals achieve the result they wanted.
But the vast majority of my output these days never gets anywhere near
paper: it's never printed at all. So I tend to encounter more of the
"cross-platform" kinds of issues and very few of the "precision rendering"
issues. The industry has changed quite a bit since I got into it :-)
I was working at one company where they had a contract graphics artist, who
insisted on including not only call-outs and labels but also captions in his
pictures. He also refused to deliver them in any format other than raster
formats. He was working on a Mac, and claimed he couldn't get vector
graphics to work properly. I sacked him: it was just a scam to ensure that
if we wanted to update any of the pictures, we had to go back to him to have
the work done.
It would be nice if this stuff "just worked", and even nicer if Microsoft
and Adobe would stop their silly games. But they don't, and they won't. I
take the view that the customer is paying my outrageous fees so he doesn't
have to think about any of this: it's my job to "make it work". And these
days, that means cross-platform, too :-)
Cheers
On 21/05/09 1:18 AM, in article
34744092-cd39-4367-b7a8-433e3545ce5d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "mdh"
<mdhills@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
John,
What are you using to create your WMF/EMF graphics?
And how do those work with fonts, cross-platform?
Matt
--
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Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.
John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:john@xxxxxxxxxxx
.
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- Re: Import Vector Grahpics to Word - Best Format
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