BS: Weird WORD

Subject: BS: Weird WORD
From: Barbara Shaw
Date: 31 Oct 05 - 04:26 PM

I've been using WORD a long time and never had this happen...

I pasted an image from Illustrator into a WORD document, looked at the print preview which looked fine, and printed it down. The entire thing came out MIRROR IMAGE!! So I went back into Illustrator and exported the image as a jpeg, pasted the jpeg into WORD, print preview looked fine, printed down fine! What the heck made the Illustrator image print backwards?

Subject: RE: BS: Weird WORD
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 31 Oct 05 - 04:34 PM

erus ton m'I

Subject: RE: BS: Weird WORD
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 31 Oct 05 - 04:49 PM

You probably flipped it by accident in the photo properties setting or with a keystroke combination you weren't aware of. If you right click any image you paste in you'll find you can do quite a bit of editing even within Word. Just don't try to do anything with them beyond that document after Word gets finished.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Weird WORD
From: Cluin
Date: 31 Oct 05 - 05:59 PM

It's Samhain. Sounds like ya got a gremlin there, little lady. Nowt for it but to turn off the computer and pour yourself a drink, light a fire and not think about anything like work till tomorrow.

Subject: RE: BS: Weird WORD
From: Barbara Shaw
Date: 31 Oct 05 - 07:10 PM

Well, I turned off the computer, had a drink and lit a fire in the three jack-o-lanterns. But I'm still pretty sure it's Illustrator doing funny things. Last week Illustrator was hanging my computer, so it's getting somewhat better...

Subject: RE: BS: Weird WORD
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 31 Oct 05 - 08:18 PM

You're not using a Mac, are you? All the bits are backward on them.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Weird WORD
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 31 Oct 05 - 08:42 PM

With some printers (depending on the driver) you can select to "print mirror image." This is usually hidden in Printer - Advanced Options, or some such place, so you'd be unlikely to have changed it by accident.

The setting is most commonly available for PostScript printers, but may be present in some other kinds.

Other drivers may make it more "visible" so that it's more likely to get changed accidentally.

It's handy for printing iron-on transfers for your T-shirts, but I've not found many other intentional uses for it.

In Word, the "flip" function is on the "Drawing" toolbar as one of the rotation options. If you *select a picture by clicking on it, then Click "Draw" on the drawing toolbar, you can rotate or flip the picture. If you added annotations to the picture, you may have had the Drawing toolbar up and could maybe have accidentally done a flip?

*If the document has been saved, you may have to select a picture, Copy it, Paste it back, to enable rotations in the Drawing toolbar. The option sometimes isn't available if the picture has been "flattened" into the document.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Weird WORD
From: Amos
Date: 31 Oct 05 - 08:45 PM

John,

The bits are NOT backwards.

I had the same cantankerous behaviour on my Windows pc at work, and solved it by reinserting the pictures over again.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Weird WORD
From: Barbara Shaw
Date: 31 Oct 05 - 08:47 PM

No, not using a Mac.

Here's what my son, the graphics techie, had to say about it:

"...there are some format translations that just aren't a good idea...pasting illustrator files into ANYTHING is usually not wise. photoshop handles the copy-paste pretty well, but they're both adobe programs. word is very picky, in my experience. I like to use "safe" formats for file transfers...jpeg is good, tiff is good, eps is good. these are formats that are the same on all platforms and all programs because they're recognized standards..."

Doesn't explain the phenomenon but further describes the problem. Interestinger and interestinger. I thought my brain had finally reached the breaking point when I saw everything backwards on the printed page...

Subject: RE: BS: Weird WORD
From: Amos
Date: 31 Oct 05 - 08:54 PM

It may be a virus as Cluin said -- I'd investigate recent ones to see if that is one of their symptoms.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Weird WORD
From: Barbara Shaw
Date: 31 Oct 05 - 09:13 PM

I actually verified the "mirror image" option in the printer settings and it was not checked. The only other thing that changed (years of experience has taught me to look for what changed) is that I have a new HP all-in-one printer. This printer required the installation of software that keeps trying to access the internet and other unusual things, so maybe there's a setting somewhere in the printer workings that I can't find which is doing this. Of course the real change is that I've been trying to learn to use Illustrator, which is greatly paining my neck.

Subject: RE: BS: Weird WORD
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 31 Oct 05 - 09:14 PM

Adobe Illustrator is noted for marginal compliance with graphic image standards. Some of the standards permit "additional features" and AI seems to use a lot of them. Its "native" format is simply unintelligible to lots of other programs, and even when you save as another common format, AI seems to want to add it's own unique "flavors" to the specs.

Some other graphics programs will occasionally recognize that what looks like an "ordinary" TIFF file is actually an AI-TIFF file, and may tell you so before rejecting it (and sometimes crashing).

It's a wonderful program, but shouldn't be the only good graphics program in your arsenal. It's just "not fully compatible" with too many other application programs.

If you have another graphics program that can open AI-produced images with reasonable reliability, sometimes opening and resaving in almost any other program will remove (or at least blunt) some of the "AI features" so that you can use the image more generally. That's a work-around we used to use a lot.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Weird WORD
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 31 Oct 05 - 09:24 PM

Barbara: Re- the HP All-In-One:

We have one too. You have my sympathy.

I have an HP1200 laser, an HP9650 inkjet, and an Epson flatbed scanner hooked up to my PC. No problems.

She has the HP All-In-One (HP1315xi) hooked up to her PC.

It keeps me from sneaking over and using her machine.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Weird WORD
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 31 Oct 05 - 09:31 PM

AI seems to want to add it's own unique "flavors" to the specs.

What! Have Adobe been taking lessons from Microsoft? Maybe one day they will get really good at it and try to take over things like HTML standards and Java by adding thier own "extensions".

Subject: RE: BS: Weird WORD
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 31 Oct 05 - 09:54 PM

I have a scanner. I have a fax. I have a laser printer. They are separate machines, and they work well doing their own things. The fax is in the other room, the scanner and printer are on this computer. Should one of them die, I will replace it, and leave the others to keep doing their good works.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Weird WORD
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 01 Nov 05 - 09:12 PM

Stilly -

We got the "All-In-One" simply because it's small enough to take along in the camper for those month long three day festivals we go to. It also provided "her own" separate color printer/scanner, etc for "her" and solved a persistent noise problem for me.

The specific printer was selected partly because it can use the same ink cartridges as "my" HP9650 Super B printer.

We've had little real problems with it, but it is annoying that it attempts to take over your whole system with presets, and persistently pops up "you need an update" messages that turn out to be meaningless.

Sonandfamily have a very similar Epson multi that has never printed more than about 6 sheets off a set of ink cartridges because the cartridges/nozzles dry out and clog if you don't use it every very few hours. Ninety five percent or more of multiple cartridge sets have gone to unsuccessful "cleaning cycles." He has thus far resisted acting on my suggestion that a new HP Multipurpose with a starter set of cartridges would cost less than a set of new cartridges for the Epson - I think only because he wants to prove he "doesn't have to be like dad." You'd think by the time they're forty they'd get over it....

John

Subject: RE: BS: Weird WORD
From: Barbara Shaw
Date: 01 Nov 05 - 10:18 PM

I'm actually pretty happy with my HP 4215 all-in-one. Under $100 and it is very compact, works easily as a fax or copier or scanner or printer, good print quality, quiet, quick. And I have satisfied myself that it is not the fault of the printer but rather Illustrator causing the mirror image.

I just re-created the crime by pasting a photo from an Illustrator file into WORD, then pasting the same photo directly from a jpeg. The illustrator image is upside down and backwards and the jpeg is fine.

So maybe the thread should be "Ill-ustraitor" rather than "Weird WORD."

Subject: RE: BS: Weird WORD
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 02 Nov 05 - 01:05 AM

One of the things that "made" the Mac was the early adoption and intentional facilitating of PostScript and vector graphic programs in close cooperation with Adobe. Early Mac printers were essentially PostScript based, and the early Adobe graphics programs that were available for Mac computers gave them "vector graphic" tools not readily available to PC users.

The few "vector graphic capable(?)" programs available for PCs essentially had to convert everything to "bitmap" or other "raster graphics" fromats in order to print. Most PC programers took the easy way out and provided a skeletal conversion from vector to raster formats, but used raster/bitmap formats as the "native languages" for their programs. Exceptions were "expensive" by PC users' standards.

In extremely crude terms, on a Mac you could "draw a line or a curve" while on a PC the best you could do was "paint a row of adjacent bits." The difference is perhaps a bit subtle, but it gave early Macs a very real advantage in graphics - and especially in "artistic" graphics.

Early PC versions of programs that Adobe developed originally for Macs and "ported over" to PC were more or less successful for PC users, but the emphasis probably should remain on the "less" side unitl fairly recently.

Recent versions of core Adobe programs have been pretty much rewritten for PCs, so that there now is very little difference in functionality between the two platforms. In some cases the PC versions appear to offer a bit more than the Macs can get, although familiarity with the system an individual chooses can pretty much wipe out any arguable superiority on one side or the other.

Adobe Illustrator appears to be one program that carried a lot of Mac code over, with add-on interpreters/translators (known technically as "Band-Aids") in the PC version(s). It may someday get a "ground up" rewrite for PCs, or that may have pretty much been done in the latest PC version(s); but PC versions I've seen thus far are a bit "clunky" on a PC. AI was never intended as a general purpose graphics editing program, and should be used with the rest of the Adobe arsenal or with appropriate other programs unless you are a "one method artist" and the limited range (and usability) of products it produces are all you need.

All personal opinion, of course.

The inverted AI images, with normal .jpg, suggests an Input/Output driver/.dll may be corrupted or missing in AI. Separate utilities, essentially like printer drivers, are used for each exportable format in some programs, or a single I/O routine may call different .dll scripts depending on which format you ask for. An unexpected result for one format, when other formats are normal, suggests this kind of problem....

If you actually have a .jpg of the image you want, AI probably isn't the "program of choice" for adjusting it. You might be able to get resizing, cropping, and some brightness/contrast/color fixes out of the multipurpose printer/scanner's bundled software more easily than from AI.(?). Personally, I'd probably use Photoshop Elements for anything of this kind.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Weird WORD
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 02 Nov 05 - 01:45 AM

I'm not sure Barbera. I have little faith in MS and did some searching

Could it be related to this Microsoft bug?

Subject: RE: BS: Weird WORD
From: Bard Judith
Date: 02 Nov 05 - 02:33 AM

Very illuminating.

As I didn't have the cash for Adobe Photoshop, and Illustrator was available where we were living at the time (Korea - and I mean legally, which was much more difficult to get than the ten-dollar versions!), I got Illustrator.

I create my computer-assisted fantasy art

with Illustrator, a little-known program called PhotoImpressions, and the humble Paint (believe it or not, it's more versatile than ya might think!) Upon occasion a little help from Print Artist, but that has strange compatibility issues as well (it inverses the order of layers, never mind 'mirror image'! everything that was stacked on the bottom goes to the top - veerrrrrrry disconcerting visually!)


El cheapo hint of the day for misbehaving graphics: if what you need is the image, right this second, and don't have the time to fiddle with fixing it in Word, etc. - try hitting the 'print screen' button. Open that humble old Paint (under All Programs / Accessories) and hit Paste. Your image will appear as a screen dump and you can then simply crop it and save as a bitmap or jpeg and insert into your document as usual.

Subject: RE: BS: Weird WORD
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 02 Nov 05 - 02:45 AM

Good find, Jon.

FileExt doesn't identify the .EMF filetype as used by any programs I identify as Adobe, and I would expect one with that much "name power" to be pretty high up on any listing. They do say "other programs too numerous to list." A couple of Corel Draw! programs are down in the bottom part of the page.

It is perhaps possible that other filetypes could run up against the same bug.

The KB article does imply that only "Office 2000" version programs are affected, but it wouldn't be the first time Mickey didn't know the whole truth.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Weird WORD
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 02 Nov 05 - 03:18 AM

Bard Judith -

We sort of cross-posted. Yours appeared while I was writing.

AI is probably one of the better programs for creating the kind of art you linked. That's sort of "what it's for." Other programs still can be helpful for getting the AI output into something other programs can use.

When using PrtScn, PrtScn alone captures the whole screen (in Windows). If you use Alt-PrtScn you only get the "active window." Sometimes this will give you a little bigger image with a little less to crop to clean up. Screen prints are always at 72 dpi, which is a bit crude for many uses, so if a program lets you do it, zooming in as much as possible before doing the capture with Alt-PrtScn sometimes gets you a little better resolution.

Photoshop Elements (about $80 US now I think) lets you use "File|New from Clipboard," which automatically sizes a "canvas" to the clipboard content size and resolution so that you don't have to "create" a canvas to paste to or crop after it's pasted. Once in Elements, I think you'd find a lot more flexibility in what you can do than in Paint; but as noted in the Mac/PC comments, the program you know how to use is probably the best one for you to use - as long as you can make it do what you want.

The PrtScn or Alt-PrtScn is also sometimes handy when websites block saving of images you'd like to make notes about. Sometimes you have to screen capture in pieces and reassemble, but it's workable and fairly easy in Elements.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Weird WORD
From: Barbara Shaw
Date: 02 Nov 05 - 07:23 AM

The Illustrator image in WORD showed correctly on the screen and was not upside down and backwards until printed. Microsoft's bug per Jon's link sounds like the image is reversed onscreen as well.

So, if one wants to insert graphics from Illustrator into a WORD document (for example, a copy of my new cd cover in a notice about the new cd) I guess I need to work around this bug.

The mudcat has awed me again. Thanks, everyone.