Photos in Word 2016 Larger Than in Word 2010

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I self-publish a book (a diary of my family’s activities for that year) each Christmas that includes photos embedded in the text. I’ve published almost 20 books this way. I used Word 2010 for the past five or six years, and this year upgraded to a new Win10 Alienware and Office 2016.

I just realized that the size of my document for this year will be 4 or 5 times as large as it was in previous years. The obvious suspect are the pictures that I include. I have about the same number as in the past, so the size of the photos seems a likely source of the extra size.

I compress all of my photos to “Use Default Resolution” as I always have. That default is set to 220 in Advance Settings as it was under Word 2010. Thus, I’m assuming that they should all be consuming the same amount of storage. Thus, the only real variable is that I moved from Word 2010 to Word 2016.

What am I missing? Why would this new document be so much larger? Has anyone else seen this phenomenon?

Thanks.

WSC3

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Inserting the pictures at a different size would increase the file size; Word 2016 may also compress the pictures less for a given resolution also.

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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If you have this year’s pics and last year’s in a couple of folders on your computer, you can quickly compare their average file sizes before they get into Word. That will narrow the list of suspects.

Is your output format DOCX? That’s usually the smallest format. What format do you publish in–epub, paper, PDF, …?

There is more to the filesize of an image than resolution. DPI is for print quality, specifying how many dots of ink or toner should be laid down by the printer on every inch of paper. It’s not relevant for electronic storage or output. The very similar PPI [pixels per inch] is relevant, but more useful to describe output screens than docs or images to be displayed.

Are this year’s files uncompressed compared to previous years?
Are they a diff format–eg BMP files are much larger than JPG?
Has color depth changed this year, from eg 16 bit to 32 bit?
Are this year’s simply larger photos–eg 4,000×2,500 vs 1,000×2,000 last year?
Is there a lot more extra info [EXIF metadata] stored in this year’s pics?
Could the picture editor program be storing a lot of extra info [eg multiple undo] this year?
Are you sure this year’s pics aren’t still layered from the image editing software?

I’ve been making books with images in Word 2016 for a couple of months, and haven’t seen any increase in file sizes compared to Word 2013.

Lugh.
~
Alienware Aurora R6; Win10 Home x64 1803; Office 365 x32
i7-7700; GeForce GTX 1060; 16GB DDR4 2400; 1TB SSD, 256GB SSD, 4TB HD

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My pictures are all about the same file size, typically somewhere between 1.5mb and 2.5mb. I bought a new camera over two years ago, but that didn’t make any difference between last year’s book and the previous year’s. They were very close.
All my pictures are jpg’s.
The photo dimensions (in Explorer) do vary from picture to picture, but they’re all within some similar range. I didn’t change any camera settings, so there’s no reason to suspect they would be.

I don’t use layering much, so I know that’s not it.

I am surprised that when I compress a photo that its original size would make a difference in the compressed size. I would think that conformity would be a goal of compression.

My end of year book size from last year was 127mb. This year’s is already 367mb and I still have a few months to go.

My output at this point is DOCX. I publish in PDF.

As I noted, the only things that changed this year are my computer, Word version, and OS.

I worry that the Word doc will become unwieldy as its size increases. Any thoughts on this?

Thanks.

WSC3

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I am surprised that when I compress a photo that its original size would make a difference in the compressed size. I would think that conformity would be a goal of compression.

Two jpg files having the same horizontal & vertical pixel counts can have quite different file sizes, depending on the variability of the data in the image. Naturally, the compressed (i.e. downsampled) versions of these files would likewise differ in size. What I was referring to, though, is a possible change in the compression algorithm used by Word 2016, which could mean the images are compressed less so that more detail is retained.

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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Check the settings in “Image Size and Quality” in File > Options > Advanced.

I worry that the Word doc will become unwieldy as its size increases. Any thoughts on this?

Also in in File > Options > Advanced, in “Show document content” ticking “Show picture placeholders” should help with scroll speed.

Lugh.
~
Alienware Aurora R6; Win10 Home x64 1803; Office 365 x32
i7-7700; GeForce GTX 1060; 16GB DDR4 2400; 1TB SSD, 256GB SSD, 4TB HD

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Lugh: Image Size and Quality: 220ppi.

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It did compress it further in previous versions of Word, and significantly. That’s why Word offers image compression. I’ve been doing this for years and the size was 4 or 5 times smaller with previous versions of Word. This is the first time I’ve ever had a doc of this size. Make sense?

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I’ve had a chance to get back to this issue. I just did some measurements. My document was 393.606MB. I inserted one picture 2.77MB in size and reduced the size to “Default Resolution” as I indicated at the top. I save the document and the new size is 397.336. The difference is 3.73MB. The document is bigger than the size of the inserted photo!

Any further thoughts?

Thanks.

WSC3

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If the picture was already in the jpg format or another format that uses compression, Word mightn’t be able to compress it further, even for ‘Default Resolution’, plus it would need some overhead for the image’s placement, sizing, etc. in the document.

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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What you’re saying doesn’t necessarily follow. What Word does with it all depends on what the image is, what dpi it has when inserted into the document (at the scale used in the document – not elsewhere) and what compression settings you have. It is entirely possible in any version of Word that a given image will not be compressed at all; other images might undergo very substantial compression – in the same document with the same compression settings.

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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I understand. But the vast majority of images in my book are from my camera, which has been the same for several years and the files it creates should thus also be somewhat the same, especially in terms of size, dpi, etc. (I did compare a few just to see.) I can see a one-off every now and then that doesn’t compress, but I’m thinking now that none of my pics have compressed this year in my book. Why did pics with similar properties compress so much last year?

And what particularly surprises me is the 4 – 5 order of magnitude and that’s hard to explain.

And in my brief test, the size of the document got larger than the picture I inserted by almost 50%. How would that happen?

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I can see a one-off every now and then that doesn’t compress, but I’m thinking now that none of my pics have compressed this year in my book. Why did pics with similar properties compress so much last year?

And what particularly surprises me is the 4 – 5 order of magnitude and that’s hard to explain.

As access-mdb remarked, you may have changed the camera settings. In Word, you may also be using a different compression setting now than in the past.

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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And again, it’s an amazing 5x order of magnitude.

Citing above, I compress all of my photos to “Use Default Resolution” as I always have. That default is set to 220 in Advance Settings as it was under Word 2010. Thus, I’m assuming that they should all be consuming the same amount of storage. Thus, the only real variable is that I moved from Word 2010 to Word 2016.

The settings were the first place I looked…. It’s just weird.

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Try what I mentioned previously. Drag a picture into Word, select it, cut it to the clipboard, then Paste Special jpeg and see what happens. My file size (with a 1MB) pic was 224 kB.

To Paste Special btw, click Home, pull down Paste, then click Paste Special.

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You might find it useful to read the Wikipedia entry on Jpegs. Warning, this can blow your mind:eek:. You don’t say what camera you have but are you sure you haven’t inadvertently changed the quality (how many pixels are used) of each picture? On my camera, the size of the pictures (Mbs) is dependent on what I’ve taken photographs of – some subjects are more easily compressed than others. It’s all a bit of a minefield really as you will see if you read the article. See Effects of JPEG compression towards the bottom of the article.

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I have Canon EOS 70D. I went back and did a quick look at a couple of pictures, this year vs last. The number of pixels is around 18 – 20 mpixels for both.

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I have found that dragging (from File Explorer) and dropping into the file adds nothing extra to the filesize. I just tested it by dragging a 955 kB pic onto a 26 kB blank doc, which gave a new file size of 981 kB as expected. In bygone days I used to copy jpgs to the clipboard then paste special jpg, but there is now no advantage in that and maybe some loss in resolution. So try drag and drop – I would be surprised if it doesn’t work. I am on 365/2016.

And in passing, why do you want to include 2 or 3 meg files in your book? I would (almost) guarantee that no-one would spot the lower resolution if you first reduced them to say 500 kB which I do to all my pic files, except ones I might one day want to reproduce at A2 or A1 size.

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Load a previous year’s docx, move some stuff around, and save it as a new docx. Did the file size grow?

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It would if I converted it.

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I thought you sent a pdf to your publisher.

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The file formats do vary between each of the Word versions. It is possible that the file format for Word 2016 is less efficient in how it stores JPGs. In old versions of Word, doing anything to a JPG in Word resulted in the bitmap being converted to a BMP format which has a waaaayyy larger file size.

However, I have never placed much faith in allowing Microsoft’s bitmap compression algorithms to give me a good result. It simply isn’t realistic to expect that an office productivity application has algorithms that can compete with a specialised bitmap editor such as Adobe Photoshop. So, if I wanted my Word document to have optimised images, I would use a bitmap editor to convert my 20mpixel image into a 240dpi image (ie containing the right number of pixels for the size I wanted) and then place that into Word. Then I can avoid asking Word to do any compression at all.

So work out how large you want the image in Word, resize it in your bitmap editor and then import that into Word.

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I have never placed much faith in allowing Microsoft’s bitmap compression algorithms to give me a good result. It simply isn’t realistic to expect that an office productivity application has algorithms that can compete with a specialised bitmap editor

I agree. I make books with a few small pictures in them, and process the images externally before bringing them into Word. A free image editor like
PhotoFiltre, IrfanView, Paint.NET, etc should be all you need for batch resizing the originals to your doc specs.

Lugh.
~
Alienware Aurora R6; Win10 Home x64 1803; Office 365 x32
i7-7700; GeForce GTX 1060; 16GB DDR4 2400; 1TB SSD, 256GB SSD, 4TB HD

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Andrew: I’m looking at the file size in Explorer after I save the file and exit Word. I’m not sure what you mean….

Am I missing something?

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I just added a 3MB picture to my document and the file size jumped 6.8MB. It’s crazy. That’s why I’m wondering what’s going on behind the scenes in Word 2016.

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If you put any image on the cover AND the file preview is turned on for that file, the file size jumps a lot because the jpg is stored AND an uncompressed bitmap (possibly BMP) version of the entire front page is also saved. This might account for your increased file size when testing a single image.

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WSC3

When you do a Save As on a new file, the Save As dialog has a checkbox that says “Save Thumbnail”. This tells Word to create a bitmap of the cover which can be then be seen when you use File > Open to select a file for opening. The bitmap adds file size for very little value. That is what I was talking about in my earlier post.

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I just embed picture files into the document. Insert/pictures option. Isn’t this the way to do that???

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I thought I would give this a whirl to see if I have the same issue. This is what I did (in case it differs from your method). Word 2016 via Office 365 with 220dpi under advanced just like yours.

1. Create a new Word doc (called phototest.docx) with some simple text. Saved and size was 12kb.

2. Insert a picture as you post above. Picture size 13.8Mb, file size now 311kb (yes kilobytes)

3. Insert another picture the same way. Picture size 14.2Mb, file size now 685kb.

4. Copy and paste a picture. Picture size 14.2Mb. File size now 1027kb.

All three pictures were different. This might imply to me that it isn’t Word that’s at fault, though there might be another setting affecting this.

Might it be possible for you to let me have one of your photos to see if my doc increases in size radically?

Eliminate spare time: start programming PowerShell

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access-mdb: I can post a pic here. Can you delete it after you grab it?

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jonricho: I’ve always inserted photos at about 1.5 – 2.5 MB over the past number of years. The reason I compress is to reduce the size and yet keep the necessary quality. This was a seamless way to accomplish this goal w/o having to change the original file before inserting. As I’ve noted, its always worked before. Maybe 20% of my pics are close to 8 1/2 x 11. The others are half or less than that in size.

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Better if you put it on Dropbox or similar and PM me a link, then it’s under your control. I don’t think they can be deleted from here…

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Jonrichco: I will try this on my next pic, but a drop in size to 224kb will give much lower quality resolution. The compression I’ve used in the past the way I suggested keeps the size down and holds the quality.

access-mdb: Sorry, what does PM you a link mean?

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Just a question: are the images at 18-20MB stored on the camera card? I had to help a client who was using an EOS 50D and storing images as both .jpg at 3 to 5 MB and .raw at 20MB and concerned when his card got full too quickly. A simple change in the camera setup got it to .jpg only. An interesting treatise on the formats:
http://photo.net/learn/raw/

Before you wonder "Am I doing things right," ask "Am I doing the right things?"

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I store raw images on the card and move them to AE where I ultimately reduce them to jpgs between 2 -3 MB in size.

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access-mdb: Sorry, what does PM you a link mean?

Sorry, lounge jargon. it’s a personal message – click on notifications at top right (between your username and ‘My profile’) then ‘send new message’ on the left (in the My messages box). Enter my username access_mdb and a title, then the message. Now hit the submit button at the bottom. I’ve PMed you to illustrate. ‘Notifications’ at top right should change colour and you’ll get an email at your email address you use in the Lounge. No one will see it though, but don’t reply to the message, as it says, as it won’t get to me.

Eliminate spare time: start programming PowerShell

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Thanks, got your PM and I’ve downloaded the photo (which I will delete once we’ve finished with this test). I added the file using insert/pictures (2.49Mb) and the size of the file only increased to 1666kb from 1027kb. I think this shows that it’ not a problem with Win 10 or Word 2016 as such but rather a setting in Word. I’m not sure what that setting might be – I hope that someone on here might have some ideas. It’s late here so I’ll have another investigate tomorrow.

Eliminate spare time: start programming PowerShell

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Thanks. The compression settings all match. I appreciate the help.

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WSC3

“PM you a link” means use the Private Message function here to send a message to a person rather than the whole world. You get to this area by clicking on the link up at the top of this page which says “Private Messages”

Often reducing the file size of an image results in no VISIBLE loss of quality. We tend to take photos at the ‘highest resolution’ to give us the maximum quality but this means the level of detail far exceeds what we actually need. A high resolution image is completely necessary if you want a poster-sized photoprint of your photo. BUT if you are placing your image into a Word document to print out on a piece of A4 or US Letter then the majority of the detail is lost because of the way both our eyes and our printers work. If you are simply viewing the image on a screen then any resolutions greater than the screen resolution is similarly wasted.

If you put the right-sized image into a Word document the file size can be greatly reduced. Without knowing the physical sizes of the photo in your Word document nor the degree of JPG compression nor the quality of your colour printer, I would estimate that a 224kb JPG probably has enough quality to occupy half a page and look just as good as a 5Mb image. However a 225Kb BMP or PNG photo would not be as good since the resolution of those image types is far less for the same file size.

Ultimately, a computer screen displays between 1000 to 2000 pixels from one side to the other. If your image fills the whole screen it doesn’t need to contain more pixels than this. If it fills half that then you could reduce the pixels in your image by half.

When printing, your printer might be 600dpi but because of how colour photos are actually printed, resolutions of photographic images greater than around 220dpi give you NO appreciable increase in quality. So if the image takes up 4 inches on the printed page, it doesn’t need to be any more than 220 x 4 = 880pixels wide. Placing a massive jpg into that space will give you a massive file size but not a visual benefit.

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WSC3
The only setting I could find is ticking the compress option in advanced. When I unticked it and inserted one of my 14Mb pics, the file size went to very large as you you would expect. I then deleted the new pic from the doc and ticked the option. I repeated what I had just done and the file size reduced to an appropriate figure.

Have you tried unticking the option, adding a file and seeing what size it is, then doing the same with it ticked to see if there’s a difference? It would seem to me that your compression isn’t working for some reason. Other than that I have no idea what the issue is. Sorry.

The other alternative is to use your photo editing software to reduce the size before putting it in the Word doc as Andrew suggests.

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Andrew Lockton:
Just to be clear, this is all about print quality. And, if the print quality looks ok, the display will be as well.

Historically, I inserted the jpg file and selected “Use default resolution”, and the default is set to 220 here in Word 2016 as it has been in previous versions of Word. I assume that the reason that file compression exists is to reduce whatever size file is inserted to 220ppi and eliminate the user having to have any deep understanding of the things you detail above. This has worked successfully for years for me over two or three or four different versions of Word. This clever feature eliminated me having to worry about resolution details, and the end product was great. Also, I never had to worry about the physical size of the inserted photo: Word compression took care of it.

Now, not only is compression not working as expecting, but the Word doc is actually getting larger than the inserted file. That is crazy.

Access-mdb:
In Word 2106 (I don’t remember previous versions), under the Options/advanced, the only options to tick are:
Discard editing data. (not checked/ticked)
Do not compress images in file (not checked/ticked)
Default resolution 220ppi

I checked/ticked “Discard editing data” to test this setting. I have no idea what that means; I never paid any attention to it. I just focused on the next option on compression. But, I did run your test and the Word document file size DROPPED 54.72MB on save when I added a single 2.4MB photo!

Do I infer that changing this setting eliminated unnecessary editing data lurking throughout my document from any and all pictures? It obviously removed something outside of this just-added photo.

What is editing data? What did I just lose? I’m assuming that it’s an okay thing. And, as excited as I am that I dropped my file size almost 55MB, my file is still way too large.

Under Compress Pictures within Word, “Delete cropped areas of pictures” is checked, so I assumed that this setting made Word remove unnecessary picture data when I made photos smaller from within Word (making them smaller than 8 ½ x 11).

Thoughts?

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Word keeps a record of some (many, all?) of the edits you do … Whether this is true of docx is another question I don’t know.
…
It doesn’t actually make any difference when I tick it and save the file.

You are correct for Word 2016 & DOCX. You didn’t see a difference I’m guessing because you hadn’t made any edits to the image.

What is editing data? What did I just lose?

You lost undo, nothing else.

Lugh.
~
Alienware Aurora R6; Win10 Home x64 1803; Office 365 x32
i7-7700; GeForce GTX 1060; 16GB DDR4 2400; 1TB SSD, 256GB SSD, 4TB HD

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You are correct for Word 2016 & DOCX. You didn’t see a difference I’m guessing because you hadn’t made any edits to the image.

I didn’t edit the image so that explains why the size didn’t change. Thanks for the explanation. So I tried editing a pic (format picture and artistic effects) and that increased the file size by 2054kb from 1508 to 3562kb. But the OP’s file size increases are more than that.

WSC3, are you editing the picture in the Word doc? (Look, a straw is floating past!)

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As far as I remember, Word keeps a record of some (many, all?) of the edits you do, it certainly did in older (pre docx) versions as we were always told that everything we had changed in a doc was saved in it (whether that was really true I don’t know). Whether this is true of docx is another question I don’t know. The hint on the option does say it keeps the data to restore pictures to their original state, so ticking the option should result in smaller files. It doesn’t actually make any difference when I tick it and save the file.

So I’m at a loss to suggest anything further. It seems that your compress isn’t working, as it works fine on mine.

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I do some editing. I’ve discovered that the book printing process tends to darken photos, so I manually lighten them in Word to make them normal when they appear in book form.

I also add some Picture Effects, like Soft Edges. Finally, I almost always reduce pictures from full size (11 x 8 ½?) to something smaller, which is probably why my docx file size dropped by 55MB when I checked the Discard Editing Data box.

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Coming late to the party, I don’t expect to be able to add anything useful, but as straws seem to be up for grabs, I may as well. I don’t use Word 2010 often, and have no access to 2016, so can’t try what I am about to suggest. I wondered why no-one had mentioned trying the ‘compress pictures’ option when doing a save-as, but having just done some tests, realise it is effectively on all the time, defaulting to 220 ppi (in my case). I am used to slimming other people’s powerpoints etc by doing a save-as, presumably achieving a saving because I select a lower dpi value than they did. But perhaps the compress option is not on all the time in Word 2016?

Try a save-as and select 220 dpi under options, then do it again with a lower setting, eg 96. Is there a dramatic reduction in file size in either case? If so (and I know it doesn’t explain why 2016 behaves differently to 2010), let us know the numbers.

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WSC3,
You’ve very eloquently described your problem, however, I think many of the responses here are focused on the wrong track. As you’ve stated, the file sizes of your recent pictures are not themselves much different from earlier years. The new version of Word is the only thing truly different. I doubt that Word 2016 “compresses” pictures any differently than previous versions, certainly not to the order of magnitude you’ve experienced. As has been noted, Word cannot compress JPEGs by much as they are already compressed. Word actually “resizes” the photos by reducing the number of pixels, and thus the quality, as you know. If your picture sizes have not changed that much, something else must be going on.

There are other reasons that Word file sizes can be large. I would look at several options in your *new* version of Word. Is “File Versioning” enabled? (In Word 2003 you would check File>Versions…) Keeping backup version info can increase file size. Also check under Save Options for “Fast File Save.” This feature, if enabled, increases file size (Word 2003, anyway). Finally, is your Word 2016 embedding font files by default? There are several options for how/when font files get embedded. Again, if complete files of all fonts are embedded, your file size will increase dramatically. If I understood correctly, you publish to PDF, so you shouldn’t need to embed any fonts (One of the reasons to use PDF as output).

Word 2016 may have other save options that can affect file size, but the above are those included in Word 2003 and likely other versions. I don’t know if Save Options can get your file sizes tamed, but it won’t cost you anything to find out. Hope this gives you another perspective — and maybe a solution. -RonR

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As far as I can see there’s no file versioning or fast save feature in W2016 (though I’m happy to be corrected on this). Embedding fonts can be found in file/options/save at the bottom. I suspect that WSC3’s default is to not embed fonts in the file as mine is.
However as my set up isn’t giving the same large file sizes as his, it must, presumably, be a setting that we have set differently, so any other suggestions are welcomed!

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I have done some more testing, and discovered something that may be interesting (note: all done with Word 2010): If I add an 8 Mp (mega-pixel) jpg to an empty doc by drag & drop, the file size when saved ends up at around the same as the original jpg, regardless of the dpi setting under Options>advanced or under the save>options>compress setting. This puzzled me. After some playing around I found that if one selects the picture and rt-click>picture tab>compress button, then compression (dpi) options are available. Just backing out of this without changing anything changes the behaviour: the file size now changes on save to reflect the dpi setting.

Similarly, starting afresh with a dragged & dropped pic, the format picture ribbon menu (Word 2010 not available as I type this, so can’t check the exact labelling) contains a ‘compress’ button which does the same thing.

However, inserting a photo with ‘insert picture’, or copying from one word doc to another, creates a different type of object, which offers a different rt-click menu, with no compress option (and compress is not available via the ribbon [update 1/12: my mistake – the ribbon menu changes, and compress didn’t fit in my window, but if the Word window is large enough it will appear – oops!] ). But this object does ‘obey’ the file save compress setting, resulting in a significant reduction in size (in my case, from ~2MB to 200kB at 220dpi or 60kB at 96dpi). Only this second type of picture object offers editing features such as soft edges etc.

So any of your pictures which you inserted with insert>picture, or have edited, should be obeying the save dpi setting, but any you inserted via drag & drop (or perhaps other methods I have yet to try) may not. Is it possible you have a mix? See if any offer the compress option in the ribbon – if so, then until compress is selected my tests suggest they will stay at their original size.

Further to that, how many pictures do you have in the doc, and how many MB is it? Those that are near the full page size will be about 4.5 Mpixels (at 220dpi), which should compress with ‘normal *’ jpg compression to under 2 MB, all others should be less than that.

*My tests suggest word uses compression settings anywhere between 70 and 95, which is a large range.

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mngerhold: Just a quick note while I have a second: yeah, this is my 20th book. The previous 19 worked fine with other versions of Word. Your experiences with Word 2010 may be different. I didn’t have a problem until I hit Word 2016. My book is about 380 pages and I have 150 pics? I dunno. It would take too long to count them all. Most are not full size. The doc is about 380MB. Last year’s was 127MB, with about the same # of pages, so the increase is sizable and I have a ways to go.

The files I add are 2 – 3 MB and compression that worked on the first 19 books is not working the same way here, and may be making the photo insertion even larger. The only variable I can point to is W10 and Word 2016.

Thanks.

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With ~150 pics at 2-3MB each, it sounds like Word is not compressing them at all (the text will take negligible space). If you can be bothered, try a save-as to a temporary file name, and set the compression (under options in the save dialog) to 96dpi (the lowest ‘std’ value). If the file does not reduce in size significantly, we have to find out why. I am intrigued enough to see if others are having this issue in Word 2016, so shall go looking…

tata for now, Martin

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Sorry. How do I set the compression when I save my document? I don’t see any such options under “Save As”.

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To reduce the size of your Word document, you must DOWNSIZE the photos. Word options may refer to this process as “compression,” and may in fact do some compression, but JPEGs are already a compressed format. In order to reduce file size, Word must downsize, not compress, the images. That is, the number of pixels must be reduced! So, if you reduce a 1600×1200 pixel (~2MP before compression) image to 800×600 pixels, you’ll reduce the file size by 1/4 (down to ~.5MP). Word dialogs may make reference to compression levels and “DPI” resolutions, but such references perpetrate widespread misconceptions. The DPI value, or more properly the Pixels per inch (PPI), has nothing to do with the inherent “image resolution” or the file size. The best explanation I’ve found on DPI/PPI is this article by Ken Watson entitled, The Myth of DPI.

Word 2003 offers to compress images and/or change their resolution. With a highly compressed jPEG, there is no additional compression and thus no reduction in DOC file size when the “Compression” box is checked. Under “Change” resolution, Word offers No Change, Print (200dpi), and Web (96dpi) options. The DPI references are a mis-guided attempt at quantifying the amount of downsizing that Word will do. In my experience, the reduction factor is somewhat erratic. Word will reduce a large image to maybe, 1200×1600 with the Print option, or maybe, 350×480 with the Web option. If the inserted image is already only 1200×1600 say, Word may not reduce it at all for Printing, but will reduce it for Web display. Again, this correlation is a very loose and confusing one. Further explanation is a whole ‘nuther discussion.

Back to the objective. Reduce Word’s file size by downsizing your images. How much you downsize depends on your ultimate use of the images. Word’s downsize for PRINT option seems to guess that you’ll want somewhere between 1000-1500 pixels wide so that you can print an 8-inch wide image on paper and achieve approximately 200 PIXELS per inch (not DPI). Word 2016 may have different dialogs, but the mechanism is the same. I’ll be disappointed if Word is still using the confusing and inappropriate DPI references in its dialogs.

If you cannot achieve reasonable file sizes by downsizing your images, you’ll need to look at other “save” options. I mentioned a few in Post#44 and Malcolm (access-mdb) commented on what he found in Word 2016 options. If Word 2016 offers a default “compression” using [ugh!] 220dpi, just understand that it means downsizing (reducing the number of pixels) by some factor.

Sorry for the looooong post. -RonR :blush:

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To reduce the size of your Word document, you must DOWNSIZE the photos. Word options may refer to this process as “compression,” and may in fact do some compression, but JPEGs are already a compressed format. In order to reduce file size, Word must downsize, not compress, the images

IMHO that is just muddying the waters regarding how Microsoft uses the term ‘compression’ in the context of a Word document. From that persepctive it includes both downsampling and the application of a compression algorithm to raster graphics (vector graphics cannot be downsized or compressed).

If you insert a 3300*2200 raster image, scale it to 6*4in, then let Word apply a 220dpi ‘compression’ to it, Word will both reduce the pixel count to 1320*880 (an immediate 84% reduction in pixel count) and apply lossy (presumably) jpg compression to it. If the image was already a jpg one, an 84% reduction in image file size within Word is about all you’ll get (not to be sneezed at); if it was a TIFF image you might get a 90% reduction in image file size within Word. As a demonstration (using Word 2010) I inserted a 5184*3456 pixel jpg photo (File size:5750kb) into a document, letting Word scale it to fit the width between the margins (16cm), then saved the document. Document file size:5775kb. I then set Word to apply a 220dpi ‘compression’. Document file size:207kb.

WSC3 should be seeing something similar. If not, either: the Office installation is faulty; Image compression has been turned off (see under File|Options|Advanced>Image Size and Quality); Word 2016 simply doesn’t apply anywhere near as much lossy compression to pictures as Word 2010 (which is also quite possible); the document is corrupt; and/or WSC3 has forgotten how to use Word :p. You can test whether Word is doing its ‘compression’ stuff by examining the image in the document post-save. You can do that by changing the extension to .zip and opening the archive with a Zip viewer so you can compare to saved image’s size against the original.

Reducing images outside Word so that, as inserted, they’re anything more than 220dpi is unlikely to be beneficial if Word is then going to reduce them to that size anyway.

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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IMHO that is just muddying the waters regarding how Microsoft uses the term ‘compression’ in the context of a Word document. …

Muddying the waters?? Overall, the term “compression” encompasses many different things. Microsoft can use the term in the ‘overall’ context of a Word document so long as everyone understands that compression in this context entails many different things.

I agree with most of what you went on to say. You’ve basically generalized what compression can entail in various contexts. However, continuing to refer to DOTS per inch when PIXELS per inch is what is meant, or to use the X per inch value in a misleading fashion, is what keeps muddying the waters.

Word 2016’s use of “220 PPI” in its dialog is a crude (and to many, misleading) approximation of the size to which it will reduce/resize/resample/or whatever an image file. An image file may have a PPI or DPI value in it’s metadata, but it has no mathematical relationship to the inherent image resolution or file size. One can change the metadata “X per inch” value without affecting the image characteristics whatsoever! This is why you’ll often hear, “I reduced the DPI to 100, but the file size is still the same.” Image processing applications may use metadata DPI as a default “size” at which to initially display an image, but that’s all.

Word puts the “220PPI” in the dialog, but simply saying “Print quality” would convey what is meant. The actual PPI that an image produces on paper depends on how many pixels there are and how far across the paper they are printed. A 220×220 image (<40kB after compression) will look great on your printout as long as you don't print it any larger than 1 inch by 1 inch. If it's to be printed across 5 inches of paper, the image should be 5x 220 or 1100 pixels wide. Does Word actually do the math to determine what minimum pixels are needed? Word knows the paper size I've selected and the size in inches each image will occupy by the way I inserted it. So, Word could be that smart, but I doubt that's what happens. I say again — 220 PPI — is just a relative "let's downsize, but not too much" order of magnitude value when the objective is to print on paper. If we check the number of pixels in each of WSC3's 184 images, and divide by their physical size (in inches of paper to be printed), I'll bet we get widely varying PPI values. From what WSC3 has already discovered, we know they're not all going to be 220 PPI — not even close!

I also agree with you that whatever Word2016 is doing with WSC3's images is probably due to other factors. Save options and file corruption have been suggested.

Muddying the waters? No. Belaboring the issue? Perhaps. To all who are rolling their eyes … :rolleyes: … I apologize, and I'll quit talkin' about it.

WSC3 — ball's in your court. Find anything new? -RonR

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Does Word actually do the math to determine what minimum pixels are needed? Word knows the paper size I’ve selected and the size in inches each image will occupy by the way I inserted it. So, Word could be that smart, but I doubt that’s what happens.

Whilst I haven’t done any tests to confirm that precisely, I believe that is just what Word does (maybe only approximately). It’s trivial for Word to calculate, and does save the user from doing the arithmetic themselves. I think its a very good approach to controlling file sizes. Word’s help on how it does it, and the consequences for the images, could be improved.

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Sorry. How do I set the compression when I save my document? I don’t see any such options under “Save As”.

Its under tools (not options – my poor recollection):
46119-save-as-compress

which when selected offers this (in 2010):
46120-compress-options

I see they do use ppi, as they (and I) should. See update to #46 re ribbon menu. Martin

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Further to the above, it occurs to me that you could do something to see if certain (as opposed to all) pictures are creating the problem: docx files are really zip files, so if you make a copy of your doc and rename it as xxx.zip, then File Explorer should allow you to explore the contents. In the xxx.zipwordmedia subfolder you should see a number of images (probably .jpg or .jpeg) named image1, image2 etc. Look at the sizes of these: any that are larger than others may indicate Word is treating them differently, and identifying those large ones in the word doc (by visual comparison) may shed some light. If they are all about the same size, then its not compressing anything as expected.

Either way, I am afraid some more tests are likely to be required on your part – in that case, rather than simply adding pictures to an already large word doc, I suggest you start a dummy doc and add one or two, then perhaps you can the share the doc with us in the hope that we can shed light on what is going on. Note that I have seen nothing on the web that suggests Word 2016 behaves differently than recent previous versions, although its defaults may have changed.

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Oh, almost all of the files are png’s (142) not jpg (41). I wonder why? 99% of my photos are jpgs.

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Oh, almost all of the files are png’s (142) not jpg (41).

That’s probably at least half your problem. PNGs can be 3-4 times [or more, depending] the size of JPGs, as PNGs use ‘lossless’ compression.

I have never heard of Word changing one image format to another, so my guess is the reason lies outside Word.

You need to get all JPGs into your doc to determine if you still have a problem, and what’s its extent.

Lugh.
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Oh, almost all of the files are png’s (142) not jpg (41). I wonder why? 99% of my photos are jpgs.

Sorry to miss the most recent exchanges (Ive been snoozing in the UK). I’m sure the use of PNGs is the answer, we just have to work out why Word is doing that. Whilst looking to see if others were having this problem, I did read a comment to the effect that Word saves as a PNG if picture effects are applied (like soft edges). I thought ‘aha!’ and did a test: that was not the case in my Word 2010. Perhaps it depends on the effect? I shall go back looking (can’t access that page i saw at the moment). You may be able to determine what is different (in Word) about those images stored as PNG.

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I’ll look at this shortly when i have a bit more time. It’s very interesting. But, when I type in my new book w/o pictures, there’s no real increase in size as it is when I embed a photo. That’s my first thought…

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RuosChalet:
Thanks for the detailed post. Whatever we call it, downsize/compression, W2016 is not behaving like its predecessors.

I did try the Save As and selected the “220 ppi” option which was available to me. (Thanks mngerhold!) The doc file size results were exactly the same size. Exactly.

In working on my book, I added a bunch of drawings in the appendix, total size = 110MB of images embedded. I compressed these to 150 dpi, as the detail will not matter as with a photo. The doc file increased only 42.53MG, so real compression existed here, at about 60%.

Mngerhold
I had NO IDEA that a word doc was a zip file. Your idea was amazing. I did find all 184 of my images in a subfolder. 85 are less than 1 MB, 49 are 1 – 3 MB, and 50 are 3 – 7.3 MB. I don’t even have pics that large (> 3MB) inserted. The largest one (7.3), I just inserted in the past week and lightened it a bit. I am at a loss to explain why it’s so HUGE. There is clearly no compression going on for at least half of these photos and a third or more are being increased in size by Word, but I have no idea why.

The 184 images sizes sum up to be 399.981MB, a bit more than the total size of the doc. Odd as well.

So what does this tell me? Compression is not working? I guess I knew that. Now we proved it.

Now what?

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RuosChalet:
… Whatever we call it, downsize/compression, W2016 is not behaving like its predecessors.
What we call it matters because they are two different things! ONE, downsizing, is not behaving as expected. -RR

… I did find all 184 of my images in a subfolder. 85 are less than 1 MB, 49 are 1 – 3 MB, and 50 are 3 – 7.3 MB. … a third or more are being increased in size by Word …
Most of your images are being reduced in size (not compressed), but some are being increased! The “why” is what we need to find out. -RR

… The 184 images sizes sum up to be 399.981MB, a bit more than the total size of the doc. Odd as well.
Not odd. Everything is compressed into a “zip” (docx) file, but since images are already compressed, there is little reduction in overall file size. -RR

… So what does this tell me? Compression is not working? …
Compression IS working. Images are compressed into JPEGs, Word elements are compressed into DOCX.
What’s not working is the resizing of images as you, yourself, have discovered. Sorry to beat this drum, but as we zero in on the problem, we need to be precise in what we’re talking about. -RR

Now what?

So now, we focus on the issues you’ve just identified. Why is your copy of Word decreasing the size of most images, but increasing others in your file? Why and by what algorithm/rule does Word change the object TYPE (Jpeg > PNG)?

I think Martin is right (Post#53). Now that you can “unzip” the DOCX file, you need to investigate what is happening with the images. As Martin suggests, it may be beneficial to experiment with a brand new empty file and one or two misbehaving images, like the one that grew to 7.3 MB. Does it happen repeatedly? Predictably?

One last thought: With your HUGE file and hundreds of images, maybe your DOCX file has become corrupted. Not sure what it would take (cut/paste?) to create a whole new file, but a little experimentation might shed some light. Maybe delete a page with a huge image, save as tempfile, check file size. I don’t have W2016, so can’t help there.

Like Martin, I am intrigued to see where this thread goes. -RonR

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Just to add my 2 pennyworth, I mentioned that I had used effects in Word on one of my inserted pics and that had radically increased the file size. So I’ve had a look at the files by changing the file’s filetype to a zip (as per suggestions above). The last pic, which was the one I changed, is now a PNG and is significantly larger than the other (unchanged) files. But it is smaller than the original jpg. My impression is that Word 2016 is doing (for me) what it should be doing (and there’s no change to previous versions). So I suspect that it’s either a corrupt file or a damaged Word installation as has already been suggested.

Phew, I always thought it’s difficult to get my head round JPGs, compression et al – now I know it is!

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The last pic, which was the one I changed, is now a PNG and is significantly larger than the other (unchanged) files. But it is smaller than the original jpg.

Before i saw your response, I felt sure I had an answer, but needed to check it out: JPGs don’t support transparency, but PNGs do, so I tried adding transparency to my test doc, but this did not lead to an increase in file size nor change to the stored image type. It seems Word hangs on to the original JPG, and does the transparency on the fly (but maybe it won’t do that if there are a lot of pictures?). I hunted around, and finally found an effect which (in my case) changes the image to PNG: Remove background. A doc with a single 1.8MB image, when saved after removing the background (I let Word pick the rectangle) ballooned to 19MB.

So the $64 question is: have you, WSC3, used this effect? Please say yes!

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FYI my edit was an artistic effect, probably watercolour sponge.

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Wow. I can’t believe the conversations. I use the term Compression because it’s what Microsoft calls the function. The rest is academically interesting.

In most of my now 20 books I’ve made adjustments to my pics inserted into Word. I see discussion on why most of the pics are png’s instead of jpgs. I dunno, but I did the same thing in previous years, so there’s no change here.

My book is due out of here at the publisher in a few days, so I’ll have to run more tests when I start the new one for 2017.

I’m not sure what transparency is. I don’t see it listed among the picture effects, so I guess the answer is “no.” I do lighten my pics 20% as I noted above because they tend to print dark, so this helps offset that propensity. Other enhancements I use are:

Reduce the size. This is true for 90% of my pics. Most are much smaller than 8 ½ x 11.
Soft edges. I use this on the vast majority of my photos.
I’ve used a couple of reflections and glows, but only a few.

And as I’ve said, I’ve used all of these before.

Am I to conclude that Word converting my jpgs to pngs is normative?

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Am I to conclude that Word converting my jpgs to pngs is normative?

I think I understand why it does it for ‘remove background’ – it uses some clever routine to identify interesting edges inside the defined area, then sets everything outside the resulting irregular boundary to transparent (to do this for just one colour, see Pic-tools-format> adjust>Colour>set transparent). Because it has set a lot of different colours transparent (all those outside the boundary), it can’t remember all that each time it displays the pic (and it takes a while to do it), so it changes the pic to PNG, which has an ‘alpha’ channel, effectively a 4th colour in addition to RGB, and sets the outside to the 4th colour. The resulting pic displays quickly. To allow you to undo this, it also saves a WDP file (Windows variation on JPG) along with the PNG.

If you turn on ‘discard editing data’, the WDP file is dropped, and there’s no going back. From what I can tell, once a PNG has been created, to support whatever effect requires it, it won’t get turned back into a (likely smaller) JPG, even if the effects are removed. Perhaps you did something briefly, and later undid it, but are caught by the one-way nature of the JPG-to-PNG conversion?

I have tried reflections, soft edges and lightening, but none have generated PNGs AFAICT.

As I’m not using Word 2016, I am never likely to find out what, if any tweak, is setting some of your pics to PNG. If you can be bothered, you could try removing (from within Word) one of the pics you can identify as a large png, and re-inserting the source JPG and saving without any effects applied. The file size should go down. I don’t expect you want to do that for all the PNGs!

Good luck! Martin (probably over & out)

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I’ve had some time to look at some of the images in my Word to zip file. I found one, a small picture about the size of a postage stamp in the book. It’s named ‘image9.emf” and it’s 1.5MB in size and labeled as Deflated under Method. It should be less than 100 KB in size. Wow. What’s an emf file and again, why so large?

I went back into the document and tried to re-compress this small file and another massive (7.3MB) photo, but to no avail. I found another image that I compressed to 150ppi that was 2x the original size! What’s up?

And what does it mean to “flatten a transparency?” I got that message when I uploaded a PDF of my doc to my publisher when it was converted by the publishing website to its own PDF: “We detected and flattened transparencies in your file.” ?

Thanks.

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I tend to think of Metafiles (and .EMFs) as containers that are especially efficient for storing vector shapes, eg lines and blocks, as opposed to simply pixels (for which JPG and PNG are better). When pasting images out of Excel plots into Word (2000), I often use ‘paste special’ and insert as ‘Picture (enhanced metafile)’, as this (in most cases) takes up less space than a bitmap-image (and avoids having to save as an external file first). Later versions of Word may make this unnecessary.

I can only think you applied some effect to a picture that Word decided was best encoded via an EMF, or you cut and pasted something, but have no idea what that effect may have been.

When you say you tried to re-compress one of the 7MB photos (presumably PNG), did you delete it and insert again (recommended), or simply try to apply compression? If the latter, that won’t help, as once its a PNG it seems it will stay that way.

Are you prepared to create a copy of your doc, with most images removed, leaving only one or two of the PNG ones, and then put it on Onedrive or dropbox, so we can have a look at what is going on? I understand that privacy concerns may rule this out. Even if you do this, there’s no guarantee we can help, as the conversion to PNG (for whatever reason) has already happened. Perhaps better to create a new empty doc, and simply copy one of the ‘big’ pics to it, then try to repeat whatever effects you originally used on it, see if it has converted to PNG, and once it has then let us have a look.

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.EMF => Extended (Enhanced) Windows Metafile Format

Flattening a transparency, see this link for an explanation. It refers to CS5 but it’s the same principle (I think).

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The emf file was copied from another source and pasted into the book. It was small in my doc and was small to begin with. I think it was a photo that came from a web site.

I tried to re-compress a 7MB png from within W2016. I don’t care what extension it has; I just wanted compression to work. I even tried to compress it to 150ppi (instead of 220). That didn’t do anything either here.

I still don’t know what it means to flatten a transparency. I looked at the link. I didn’t do any artwork, not that I’m sure of the definition of artwork. I did a search myself without any luck on a meaningful description. I have put some effects like color around a pic; not often, but a few. I wonder if that’s interpreted as artwork?

I’ve sent the book off to the publisher and started a new one for 2017. No pics yet, but I’m definitely going to keep an eye on compression, and sad that I have to do that. Like I’ve said, I’ve made 20 books up to now and never had such an issue. Maybe some weird type of file corruption is the best answer. The docx to zip file is a great piece of information to have to catch oddities.

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I’ve sent the book off to the publisher and started a new one for 2017.

Good luck – perhaps we will hear from you this time next year! Martin

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I’ll keep a closer eye on it during the year. If I see an unexpected uptick in size, I’ll be back.

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The effects being applied to the JPGs are responsible for the conversion to PNG. PNG is a very bulky format for photographs so it is no surprise the file sizes are increasing. There may be some effects that don’t result in changes to PNG but because it is not obvious, applying any effect is a risk.

If the OP needs to lighten all the images or do ANY other modifications to the images, he should do that in a separate bitmap editing program and then import the final images into Word. This was suggested earlier in the thread but appears to have been ignored.

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I’m baaack!

I started my new book for 2017, and I can already see that have a compression issue, and thanks to the convert-your-Word-doc-to-a-zip-file, I can see the details. I’ve inserted eight pictures in the new book. I compressed each one, selecting 220ppi and performed some minor brightness enhancement on each. Here’s what I can see in the file:

1. All inserted as jpg’s convert to png

2. Three of the 8 are 2 or 3 times their original size! They were around 2MB and in the files are 6 – 7 MB. How did that happen?

Again, I’ve been creating this book for 10 years or so, handling the photos in the same way and getting good compression. I’m not sure why this is so different under Word 2016. I’ve been lightening the pictures this way too with no size impact, certainly not of this magnitude. Mr. Lockton has suggested that I do all of this work outside of Word, but I’ve never had to do that before, and it would be a lot of effort to do it that way. It’s simple – and a stated function of Word – to do modifications inside the app. And ultimately of course, the compression isn’t working, at least not at 220 ppi. I did see some size changes if I selected 150ppi.

Something is amiss.

Thoughts?

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Well, it’s simple (and not, at the same time). The simple bit: almost any jpg photo will be larger when converted to png. The not-so-simple: why is Word converting them? My tests with Word 2010 showed some operations would do so, but certainly not just ‘lightening’, so something must be different with W2016. You need someone with that vn to take up the baton.

If you can find somewhere to share just one of the pictures (that enlarges), and confirm the operation you performed, I can check what W2010 does to it.

Also worth pointing out that if you install a zip-viewer (7zip is good & free), then you can open a docx in that to see the picture sizes, without having to rename the file.

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Mngerhold: I emailed you a link with the two pics. Thanks for your help.

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Ok. I decided to start over, so I downloaded a new template from my publisher (LuLu.com) and copied a little text over from my original. I inserted a picture, lightened it, and compressed it to 220ppi. A 2 MB pic became… wait for it…. 35MB. I kid you not. It’s a 35MB png file….

BTW: There’s also an embedded file called “hdphoto1.wpd” that’s about 4MB in size. I didn’t put it there. It must be part of Word, but pretty big.

Oh, the template must not have been an original Word 2016 file because it had to be saved w/o compatibility.

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Ok. I started with a completely new document, put in a few blank pages + 1 picture, lightened it, compressed, and I still get a 6MB png file…..

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Berton: the “hdphoto1.wpd” is created by Word internal to the app, apparently when you adjust a photo in Word 2016. I do not have Corel installed.

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I’ve done more testing.

Because pagination is so painful in Word, I use a template that I copy and use that already has the page numbers laid out correctly. I can insert pictures into this template and they stay jpg’s, reduced in size. The moment I convert it forward to Word 2016, the pictures “reduce” as png’s. Thus, they become larger, not reduced by “compression,” usually by a factor of 3.

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The conclusion I now see is that if I lighten a picture, that action converts the photo to a png file, creates a hdphoto1.wpd file (sometimes of considerable size itself) to accompany it, & compression is ineffective. At this point, compression has little or no effect unless you opt for 150ppi, and then the size is still not what it should be. At 220ppi compression, the image size in the Word doc is 2x – 3x its original size. So, the lightening effect changes the type to png, something that (apparently) didn’t happen in previous versions of Word.

Can anyone try this in your Word 2016 and see if you have the same result? It was a long road to get to this simple, but awful conclusion. Thanks for your patience.

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creates a hdphoto1.wpd file

Why? A .wpd file is normally associated with Corel WordPerfect [competitor to Word], do you have that installed?

Before you wonder "Am I doing things right," ask "Am I doing the right things?"

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Just tried it and lightened it a little. It indeed created a large png file and the associated wpd file. Opening both shows the same picture – the wpd file is smaller than the jpg in a word doc which hasn’t had the picture adjusted.
I deleted the png (using 7Zip) but it just says the picture can’t be displayed (unsurprising really).

So it seems that MS has now changed the way Word treats images which are adjusted within it. Why? You’ll have to ask them.

I have to confess that if I was creating a book like you I would only import adjusted images anyway – but that’s not really the point of this thread.

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Well, i guess it’s good to know that your Word does the same thing. Is your png 3x the original size? Did you try to compress it?

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Well, i guess it’s good to know that your Word does the same thing. Is your png 3x the original size? Did you try to compress it?

I don’t think so, but then that would probably depend on exactly what you did to it. I didn’t try and compress it.

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Dlmeyer1: When i just moved text around and saved as a Word 2016 compatible document, there was no change. If I altered a picture (made it lighter), then the photo converted from a jpg to a png and the file size jumped several megabytes, consistent with what I’ve observed before.

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Did the bloated docx result in a bloated pdf?

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I do send the PDF to the publisher. Yes, the PDF was about 75% bigger than last year’s. That’s really a minor problem, because I just convert the Word doc to a PDF and then upload it. Done.

The extra-large Word doc becomes increasingly unwieldy as the size grows. That’s where the problem lies. Obviously if the Word doc were smaller because the pics compressed properly, the PDF would be smaller as well.

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the template must not have been an original Word 2016 file because it had to be saved w/o compatibility.

Do you get the same problem if you save with compatibility? I suspect you won’t, so that could be a workaround for you.

Lugh.
~
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