Image size restrictions

[AnthonyMA]

On my report I have a 9cm x 6cm image control. This is reluctant to
print, or display, images unless I reduce their resolution to
1024x768. Reducing them in this way reduces their printed quality. Is
this restriction on resolution by design? If not, is there anything I
can do to force the image control to accept higher resolution photos?

Many thanks

 

[Simon_MT]

The problem is two fold. A 9 x 6 cm container for the image reduces the image to 255 x 170 px. There will be distortion particularly from an image as large as 1024 x 768 remembering the a 1000 x 1000 px image is four times the size as a 500 x 500 px image.

If you want to use image I would store the large imafe in master folder and a separate folder to Low Resolution jpgs or whatever format you use.

Your contain should be 9 x 6.75 cm to be proportional with the original image. What size are your images as they should be under approximately 100KB.

Simon

 

[AnthonyMA]

The original pics are 3648 x 2432. I use Qimage to reduce the size to 1024x768 (which is a pre-set) but I suspect, from what you say, that I should be reducing them to 1024 x 683. Anything much above that does not seem to print/display which is at odds with the advice I was originally given by an MVP, which was to use the highest possible resolution in order to obtain the best quality of printed output. The file size of the reduced images is 600KB - 800KB. Note; these are not stored in the database but fetched via Me.imgPhoto.Picture = Forms!frmProfiles!txtPath & "\" & Me.txtPhoto. The size mode is set to Zoom. Are you saying that there is a designed-in limit to the resolution that an image control can handle. If so, do you know how the limit can be calculated. I need to do everything I can to maximise the quality of the report

Many thanks for your help

 

[boblarson]

I'm a former MVP and I'll tell you that we had problems with our photos in our reports (we have property inspections which have many photos on a particular report) unless we have them reduced to 1024 x 768. The Access image control just doesn't like images too much over that resolution. We found that if we had high resolution photos, we would see possibly one, two, or three pics but that was all. Then the report would just refuse to show any more.

So I don't know which MVP told you that but I'd have to seriously argue against him/her about this issue.

Bob Larson
Former Access MVP
2008-2009, 2009-2010

 

[AnthonyMA]

Bob, you are spot on. That is exactly my experience. It's a bummer really because in some of our reports the picture is everything so we need maximum quality. I've even considered, on very dark nights, investigating Filemaker...

 

[Simon_MT]

As I said as your container for the image is only 9 x 6 px (S/B 9 x 6.75 px) or around 255 x 170 px you are actually asking too much of Access to render down these images. Image that are between 600KB to 800KB are just far too large and too big to handle. I wouldn't even put these images on a web site as even here they would take too long to render.

I would suggest your images should be around 500 x 375 px or 600 x 450px. You should also use low res images about 60%-80% of the original and this would result in
images that are a more manageable size.

Here is a site that uses images where the image size to generally limited to a maximum of 500px. These images are used inconjunction with an Access database:

http://www.trevorsutton.com/

Simon

 

[AnthonyMA]

Once I've reduced the images to their current size, Access deals with them OK. Are you saying that the quality of the printed output would improve if I reduced them further ie that Access is taking liberties with the larger files (in order to render them) which it wouldn't do with the smaller ones?

 

[Simon_MT]

All I trying to say, is when the container is so small and the image is so large it is difficult for whatever application to re-render the image and pack it into a confined space. Keep your large ones in a separate directory but put smaller images into another directory and use these.

Simon

 

[Max D]

Access imaging possibilities are quite poor, especially when it comes to image printing.

You can try using our AccessImagine control for image display, it is specially tuned to give the full-resolution images, when it comes to printing.