Finding Art You Can Use

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What kind of art do you want to use? You can import all kinds of art into Word—drawings, paintings, images you create in high-end graphics programs, and art you download off the Web. You can also create your own diagrams and drawings inside the document you're working on. There's room for everything, and unless you've got an art file created in an ancient (or virtually unheard-of) format, you'll be able to get a filter that enables Word to import it.

Inside Out: Unusual graphics format?

If you have a logo or an image saved in a file format Word doesn't recognize, try opening the file in an image editing program (Microsoft Digital Image Pro 9 is a good example of a program that works with a variety of files). If you can open the file in the image editor, you can then save the file in a more common file format, such as .xxx, .tif, or .jpg.

Distinctions Between Paint and Draw Graphics

When you work with graphics, you create one of two types of images: bitmapped or vector graphics. You might see bitmapped graphics referred to as paint graphics or raster images. This type of image is created based on a pattern of pixels (or a map of bits). When you enlarge a bitmapped graphic, the dots are stretched, resulting in a loss of clarity because the larger the dots, the greater the space between the dots.

Cross-Reference 

This chapter deals specifically with placing, importing, and working with images and objects. But Word also includes specialized drawing tools, for times when you want to hand-draw items on your Word page, and AutoShapes, which enable you to create and customize common shapes. For more about using Word's drawing tools to create images in your documents, see Chapter 12, "Enlivening Documents with Drawings and AutoShapes."

Vector images (also called draw graphics and object-oriented graphics) are drawings made of shapes, lines, and curves. Because these items are based on mathematical calculations, the images can be grouped into a single object and later divided again into individual objects. This means they can be resized, moved, and enlarged with no loss of quality. Table 11-1 lists some popular images you'll use, identifies their type, lists common file formats, and suggests possible sources or programs.

Table 11-1: Paint and Draw File Types

Item	Image type	File formats	Source
Clip art	Depends on the image—bitmapped or vector graphics	.xxx, .dib, .gif, .jpg, .pcx, .png, .tif, .wmf	Microsoft Clip Organizer, purchased clip art collections, Web clip art sources
AutoShapes	Vector graphics	.wmf	Microsoft Windows-based programs
Scanned images	Bitmapped graphics	.xxx, .gif, .png, .jpg	Microsoft Paint, Adobe Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro
Web graphics	Usually bitmapped graphics	.gif, .png	Available online and in some Web-generation programs
Page backgrounds	Bitmapped graphics	.xxx, .dib, .gif, .pcx, .png, .jpg, .tif, .htm	Paint images, HTML files
Picture bullets	Bitmapped graphics	.gif	Images created in programs such as Paint

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