Finding Art You Can Use

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What kind of art do you want to use? The kind you can import into Word—drawing, paintings, images you create in high-end graphics programs, and art you download off the Web. 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.

Paint and Draw Distinctions

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

This chapter deals specifically with placing, importing, and working with images, both clip art and drawn images. For more about using Word's drawing tools to create images within your documents, see Chapter 16, "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. They also can be resized and enlarged with no loss of quality. Table 14-1 lists some popular images you'll use, identifies their type, lists the common file formats, and suggests possible sources or programs.

Table 14-1. Paint and Draw File Types

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