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Keith advised:
> One you've saved the GIF, insert it into word using Insert,
> Picture, From File.
>
> For some reason (and in my experience), merely copying the
> picture from a graphics program or another Word doc and pasting
> it into the desired Word doc does not keep the file size as lean
> and mean as the method I described above.
I agree.
*tangent alert*
This piqued my curiosity, so I did a quick test: I took a large screenshot and
put it into a Word doc using various methods, and then did a file size
comparison.
Image copied from Photoshop and pasted into Word: 348KB (yow!)
Image inserted as medium-quality JPG (bad idea -- save JPG for photos): 134KB
Image inserted as blurry low-quality JPG (ditto): 95KB
Image created with PrtScrn, then pasted into Word from the clipboard without
getting a graphics program involved: 52KB
Image copied from SnagIt and pasted into Word: 45KB
Image inserted as 256-color GIF (saved in SnagIt): 38KB
Image inserted as 18-color GIF (saved in Photoshop, exact color mode, 18
colors): 37KB
The images inserted as GIFs were the winners here. Interestingly, reducing the
color palette didn't save much space.
This is Word 97. As I recall, Word 95 was beastly about pasted images (I used to
get enormous Word files from people who had pasted in 3 or 4 large screen shots
from the clipboard... we're talking megabytes for a 4-page file!).
FWIW...
Christine
GIF Geek
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