Inserted images are getting blurred/compressed

Thank you David for taking time and replying. You are right, it looks like MSTF indeed treats Publisher as a poor stepchild neglecting to provide a solid image management routine for customers. It goes against common sense as you never know whether a "good" looking image is going to be printed as good and vice versa. When I said in my first post that I've already followed all the recommendations, I meant your recommendations (I think), as I found a lot of your replies to people on this forum in regards to Publisher. 

I finally managed to get more or less decent printed output in my project. I rotated those overly large 2 color, 72 dpi gifs in Photoshop, then inserted and scaled them in Publisher to fit in available space. Whenever I scale, the DPT jumps to 1300 dpi. They still look blurry on the monitor screen but the print quality is almost as good as print output from Photoshop.

Since you didn't bother listing the solutions you have already tried, the best I can do is guess.

How are you producing the image specifically and what is the dpi?

Is the image inserted into a picture box from a saved location on your local computer or are you copy and pasting?

Does the picture box overlap other design elements?

Is it inserted at 100% scale?

Is the aspect ratio locked?

Is the image blurry both on screen and when printed? Are you producing a PDF?

Publisher does not automatically compress an image. You must do that manually.

DavidF

I had converted images a few years back from PDF to PNG.  DPI is 1200. And the "document size" of image reported by Photoshop matches exactly the Publisher's page (it's like ID cards with barcode, I have 20 of them in a project).

But then yesterday I converted this PNG to indexed GIF with 2 colors, it is 72 DPI. Size is 4000x2000px. Since it is pure B/W image, the barcode is as sharp as it can be even with max Photoshop zoom at 3200%.

OK lets talk PNG first I do not Copy/Paste (though I tried that at some point). I insert image directly with insert button. Image comes scaled down. When I click "Reset", it sure goes to 100%. Aspect ratio is locked. I also need to rotate it. Image manager properly reports 1200dpi.

It sure overlaps another image, because I need to cover older barcode with a new one (slightly wider). But even when I clear the page content and insert the image it is still blurry. It is blurry on screen and when I print it (Zebra Badge printer).

Same story with GIF, it comes in scaled down. I "Reset" it. All is 100%. Now, the image which should have 2 colors only all of the sudden has dozens of gray scale shades at the edges of barcode (anti-aliasing? Why?)

The funniest part is, that I produced the original Publisher document years back with older version of Publisher using the very same images. I had no problem back then.

You are saying Publisher does not compress images. OK, I believe you. But then It is exactly the same with MS Word from the same Office suite. I inserted the same image into MS Word document and it comes in blurry. I went ahead and disabled compression in Word settings. Image now is as sharp as it should be. Why I cannot get the same in Publisher?

Thanks for all the details. I don't know that I will be able to give you answers that will fix the problem, but I will comment.

The fact that you did not have this problem with an older version of Publisher is important. MSFT seems to have messed up the way Publisher deals with images in the most recent versions. It frequently chokes on large, high resolution images in a variety of ways. In many cases the best solution has been to resample, resize and optimize the pictures before they are inserted into Publisher using a third party image editor. Or go back to the old version of Publisher...

The fact that you created 1200 dpi original images from a PDF that certainly didn't exceed 300 dpi, certainly set you up for problems. You cannot go from 300 dpi to 1200 dpi without creating some blurring in the pictures. You can decrease dpi but not increase. The fact that these images worked for you in past versions of Publisher is surprising to me. Never the less you might try using a third part image editor to edit and optimize the pictures to the correct size and dpi before you insert them into Publisher.

Instead of hitting the reset button on the ribbon try right clicking the inserted picture > format picture > size tab > check here to see if the aspect ratio is locked and the scale is 100%. Does the height and width under Size and Rotate agree with what it says under Original Size? Sometimes the reset button on the ribbon menu Picture tools format > Adjust group > reset picture does not reset the size of the picture. What is most important is that the width and height are at the same % scale and that the picture is less than 100%. But again for best results use a third party image editor to reduce the dimensions to the size needed in Publisher before inserting. Also you rarely need more than 300 dpi for any printed document.

Sometimes rotating a picture will blur it. Are you pictures blurry when they are inserted and not rotated?

As a best practice, don't coverup old pictures. Either delete them or change the picture from within the picture box.

Assuming you are recycling an old Pub file, what happens if you create a new, blank page Pub file and insert the pictures?

A comment about Word and Publisher. Though it is logical to expect two programs within Office to work the same, the assumption does not hold true when it comes to Publisher. Word, a word processor, has many features and functions that you will not find in Publisher. Even default settings are different. Publisher, a DTP, has always been treated at the poor neglected stepchild by MSFT.

Pictures that are high dpi and reduced dimensions on a Publisher page remain uncompressed until you manually compress them. If you want to manually compress a picture in Publisher you can find the control on the picture tab of the right click format dialog, or on the ribbon menu Picture tools format > Adjust group > compress pictures. To learn more:

Reference: Picture tool Tab - Compress Pictures: https://support.office.com/en-US/Article/Picture-Tools-Tab-1d2e8f37-922c-4032-b1c0-56c13ca50533?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US#__toc256694329

Like I said in the first paragraph I may not be able to offer a good solution, but I would first double check that the width and height of the pictures are indeed at the same % scale and that the aspect ratio is locked. Then consider the other comments I have made and see if they lead you to a solution.

DavidF

Since you didn't bother listing the solutions you have already tried, the best I can do is guess.

How are you producing the image specifically and what is the dpi?

Is the image inserted into a picture box from a saved location on your local computer or are you copy and pasting?

Does the picture box overlap other design elements?

Is it inserted at 100% scale?

Is the aspect ratio locked?

Is the image blurry both on screen and when printed? Are you producing a PDF?

Publisher does not automatically compress an image. You must do that manually.

DavidF