Writer Guide

Graphics (images) in Writer
When you create a text document using OpenOffice.org (OOo) Writer,
you may want to include some illustrations. Illustrations (graphics) are
added to documents for a wide variety of reasons: from supporting the
description provided in the text—as used in this Guide—to providing an
immediate visual representation of the contents, as is often found in a
newspaper.
Graphics in Writer are of three basic types:
• Image files, such as photos, drawings, and scanned images
• Diagrams created using OOo’s drawing tools
• Charts created using OOo’s Chart facility
This chapter covers images and diagrams.
More detailed descriptions on working with drawing tools can be found
in the Draw Guide and Impress Guide. Instructions on how to create
charts are given in the Calc Guide.
Creating and editing images
You might create images (also called ‘pictures’ in OpenOffice.org)
using a graphics program, scan them, or download them from the
Internet (make sure you have permission to use them), or use photos
taken with a digital camera. Writer can import various vector (line
drawing) and raster (bitmap) file formats. The most common are GIF,
JPG, PNG, and BMP. See the Help for a full list.
Some things to consider when choosing or creating pictures include
image quality and whether the picture will be printed in color or black
and white (grayscale).
To edit photos and other bitmap images, use a bitmap editor. To edit
line drawings, use a vector drawing program. You do not need to buy
expensive programs. Open-source (and usually no-cost) tools such as
Gimp (bitmap editor) and Inkscape (vector drawing program) are
excellent. For many graphics, OOo Draw is sufficient. These and many
other programs work on Windows, Macintosh OS X, and Linux.
For best results:
• Create images that have the exact dimensions required for the
document, or use an appropriate graphics package to scale
photographs and large drawings to the required dimensions. Do
not scale images with Writer, even though Writer has tools for
Chapter 8 Working with Graphics 269
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