Re: Color in Microsoft Word (2008 Mac edition)
Re: Color in Microsoft Word (2008 Mac edition)
- Subject: Re: Color in Microsoft Word (2008 Mac edition)
- From: Olaf Drümmer <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2010 01:48:41 +0100
I tried a few combinations on
- Microsoft Office Mac 2008 12.2.3 (10 October 2009)
- Microsoft Office Windows 2007 (v12.0.6504.5000 - dated 2006)
I can say that on Mac (OS X 10.6) Word "honors" the profiles (but also read the end of this post...), and it looks like the assumed profile for data that does not have a profile associated is sRGB (or something very similar to it - maybe the Generic RGB found on a Mac?). Word "honors" profiles on screen, on save as PDF and on printout to a PostScript printer (recent Brother laser MFP).
These formats work on Mac (I have created all image files in Photoshop CS4, by converting to the desired color space, and the saving both with and without the respective ICC profile):
- EPS
- PDF
- PSD
- JPG
- TIF
It does not look as good on the Windows side:
Profiles only seem to be honored in .... imported EPS. For JPG and TIF the embedded profile is ignored, and seemingly sRGB or something similar is assumed instead.
Only the following formats of those listed above for the Mac can be imported on Windows:
- EPS (through an EPS filter seemingly provided by "Access Softek", dated 2000 - Access Softek claim on their website they convert the PostScript to EMF)
- JPG
- TIF
Strangely enough my recommendation would be to save color critical images
- either as sRGB JPEGs or TIFFs
- or as color managed EPS
Important info about the EPS files I used:
I saved EPS as Photoshop EPS from Photoshop CS 4 on Mac. It turned out that it is important to enable PostScript Color Management (which includes a suitable CSA or color space array in the PostScript code which the import filter then picks up), and that it is irrelevant whether the profile as such is embedded (which is done in the form of PostScript comments inside an EPS as PostScript as such does not have the notion of ICC profiles; most source ICC profiles though can be expressed reasonably well as CSAs).
On WIndows I used PDF export (through the free Save as XPS/PDF add-on from Microsoft)
On Windows I have not tried printing (too tedious from my virtual Parallels machine..)
---
When I open the (Word on Mac generated) docx file as a ZIP archive, I find an interesting structure of files inside. Each imported image is present - and a sibling in PNG format where the PNG is tagged with any of the following profiles:
- sRGB.
- Generic RGB
- e-sRGB
- nothing
I have the impression this is the result of Word's using the Mac's image processing system.
Anyway - in further processes - whether display on screen or printing or... - those PNGs will be used.
For a Word for Windows generated docx file, when unpacking the ZIP I found (huge) EMF files for all imported images, and low res JPG and TIF for the pretty big JPEG and TIFF original files. It seems on Windows these EMF files play the role of the PNG files on Mac.
All in all this is a (not necessarily pleasant but) interesting world of doing color. On the Mac side things look somehow better but seemingly only because is using the features of the operating system - fair enough, but why doesn't it o this on Windows (as has been pointed out, there is equivalent functionality on recent Windows versions)?
In any cause - upon import all images are 'normalized' into some format (PNG on Mac, EMF on Windows), and to the degree that normalization takes profiles into account things work better or worse.
Olaf Drümmer
callas software – Maker of fine PDF tools
www.callassoftware.com
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