Anti-alising in copied charts

[Posterizer]

Gang,
Mac question here, although I understand it may be just as much a
problem on Windows.

I recently upgraded from Office '04 to '08. I have a pair of charts
created in Excel that I used to copy and paste into Photoshop, then save
as jpg format images for posting on a web page. I update the charts
periodically, then go through the conversion process in Photoshop each
time.

The first time I've tried this with the '08 version of Excel,
I noticed 2 differences in the process when I'm pasting the image
into Photoshop.

The first is that it pastes into a "bounding box" (which then requires
that I right click and select Place to complete the paste). The second
is that the resulting image is notably blurry. The resolution and size
of the image are the same as I used previously.

I thought it was my eyes, so I opened up an earlier version of the jpg
file that I had created when I was still using Excel '04, and side by
side with the new jpg, there was a marked difference in clarity. In
order to get my newly pasted image to look a little better, I had to
increase the jpg quality (and thus increase the file size), but it still
doesn't look as sharp as before.

Here is one of the new images:
http://www.sci.sdsu.edu/c-beach/images/Pubrate-stacked.jpg


I don't claim to know anything about Photoshop except for a couple
basics, so I have no clue what the appearance of the bounding box may
imply about the image, but something is obviously different about the
image that I copied from Excel '08 that is causing Photoshop to treat it
differently than it did when I used Excel '04.

Any ideas?

TIA,
Dennis

 

[Posterizer]

BTW, I had posted this question previously in
microsoft.public.mac.office.excel group and was directed to this blog
posting, hence my comment about this being noted in the Windows version
too. I'm just curious if anyone here knows any more on the subject.

http://peltiertech.com/WordPress/2008/06/12/image-file-type-comparison-of
-exported-charts/


thanks,
Dennis

 

[Jon Peltier]

The chart and shape infrastructure has changed in Excel 2007 and presumably
2008, to accommodate the ability to apply more formatting options. They've
also built in some anti-aliasing into the shapes and charts, which IMO is
stupid to do to a metafile. The result is a lack of uniformity of the shape
elements in a chart that's pasted as a metafile, especially if the
resolution (dpi) is different in the pasted chart and in the original chart.

I don't know much more about it, because I haven't had to work in 2007 all
that much yet (by choice I stay in 2003). It's next to impossible to get any
help in terms of programming the formats of shapes and charts in 2007; the
macro recorder is kaput for this, and the help is even less helpful than
ever before.

- Jon