Chris,
I've found, though not worked extensively with it, that small pictures will be inserted in
actual size. That means if Excel is set to 100% zoom, they'll be rendered pixel-for-pixel
on the screen, if the zoom is set to 100%. Large pictures aren't -- their size is reduced,
even though it may say the size is set to 100% in Format - Picture - Size. This will
inherently incur loss of detail, because of the loss of pixels in reducing the size. One
6000x2000 image I tried appeared on the sheet at only about 1/3 full size (as measured in
either single dimension). Format - Picture - Size said it was at 100%. It wasn't. When
expanded to actual (pixel-for-pixel) size, all the detail appeared to be there.
Try expanding your large image before you crop it. Get it to actual size. The Picture
Viewer program that comes with Windows may choke on an image the size of yours, but if it
will open it, you can set it to show at 100%, which should show it actual size. If it
can't, find a program that can. Then increase the size in of the image in Excel to that
size. You should now have full pixel detail. If you don't have one, try just increasing
the size of your image. Now crop it. If the cropped image is too large, you can reduce its
size, but you'll lose detail because you're losing pixels any time you reduce the size.
The size of the workbook file will be increased by the size of the image file (compressed,
the size of the image file you inserted), even if you crop it. Some later versions of Excel
have a Compress button in Format - Picture - Size that may help that if you've reduced
and/or cropped the image.
--
Regards from Virginia Beach,
Earl Kiosterud
www.smokeylake.com
Note: Top-posting has been the norm here.
Some folks prefer bottom-posting.
But if you bottom-post to a reply that's
already top-posted, the thread gets messy.
When in Rome...
