JPG's and Image control

[David]

We have created a form with image controls that the user
can load JPG's into. The problem is the expansion of the
size of the form when the JPG is added. I understand that
a JPG is compressed but the problem lies when you go to
print the form, with 8 pictures on the form, the object to
get printed is 72m and many printers will not accept a
file that large to print. This is with the original size
of the JPG of 500k. If the user has a larger original, the
size of the file expands exponentially.
Any suggestions on how to handle this would be greatly
appreciated

 

[Larry Linson]

We have created a form with image controls that the user
can load JPG's into. The problem is the expansion of the
size of the form when the JPG is added. I understand that
a JPG is compressed but the problem lies when you go to
print the form, with 8 pictures on the form, the object to
get printed is 72m and many printers will not accept a
file that large to print. This is with the original size
of the JPG of 500k. If the user has a larger original, the
size of the file expands exponentially.
Any suggestions on how to handle this would be greatly
appreciated

I don't recommend printing Forms... I suggest you create a similar Report
and print it -- but that may not solve the problem you describe. Pictures
are rendered (displayed) by converting them to bitmap... so the size of the
original JPG files is immaterial. I've printed some Reports with rather
large total picture file size, so what you want to do is likely possible.
Here's some general information on images in Access, some of which may be
helpful -- none of it deals with printing Forms, however.

The sample imaging databases at http://accdevel.tripod.com illustrate three
approaches to handling images in Access, and the download includes an
article discussing considerations in choosing an approach. Two of the
approaches do not use OLE Objects and, thus, avoid the database bloat, and
some other problems, associated with images in OLE Objects.

If you are printing the images in reports, to avoid memory leakage, you
should also see MVP Stephen Lebans' http://www.lebans.com/printfailures.htm.
PrintFailure.zip is an Access97 MDB containing a report that fails during
the Access formatting process prior to being spooled to the Printer Driver.
This MDB also contains code showing how to convert the contents of the Image
control to a Bitmap file prior to printing. This helps alleviate the "Out of
Memory" error that can popup when printing image intensive reports.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Access MVP