Outlook 2007 Distorts Inserted Pictures -- How do I make it stop?

M

mjs

When inserting pictures in HTML or RTF emails, Outlook 2007 uses the size in
INCHES (for some ungodly reason) instead of in PIXELS.

How the heck do I revert to the traditional 1:1 pixel mapping so that a 900
x 600 pixel picture shows up as 900 x 600 pixels in the email? I want it to
ignore the INCHES and DPI attributes and just display the JPG as a website
would : using the X x Y information only.
 
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I hate Microsoft sometimes...

mjs said:
When inserting pictures in HTML or RTF emails, Outlook 2007 uses the size in
INCHES (for some ungodly reason) instead of in PIXELS.

How the heck do I revert to the traditional 1:1 pixel mapping so that a 900
x 600 pixel picture shows up as 900 x 600 pixels in the email? I want it to
ignore the INCHES and DPI attributes and just display the JPG as a website
would : using the X x Y information only.

I have yet to figure out where to set this in LOOKOUT!!...

However, you can side-step this problem if you force your image editor to create images at 96DPI instead of the de-facto standard (in place for 20 some odd years, ever since VGA came out) 72DPI. Photoshop, GIMP, among other image apps, all default to 72dpi images for "Monitor" viewing.

Why in gods name Microsoft decided to use 96 as their default "lets auto-scale this image so it looks 'normal'" dpi, is beyond me. While computers have increased in DPI over the years, the De-Facto standard "Monitor" DPI has been for 20 years, is, and would have been 72dpi until Microsoft came along and mucked up the works.

As every popular image format nowadays can store the DPI internally as meta-data, Outlook, Word, and any other M$ 2007 tool (and who knows how many in the future past 2007 series) will read this DPI and FORCIBLY resize the image to 96dpi, theoretically preserving the original intended viewing size as measured by a ruler, not as measured by pixels. Perhaps this is a misguided attempt at "resolution independence" but when your bitmapped images get scaled without anyone telling you WHY, its bloody BOTHERSOME.

In short: edit your default image editor DPI to 96 and you should be able to create new images that won't be auto-scaled. As for changing the current images, you can open and re-save lossless images (PNG, BMP, PSD, GIF among others) with the new DPI settings (it may be in an Image properties tab or similar) while there should be EXIF data editors for JPEG files. You don't want to recompress these as it could damage the quality.

I hope this helps, and I will endeavor to paste this in as many forums as you originally did a year ago asking for help! Perhaps more people will complain to Microsoft and they *might* (hah right) change the next version of Office to be slightly less brazen about taking DPI matters into its own hands.
 

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