Saving to .PNG, then inserting into Word - need to resize and crop

• Feb 3, 2011 - 06:06

I have been experimenting for the past hour and still do not have a solution, so any specific suggestions will be appreciated. First I saved the staff containing the musical example to a .png file. I did not change any sizes in Musescore.

I opened the .png file with the Microsoft picture viewer and editor. When it sppeared on the screen of my computer (a laptop) the size window on the toolbar said 16%. Then I cropped it and hit OK and then it said 76% and the image was larger than what I wanted. Then I inserted into Word and centered it and it came out slightly too small.

Word also has a means of enlarging or shrinking a picture, but the problem is that resizing by hand will not guarantee that my staffs will be the same size, so it will look messy on the page.

I still have to try the HP software tomorrow.


Comments

It depends what version of Microsoft Word you are using, but it is probably something like: right-click on the picture and choose "Image Properties". I'm sure you can find instructions on the web that match your version of Word.

In reply to by David Bolton

Advising someone to find instructions on the web, or look at the properties window, does not answer a question. You have to understand that I am experimenting with all of the software and am asking the forum after trying the different options and reading whatever I can find.

What I am asking for is a step by step detailed set of instructions leading to having centered musical examples.

I use publisher to resize the songs. I print out the copy from musescore, scan back into the computer as a JPEG, open it in paint, and copy and paste the music lines into Publisher and make whatever changes I need that way. I find Word hard to work with with pictures and stuff and in Publisher you can resize and put where ever you want on the page... Hope that helps you too.

I have attached two pictures one from what it looked like on musescore and then what I did on Publisher so that can give you an idea of what I mean.

Attachment Size
Heart of Jesus.mscz 2.93 KB
20110203095637_001.jpg 245.65 KB

In reply to by hdhovasse

Thank you for your post and for helping to explain what the issues are rather than sending me yet another link to the frame section of the handbook or engaging in criticism of people who ask questions.

In the version of Word I have you cannot crop a picture inside Word. The tool that adjusts the size of a picture shrinks the entire image or increases the entire image. The image imported from Musescore is an entire page and not just the staves.

You have to use a cropping tool outside of Word. Musescore does not appear to have its own cropping tool, which is OK if another procedure can be found.

I tried the Microsoft picture editor but it changes the image sizes and what is going when it changes the percents is very unclear, because 100% in that tool is not the same as the image size shown in Musescore and is not the same as what you see in the Word document.

I am going to try to import the .PNG image into the HP scanning software to see if I can open it and crop it without having to print and scan and then crop, but at this point what you have said seems to be the only way to make sure that the stave height will be the same in all of the images that I import into Word.

If there is something I am missing in Word or the Microsoft, then I would appreciate detailed instructions for this process, but for someone to say look for information online is not helpful.

In reply to by peacenow

Another possible way is to use a screenshot tool such Clip2net. You can take picture of a defined area of your screen and save as JPG or PNG. It also offer a way to save online but of course you don't need this here.
So you could put the zoom at the right factor in MuseScore (in the toolbar) and change the background to white if you prefer (Edit -> Preferences -> Canvas -> NoteSheet, click color and click at the left if the path, choose white). Then use clip2net to make a screenshot of the size you want (Just click on the icon near your clock and drag an area). Choose save and you have a snippet to insert in your Word document.

In the next MuseScore version a tool to take screenshot will be available.

In reply to by peacenow

"If there is something I am missing in Word or the Microsoft, then I would appreciate detailed instructions for this process, but for someone to say look for information online is not helpful."

Well, I think if there's a problem with Word or Microsoft, you should be asking them - or look for information online - rather than complaining to the support team from a piece of scoring software who, in my view, have been very obliging and helpful.

What do you do if your car goes wrong? Regale the nearest passer by because they can't fix it for you?

In reply to by fatwarry

Technical comments in reply to a question are appropriate. Taking potshots at people who asking questions should not be practied in this forum. If you write a comment that is an insult to a person rather than a statement about technology, kindly erase it before posting.

In reply to by peacenow

Well, I'm always happy to apologise where apologies are due. Maybe English isn't your first language. Maybe you don't express yourself very well. But hostile remarks addressed to people who are trying to help you and who are no more likely than you to posses the required knowledge seems inappropriate to me.

Still it seems you've solved the problem yourself. Amazing what you can achieve if you try

In reply to by fatwarry

So far the author of this post has accused me of not having English as my first language, of not expressing myself well, of making hostile remarks, of seeming inappropriate. Also, the last sentence was sarcastic, as the last sentence of one of his other posts, and then he claims it is inappropriate. Next time the author writes similarly attacking prose, I would suggest that he erase it rather than post it. Factual information on software is helpful, whereas personal insults are not.

In reply to by peacenow

Are you *sure* there's no way to crop from within Word? Seems I recall there being a button for that on the toolbar last time I used it maybe 5 years ago. But cropping from Picture editor - or Paint, any other image editing program should work too. The problem you are undoubteldy running into is that you need to learn about the basics of working with images in general - what pixels are, what resolution is, how images are resized for display versus for printing. These are, unfortunately, not question that can be easily answered in a forum posting - particularly not a forum dedicate to a program (MuseScore) that really has nothing to do with the issues you are having with cropping and resizing images. So I'm afraid I too have no better answer than to say you need to research the topic a bit. There are quite a few books available on the subject of image and graphic manipulation, but I don't have any specific recommendations.

But I can suggest that a decent way to get consistent examples from MuseScore would be to create a document in which the page size is shrunk to whatever dimensions you want, with the margins also set appropriately. Then make all your examples take up a full page each within that document. That way, no subsequent cropping or resizing would be needed and everyting would come out the same. Maybe have one document for one-line examples, one for two-lines examples, etc.

Here is a set of instructions that works. But it required the viewer that came with my HP scanner, HP documents and imaging.
It is not necessary to print out the image and scan it.
(1) Create the musical example in Musescore and save it as a .png file
I did not put the caption in the Musescore image. I am going to do the captions in Word under the inserted pictures because they will be easier to edit. But you can use the staff text tool to create a caption and then move it below the staff.
(2) Open the .png file with the Microsoft image editor (not Word)
(3) Compress the file and save it as .jpg and exit the image editor
(4) Open up the HP Photo and Imaging tool
(5) Open the .jpg file
(6) Select the area for your image
(7) Click on Crop
(8) Click on Resize
(9) In the resize tool, change the units to percents and change the percent to 115 (120 seems to be a little too large for the standard size of a stave in a book, 100 is too small). By using the same percent all of the time you will assure that all of your staves will be the same size in your document. Resizing by hand will not guarantee this. Click OK. Save the file and exit the imaging tool.
(10) Open up Word and insert the .jpg image, select it and click on Center

I am using MuseScore prerelease 1 and Windows 7

I write my scores and use the Snipping Tool (Windows 7 - Accessories) to :"crop" the image directly and I can save it as a PNG or JPEG file. I insert it then into PowerPoint as a picture and have to do a little bit of resizing. In Windows XP one has to open a "screenprint" in Paint to crop and save it, but this Snipping Tool can save directly and there is no loss of quality. No extra cropping is needed.

To crop in Office Word 2007, select the picture/insert that needs to be cropped, >Picture Tools >Format>Crop. Very handy that the spesifics for the size can be determined.

Maybe this will help somewhat?
Regards

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