My work colleagues seem to get a kick out of sending me images embedded in Word documents that I need to use in web pages.  If you've ever tried to copy and past an image from Word to an image editing program such as Adobe Photoshop you'll know that image seems to be posterized.

 

The original image and how the image will look after copying and pasting from Word.

For a long time I believed the best way to get the original image out of Word was to paste it into Adobe Illustrator as it didn't produce the posterized effect.  I also assumed it preserved the original resolution but I recently did a test and discovered I was incorrect.

So how can you get the files out?  Suprisingly, it's as simple as saving the document as a webpage.  But the trick is, you need to enable the option to allow PNG files.

1. In Word select Tools then Options.
2. Select General tab and click the Web Options button.
3. On the Browsers tab in the list of Options place a tick beside 'Allow PNG as a graphic format'.
4. Click OK in the Web Options and Options boxes and you're done.

With this option enabled, any lossless images placed into Word will be saved as both JPEG and PNG.  Whilst PNG may be a different format to the original, the file should contain identical pixel information as the original.

If the original file was a JPG a PNG will not be created, but I believe the JPG file that is created is an exact copy of the original (i.e. has not been recompressed).