Poor Image Quality
By Richard Rost
4 years ago
Fix Poor Image Quality in Microsoft Access Reports
In this Microsoft Access tutorial, I'm going to show you how to fix a problem where you have low image quality in your reports whether printing, previewing, or exporting to PDF.
Links
Suggested Courses
Steps to Fix
- Use JPG, PNG, BMP File Types
- Make sure Size Mode is Zoom or Clip
- Export to PDF set to Standard
- Set Fast Laser Printing to No
- File - Access Options - Current Database
- Convert All Picture Data to Bitmaps
- Most recent version of Office / Access
- Embedded may have to remove, reinsert images
- Update your printer driver
 Keywords
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Intro In this video, I will show you how to fix poor image quality in your Microsoft Access reports, whether you are printing, using print preview, or exporting to PDF. We will talk about the correct way to work with images by storing file paths instead of embedding files, setting the right image control properties, and adjusting key report and database options like Picture Property Storage Format for better results. I will also cover export settings for high-quality PDFs, choosing suitable file formats such as JPEG and PNG, and troubleshooting common issues with images not displaying properly in reports.Transcript Welcome to another Fast Tips video brought to you by AccessLearningZone.com. I am your instructor Richard Rost.
In today's video, I am going to show you how to fix poor image quality in your Microsoft Access reports when printing, either printing or print preview, or creating PDFs. This is something I get asked every couple of months or so, and this just came up in my forums, in fact.
One of my students was like, "I am putting high-quality images into my database using my Images technique, which I will show you in just a second, but the image quality is coming up really poor." He is getting something that looks like this, whether it is print preview, exporting a PDF, or printing it on his high-quality printer. Then, after I showed him a fix, we got it to look like this - pretty good.
So, let's talk about this and how to fix this problem.
First off, if you have not watched my Images video, go watch this right now first. I show you the proper way to work with images in your Access database. The bottom line here is we are not going to be storing images inside our database. We are going to be referring to them by file name. We do not want to store any kind of files inside our database.
Interesting to note, you can see right here in the print preview for this sample report that I have got here, I have got the low-quality image problem going on in that video too. I just did not address it. So, in this video, we are going to take a look at how to fix that.
First off, let's talk about my images. I have got three pretty good-sized images here, with each one under half a meg, but they are really good quality. All right, there is a landscape I am going to use. You can see the crispness of the picture right now. I have got a couple pictures of the Enterprise. There is one and there is two. So, I want them to be this quality in the database, both in the print preview and when I print it out, and if I make a PDF file out of it.
So, let's go stick these into a report in the database.
Here is my TechHelp Free Template. This is a free download up on my website if you want to grab yourself a copy. I am going to throw an image field into my order table. Why my order table? Well, because I have already got an invoice report already made up based on this table, so just to keep things easy. So, let's right-click and go to Design View.
I am going to add a field called MyPic. That will be short text. Remember, we are going to store the path and file name to each image in the table. Save the table here. These are all located in the folder G:\\My Drive, so I will put that in there. The actual file names are landscape.jpeg, enterprise1.jpeg, and enterprise2.jpeg. I recommend you use JPEGs or PNG files. Those have the best image quality. GIFs and bitmaps are okay. You can get good image quality with bitmaps, but they tend to be gigantic files, so JPEG is my image standard of choice. PNGs also have some benefits, like transparent backgrounds.
Save changes to that table. Let's add that image to our invoice report, which is right here in Design View. I am just going to get rid of all the fields up here, because we do not need them for this example, and I am going to put the image right here. Go to my toolbox and find the Image Tool - not this guy, not the Unbound Object Frame or the Bound Object Frame. We do not use those very often. Use the Image Tool and drag a box right there.
It is going to want you to browse for a picture. We are going to hit Cancel. Remember how to do this from the other video. I am going to make this a little bit bigger just so we can see the whole picture in nice quality inside this report.
Open up the properties for this image, go to All. The Control Source is going to be MyPic (that field we just made), and I will also change the name. Make sure the Size Mode is set to either Zoom or Clip. If you Stretch the image, it is going to look distorted. Zoom is your best bet - it keeps the height-width ratio the same. Clip will just clip it off, so we do not want that one. I like to stick with Zoom.
Another setting I like to do is the report itself has a setting on the Other tab called Fast Laser Printing. This generally does not fix any problems, but if you do have a laser printer, it will sometimes scale down the image a bit to print it out faster. Set that to No if you want a high-quality printout. Usually, that does not fix the problems with color photos, but it can change something.
Save this. Close this guy, and we are going to go back into Print Preview it in the customer form. Go to Orders and then hit the Invoice button here. I am going to close the ribbon a little bit. Invoice.
There it is - you can already see the quality is suffering. Zoom in; see that does not look anywhere near as good as the original. Let's take a look at another one. There is the Enterprise - again, looks like junk. Where is the third one? I am thinking it is on Jim Kirk's order. See Orders, Invoice, and yeah, that is not anywhere near as good as we want to see it.
Now, if you export this as a PDF, I am going to go back to that other one because I think it is a better picture. Let's go back to me, and my Enterprise, which is on order two. This is the best one. So, if we export this image now as a PDF, the default is Minimum Size. If you pick Minimum Size here, you are going to get a compressed image, which will not look great.
It looks better than what we have in the print preview in the report, but it is still not fantastic. Let me zoom in here a little bit. Looks okay, it is a little grainy though. If you do not believe me, compare that to the original - there is the original right there, and there is the PDF set to Minimum Size. I do not know how well this comes out in the video, but you can clearly tell a difference. If you want to make a report that is photo quality, like you are printing out a product catalog or something, this makes a difference. If you are just uploading it for something not important, then do not worry about it.
If we do export it with the higher quality, it looks a little better. Go to Standard, publish over, looks a little better. Still not perfectly as crisp, but that is not bad.
So, close that, but the problem remains - how do we get this to look nice and sharp even here inside the database? It will make our PDF look even sharper too.
Close this report. Now I am going to close this stuff down real quick. Before we do this next step, I want to compact the database. Go to Database Tools, Compact and Repair, and let's go check the size of the database file. Right-click Properties. Right now, we are sitting at 896 K. Keep that in mind, because we have not put any images inside the database at all, which we do not want to do. Very rarely do I say do that. If you are doing a single company logo and it is a small little piece of clip art or whatever, that is okay. But a whole bunch of big pictures like this? No, no, no, we do not do that.
Back in the database, how do we fix this bitmap problem? We are going to go to File, Options, Current Database. This is a setting you will have to do in each one of your databases. Right down here, it says Picture Property Storage Format - Convert all picture data to bitmaps (compatible Access 2003 and earlier).
What does this mean? This means when your database reads an image in, even if it is not stored in the database, it is going to convert that image to a bitmap, which could be the highest possible resolution, and then display it. So, it actually takes a tiny little bit of time to do the conversion. You should not notice it unless you have gigantic files. These images I have got that are half a meg, they load up in an almost unnoticeable short amount of time. But, if you have 10 meg files that you are pulling over a network, you might notice a little bit of a delay. But it will basically read it in, convert it to a bitmap on the fly, and display it in the highest possible resolution.
Click OK. Now, you might have to close the database and restart it. I have noticed that you generally do not have to. Let's go take a look at the images now. Go to Orders, go to Invoices. Look at that - it looks so much better, does it not, even here in the print preview? Let's go to our Enterprise. Look at that - nice and sharp. Let me zoom in here. Even in the database. Let's compare this to the whole version. Where is the image? Slide it away. Look at that - that is about the same quality. Looks almost identical.
Make a PDF out of it. Export to PDF, make sure you pick Standard, get published, take a peek. Looks pretty good. I think that is about the best quality you are going to get out of a PDF. Very good quality. And you get good quality inside the database too.
So, that is the major fix - changing that setting. Now, there is a little bit of a performance hit on your database. If we take a look now at the database size, notice it did balloon up a little bit, to 1.02 megabytes. Not that big. Basically, when it read in that file, it converted to a bitmap and it is stored internally in the database now. But the good news is it is not permanent storage. If you come in here and compact again, it will drop right back down. We are right back down to 896 where we started. So yes, it does store some image information in the database, but if you regularly compact, you will not have to worry about that.
What have we learned today? First, use a good-quality image. I recommend JPEG. PNG is next best, and of course BMPs. GIFs do not usually turn out well unless you get really super high-quality ones. I stick to JPEGs. Make sure the Size Mode of your image is set to Zoom or Clip, not Stretch. If you are exporting to PDF, make sure you set that export to Standard, not Minimum Size. I like to set the Fast Laser Printing option of the report to No, and the big fix is under File, Options, Current Database, Convert all picture data to bitmaps.
Remember, Access will read that in, convert to a bitmap, and display it nice and pretty.
Some other things I really did not talk much about: make sure you get the most recent version of Office or Access installed. I know that older versions, especially 2013 and 2016, had some big problems with images. In fact, sometimes the images would not display at all. You had to make that setting change in order to see the image. Instead of just a poor one, you would see nothing.
If you are using embedded images like a company logo embedded into a report, you might have to remove it and then reinsert it again after you make that change.
Finally, if you are printing it out and it still does not look good, update your printer driver. I know a lot of people do not think to update the drivers on their system, but you might have an older, original printer driver installed and it might just need to be updated from the manufacturer. You can usually do that through Windows Update.
So, there you go. That is how you update your database to fix the poor quality images that might be displaying. Hope you learned something today, and if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to post them down below. I hope you learned something, and we will see you next time.Quiz Q1. What is the recommended way to store images in a Microsoft Access database for best performance and quality?
A. Store the image files inside the database as OLE objects
B. Store the path and file name of the images in a text field
C. Store a thumbnail version of the image in the database
D. Convert all images to GIFs and store them inside the database
Q2. Why should you avoid storing large image files directly inside your Access database?
A. It increases the risk of data corruption
B. Access does not support any image storage
C. It can make the database file unnecessarily large and slow
D. Images cannot be displayed in reports
Q3. In Access report design, which image control should you use to display images from file paths?
A. Unbound Object Frame
B. Bound Object Frame
C. Image Tool
D. Textbox
Q4. What is the recommended file format for high-quality images in Access reports?
A. TIFF
B. JPEG
C. BMP (Bitmap)
D. SVG
Q5. What does changing the "Picture Property Storage Format" to "Convert all picture data to bitmaps" achieve?
A. It compresses the images for faster loading
B. It stores the images permanently inside the database
C. It displays images in the highest possible resolution
D. It changes all images to black and white
Q6. When exporting an Access report to PDF, which setting gives better image quality?
A. Minimum Size
B. Fastest Export
C. Draft Mode
D. Standard
Q7. Which "Size Mode" setting should be used on an image control to preserve the original image aspect ratio?
A. Stretch
B. Zoom
C. Clip
D. Tile
Q8. What might cause continued image quality issues even after making the recommended settings changes in Access?
A. Using the newest version of Microsoft Access
B. Outdated printer drivers
C. High-resolution JPEGs
D. Using file paths instead of embedding images
Q9. What does compacting and repairing the Access database do after importing images?
A. Converts all images to JPEG format
B. Reduces the database file size by cleaning up temporary data
C. Deletes all image references
D. Converts embedded images to external links
Q10. Which image formats are generally not recommended for high-quality images in Access reports, unless super high-quality ones are available?
A. PNG and JPEG
B. BMP and PNG
C. GIF
D. PDF
Q11. What may be required if you embed a company logo into a report and then change the picture storage option?
A. Reinsert the logo after changing the setting
B. Delete the entire report
C. Compact and repair the database twice
D. Nothing, changes take effect automatically
Q12. What should you most often do if, after all efforts, printing from Access still gives poor quality images?
A. Reduce the image file sizes further
B. Export to Word first
C. Update your printer drivers through Windows Update or manufacturer site
D. Print using the default printer settings always
Answers: 1-B; 2-C; 3-C; 4-B; 5-C; 6-D; 7-B; 8-B; 9-B; 10-C; 11-A; 12-C
DISCLAIMER: Quiz questions are AI generated. If you find any that are wrong, don't make sense, or aren't related to the video topic at hand, then please post a comment and let me know. Thanks.Summary Today's video from Access Learning Zone covers how to resolve the issue of poor image quality when printing Microsoft Access reports, whether you are printing directly, using print preview, or generating PDFs. This is a common problem that many users encounter, even when they have added high-quality images to their database using the recommended techniques. One of my students recently raised this issue when he noticed that, despite using quality image files, the output in his reports was far from ideal.
Let me explain the proper way to handle images in an Access database. If you have not already seen my video on handling images in Access, I highly suggest watching that first. The most important point to remember is that you should not store image files directly in your database. Instead, you should keep your images in a folder and store only the path and filename in your table. This method keeps your database size manageable and avoids a range of performance issues.
For demonstration, I have several high-resolution images, each under half a megabyte, which I want to display at their best quality on reports both onscreen and when printed or exported as a PDF. To set this up, I add a text field called MyPic to my orders table to store the full path and filename of each image. Images can be in JPEG or PNG format for the best quality. While bitmaps also render well, their file sizes are much larger, so JPEGs are usually the preferred option, with PNGs being a good alternative if you want transparency.
Next, I add the image to my invoice report. Using the image tool in Design View, I link the image control's source to the MyPic field. Make sure the Size Mode property is set to Zoom for best results since Stretch distorts images and Clip might trim them. While there is a Fast Laser Printing option on the report, which can sometimes reduce image quality in exchange for faster printing, I recommend turning this off by setting it to No. However, this step alone does not address the central issue.
Once these steps are complete, you may notice that your images still appear with lower quality in print preview and when exported to PDF, especially if you choose the Minimum Size option during export. Comparing the exported PDF to the original image makes the quality difference clear. The images can look grainy or washed out, which is problematic if you require high-quality prints, such as for a product catalog.
To solve this, you need to change a setting in your database. Open up the File menu, go to Options, and then to the Current Database section. Here, look for the Picture Property Storage Format setting and select the option to convert all picture data to bitmaps, which provides compatibility with Access 2003 and earlier. This setting instructs Access to read each image, convert it to a bitmap in memory, and display it at the highest possible resolution. Although this can marginally increase your database file size while the image is in use, a quick compact and repair brings it right back down, so the storage increase is only temporary.
With this change, images in reports will appear crisp and clear, both in print preview and in your exported PDFs. You should use the Standard option for PDF export to preserve image quality. This adjustment delivers results nearly identical to the original image.
A few additional tips: always keep your Office or Access installation updated, as older versions (such as 2013 or 2016) were prone to image display problems that sometimes rendered pictures invisible without modifying this setting. If you use embedded images like company logos, you may need to remove and reinsert them after changing the bitmap setting. Finally, if printed images still do not look right, remember to check for updated printer drivers, as outdated drivers can also affect print quality. These can usually be updated through Windows Update or the manufacturer's website.
In summary, for the best image quality in Access reports:
- Store images externally and reference them in your tables
- Use JPEG or PNG formats
- Set the image Size Mode to Zoom
- Turn off Fast Laser Printing if needed
- Export PDFs using the Standard quality setting, not Minimum Size
- Change the Picture Property Storage Format to convert to bitmaps
You can find a complete video tutorial with step-by-step instructions on everything discussed here on my website at the link below. Live long and prosper, my friends.Topic List Fixing poor image quality in Access reports
Adding an image file path field to a table
Storing image paths instead of images in the database
Choosing optimal image file formats (JPEG vs PNG vs BMP)
Adding image controls to Access reports
Setting Control Source for image controls
Configuring image Size Mode (Zoom, Clip, Stretch)
Setting Fast Laser Printing option for reports
Comparing report image quality in print preview and PDF
Exporting reports to PDF using Standard vs Minimum Size
Changing Picture Property Storage Format in Access options
How Access converts images to bitmaps at runtime
Impact of bitmap conversion on performance and database size
Compacting the database to reduce image storage size
Recommendations for best image quality in Access
Troubleshooting image issues with older Access versions
Updating printer drivers for better print quality |
