Extracting Images from Visio and Inserting Them in Indesign

Tom Johnson — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 13:41:34 +0000

Have you ever tried to find cool graphics for conceptual diagrams but find yourself coming up empty handed? Sure, sites like istockphoto.com make icons available inexpensively. But no matter what the cost, if you work for a company you still have to submit an expense request, get it approved by management, and then subtract the cost from a dwindling budget. It’s a pain in the neck, and you’re usually in a time crunch, right?

Never fear, Visio is here. Visio has tons of great-looking icons. And they’re all vectors, so they resize seamlessly. There’s only one problem: they’re stuck in Visio.

With a little manipulation, however, you can unfree them from Visio and keep them looking sharp for insertion in InDesign. You need a power app (namely, Adobe Illustrator), but that’s it.

To extract images from Visio and insert them into InDesign, here’s what I do:

Open Visio and find the icon you want. Search for “secretary” or “design” and you’ll find the standard bald blue man. Select and copy the image.
Copy the image from Visio

Open Adobe Illustrator, create a new document, and paste in the Visio icon. You’ll notice that each of the sixteen million layers for the image suddenly appears.
In Illustrator, you can see see the layers
Right-click the icon and choose Ungroup.
Now here you can make a few adjustments to the icon, mostly removing things or changing colors. On the Illustrator toolbar, the black arrow allows you to move things, and the white arrow allows you to distort or reshape things. The white arrow is handy, for example, if you want to squish in the line that mysteriously extends from the head of the icon.
Modify the image
When you’re finished, go to File > Save As and save it as an Adobe Illustrator (.ai) file type.
Save it as an .ai file
In Adobe Indesign, go to File > Place and insert the image. You can still resize it and the vector properties of the image are retained, so you won’t see the jagged edges. In other words, Indesign allows you to embed the image as a vector, rather than rasterizing it and having it become pixilated.
Edges still look sharp in InDesign

If it’s absolutely necessary, you can convert it to a GIF, but the edges will look jagged. Open up the file in Photoshop and go to Image > Mode. Make sure RGB color and 8 bit are selected. Now save it as a GIF file or a Photoshop (.psd) file. The edges will be a bit jagged, but as long as you don’t resize it, the edges won’t be too bad.

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Podcast: Debunking the Boredom Myth of Technical Writing

Tom Johnson — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 13:42:59 +0000

Download MP3 (to download, right-click and select Save Target As)
Duration: 55 min.

Several weeks ago I wrote about my trip to Brigham Young University-Idaho and the presentation I gave there titled “Debunking the Boredom Myth of Technical Writing.” This podcast is a recording of my presentation.

My presentation was part of the professional writing conference that BYU-Idaho puts on annually for their writing and literature students. In the presentation, I talk about a prevalent myth that many students have — that technical writing is a boring career. To combat the myth, I explore the variety of content technical writers produce, including video, diagrams and illustrations, quick reference material, wikis, online help, information architecture, blogs, wikis, podcasts, and usability.

You can view my accompanying PowerPoint presentation here. Additionally, links to the three videos I played are below:

I'd Rather Be Writing » diagrams

Extracting Images from Visio and Inserting Them in Indesign

Blog Sponsors

Podcast: Debunking the Boredom Myth of Technical Writing