sarameg,

have you tried talkatone? I think that should let you login to your google talk acct.

OK Adobe has a free trial of illustrator. Not super user friendly, but a shorter learning curve than R. I made made a pie chart that looked good on the screen. Some of the contrast is poor when printed out full size, and I just have to play with shading on pie segments for that one. Shrunk to the size I want it displayed it looks awful, so I'm going to have think of how to keep text readable when you know it will have to shrink a lot. Any tips on this? Also I think I made it too big. I tried making it a lot bigger than their minimum to allow for problems, but maybe I just should make it a bit bigger. Because these graphs contain little enough info that they can I think look good at a half page, I'm trying to make Tiff file that will look good at both 5X7 inches and at 2X3 inches. I prefer the smaller size for various reasons. Excel version looks fine at 2X3 so I know it is possible. Tips welcome.

DPI is not really a standard you can apply to a digital image, and they're kind of insane to ask for it. TB, do you want to send me a graph in Excel and let me see what I can do in Photoshop? I only have Excel 2003.

By definition, the smaller size will have been resolution.

Hi Ginger. Thanks very much. 2003 worksheet insent. And yes, insane describes it nicely.

Second try I got the pie chart working. Had to use really large fonts for the 5X7 (full page) version so that the 1/3rd page version would be easily readable. The giant fonts at full size will, I hope, encourage the layout person to shrink it. Now for the hard part, the line graph. Really don't know what I'm doing when it comes to graphics and desktop publishing. I don't know what about 80% of the menu choices in illustrator do. I'm doing the "just learn what I need from the software today" dance. Once I've met my deadlines I'm going to feel compelled to go back and learn what I'm what this stuff is about.

Gar, Illustrator and Photoshop both have a specific "Save for Web" option under the File menu that lets you tinker with size and stuff like that.

You can also tinker with stuff like DPI when you set up the file in the first place.

I'm sorry I can't be more specific or offer to help -- my computer with those programs is still in the shop!

Yeah illustrator makes dpi and size easy. recreating the graph not so easy. But now done.

[On edit] Not actually criticizing Illustrator. A powerful program, much of whose functionality I don't understand (that is I don't understand a lot of what it accomplishes as opposed just not knowing what features to use to accomplish those things.) So for example if you want a graph in Illustrator you first go to the object menu to set the graph type on the toolbar and then drag the graph from the toolbar to where you want it. Not hard to do once you know it, but not intuitively obvious to a first time user. And once the graph is ungrouped, turning it into essentially just another illustrator drawing, OK I can select a line. And then I click on the color tool bar to change colors and the thing does not change colors. Finally I figured out you have to hit the shift-key and click the "stroke" menu and then you get alternative "stroke" menu that lets you change the color. OK, *really* not intuitively obvious. And that alternative "stroke" menu still gives you a limited choice of colors, and there are probably some other choices that would let you changes. I wonder if even long time users like that particular interface feature.

Still I suspect that once you get used to it, Illustrator probably is something where you can get your work done quickly. Like any really powerful multi-purpose tool it has a learning curve. And heck, I managed to figure it out enough to get what I had to do finished in a day, so probably that does not leave me a lot of room to criticize it for lack of intuitiveness.

I've never been able to get how Illustrator works. Years ago I worked with Corel Draw and loved it, but I changed jobs and the new place didn't include it. I've gotten to know Photoshop and work with it pretty well, except it's a raster program.

Typo, fyi, if you can get your graphs into PowerPoint, you can save them as TIF files - they're not especially high-res, but I've used it as an interim step to creating a print-able image.

How does Powerpoint help as an intermediate step? I mean you can import excel images directly into most graphic programs, it is just that they are low res and using the high res features just turns them into a high res image of a low res image which has no advantage over a low res image. Is a Powerpoint image easier to enhance in Photoshop or whatever?

Here is what I'm thinking long term. I'm going to watch for opportunities to get Vizio on sale. Native charting module, high resolution, a learning curve but not a horrid learning curve. From what I hear, one of those programs you have to "get" and then once you understand the core functionality everything else becomes easy to learn. One learning curve, not multiple learning curves. So it seems like a good way to produce high resolution attractive charts in the future. Plus you know, building layouts and flow charts and all the stuff it was originally intended for, cause line graphs and pie charts not the main point.

True? False?

Sounds like a good idea - I was just suggesting PP as an interim step if you needed something quickly. It exports TIF files that are better than what you can get from Excel. On reflection, probably not good enough to get up to 600 dpi and usable for print.