In the digital world, there are two types of pictures:
- raster images / bitmaps (e.g.: photos in 5-million-pixel, meaning that your photo is made of 5 millions of tiny colored dots)
- vector pictures (much smaller size; because made of few mathematical vector shapes, such as rectangles, circles... or freeforms)
As vector images are made of vector geometric equations, they can easily be modified (by programming new properties, such as "size", "fill color", "border width"...). By the way, this is what the BeGraphic engine has been designed for:
Copying excel values and conditional formatting & Pasting them on a shape as its updated properties.
CAUTION Concerning vector images, Microsoft only manages its propriatory graphics file formats
- WMF (the oldest format in 16bit; requiring at least Windows 3.1) WMF = Windows Meta File
- EMF (the current 32bit version, requiring at least Windows XP) EMF = Enhanced Meta File
- EMF+ (the newest version of Windows metafile)... even if Microsoft is now launching XAML for the Web
Therefore always prefer WMF file format (because it's compatible even with old versions of Windows and Excel/PowerPoint).Tips & Tricks1 To export a draw as a WMF/EMF file (to save it in maps library of BeGraphic):
- copy it from Excel,
- paste it into PowerPoint
- right-click on the draw, to use the "save as image" function (selecting WMF/EMF formats)
2 To edit or draw graphics, there are dedicated types of software for each type of picture: