I am using writer to make a book cover and am on literally the last step - adding a barcode.
I have tried using shape rectangle to give the barcode a space to go when I insert it.
No matter what the image seems to become a bitmap area as soon as I insert it.
Help greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Asher
Not sure I understand what the issue is.
If you have the barcode raster image, why not just add some white space around the barcode image on that original image, and then place it over your background cover image?
Let me asume you imported the image from a jpeg file to display it in the Area of a Shape. To do so you had to use the Bitmap option.
I do not know the technical details about the rendering of the image for the display or for prints. However, the original file will be embedded in the Writer document without converting it, and you can reshape(°) it for the area of the mentioned Shape later-on without having lost any information contained in the jpeg. You can even extract the jpeg again from the file to which the document was saved. (I do not know an export option offered by LibO itself, but would have to open the compressed file with an archive tool.)
(°) reshape: Use all the options offered in the Area > Bitmap tab. It should work independent of the previous settings.
Edit1 (regarding the comment below):
Being rendered for the screen or for output on a printer any image will be converted to a description of many, many little dots of coloured dirt or something alike. Even if printing a vector graphic on a vector printer there will mostly be a simiar conversion by the printer. I do not know a recent example of an x-y-plotter actually drawing lines. This is another part of general digitaisation, probably. I thus don’t understand your insisting on the “bitmap pattern”.
In my understanding the label ‘Bitmap’ on the button for the respective Area option is simply inapt. Users may misunderstand it for something like .bmp. However, many graphical formats can be imported and will be embedded into he document then without a loss of quality. If you resize a shape having taken an image later, you will most likely need to open the Area/Bitmap dialogue another time and apply one of the choices to scale / fit it as wanted.
To demonstrate to more detail what I want to explain I created a few documents. Containing images they are too big for an upload her. Thus I put them to this location in my own domain to make them available for you. In specific regard, please, that my original big image and the .jpg I extracted later from the file
ask149548TextAndShapeWithImageMedaillonAndRectangle.odt are bitwise identical.
I probably don’t understand your advice here. Are you just saying to resize the image when it shows up as a bitmap pattern? It blows up the image and I think it distorts it if I try to make it fit by changing the size of the shape. Maybe you could explain in plainer language what to do. I don’t see anything under area>bitmap that would help.
Thanks,
Hi Lupp, thank you sincerely for going through the trouble with all those files.
When I draw a shape to contain the image, and then upload it, the image is 100 times bigger or more than it should be and it is fuzzy. When I scaled down this image before its detail was all blown out.
I’m not sure what it is, other images were uploading fine before, like in your files.
Finally, you said to use the features of bitmap but I don’t see any.
By what do you recognise if an image “shows up as a bitmap pattern”? ‘Bitmap’ as I know it is a technical term which, used in the context of graphics, is used for a way of saving and transmitting images.
The dialog used to set the ‘Area’ attributes of shapes, on the other hand, uses that term on the respective button as a generic term for all the identifiable kinds of data portions to be interpreted as images. Embedded images, however, will not be converted to .bmp or the like.
There are surely technical issues now and then with shapes and embedded data. I won’t know them all, and I cannot give a lecture about the topic. However, I just don’t understand your terms “blow up” and “distort” in the context.
If you use an inappropriate option, you will get bad results. That’s it. Just play an hour with some images (from .jpeg files, I assume), and you will know.
Depending on the used ‘Style’ e.g. you may or may not get changes of the aspect ratio when resizing…
To get the full image at its original aspect ratio, e.g, make sure the shape has the same aspect ratio and use the ‘Style’ Stretched then. To get the wanted result in different cases you may have to try options, and to judge which one meets your needs best.
(I once was told a professional page layouter aiming at high quality would do about 2, at most 3 pages a day if images are concerned. We shouldn’t expect an amateur using LibO would do 30.)
Save the bar code in your computer’s Pictures.
Right Click on it and choose Copy.
On the page of your document, where you want the bar code, insert a text box.
(Choose Insert, on the document, click and hold to draw blue box the size you want.)
You should get a text box with blinking cursor in it.
Right Click inside the text box and choose Paste.
The blue outline may disappear, wait a bit, and your bar code should appear.
If you made the text box too big, the image of the bar code pattern will be messy.
Click on the green dots along the margins of the text box and make it bigger or smaller as needed.
I hope this helps you. I followed the above three times to be sure it worked.
Why do you use a shape? When I’m faced with such a need, I just insert the graphic stuff with Insert>Picture>From file. The image is located inside a frame and you can customise all its properties and attributes the usual way.
This procedures addresses two of your concerns:
bitmap/vector: the image will be a bitmap if the file is itself a bitmap (e.g. .bmp, …) and scalable if the file has the proper format (e.g. .png, .svg, .jpg, …)
wrapping/spacing: frame/objet dialog tab Wrap contains all controls for tht, notably Spacing to selectively or simultaneously add spacing distance on all sides of the frme
With a scalable graphics, you can even resize your barcode without modifying your original file: right-click on the image to open its Frame dialog and go to Type tab. Fiddle with the Size section.
If this answer helped you, please accept it by clicking the check mark 
to the left and, karma permitting, upvote it. If this resolves your problem, close the question, that will help other people with the same question.
IMO: Whether you first create a shape and then assign an image to its area or you insert the image directly you get the same kind of a shape. An actual frame (another kind of shape) containing the image you only get if you create the frame explicitly and put the ikmage in or if you choose insert Caption for the image-shape. The image-shape and the frame both are members of the DrawPage of the Writer document then. .
Please tell me if I’m wromg.
(.bmp images are also scalable in Writer.)
Apologies, I should have added “scalable without loss of accuracy”.
Wrt to shape/direct frame, I always favour the simplest approach because I feel complexity may result in document/application instability (not speaking of time to render the construction). However, this is not backed by technical consideration, it’s just a personal feeling.