How to enforce original size when pasting images into Writer?

[lphilpot]

LO 25.2.5.2, Windows 11

By default, pasting an image (usually a screen shot) into Writer sets the anchor mode to “To character” and the image overflows the page margins. Hitting F4 and changing that to “As character” resizes the image to fit margins and it flows with the text. Works, but an additional step.

So I changed the default to “As character” (Options | LibreOffice Writer | Formatting Aids) and now it pastes anchored “As character” by default. Perfect.

Except it’s not. Now the size is reduced and I still have to hit F4 but this time click “Original size” to make the pasted image fill the margins. But then the aspect ratio is changed, distorting the image.

Is there a way to get an image to paste in, anchored as character and sized to fill the margin extents by default, without distorting the aspect ratio?

Thanks.

[ajlittoz]

I am afraid there is no way.

The distortion comes from hitting a limit. An image is a frame from Writer point of view. A frame size can’t exceed the print area dimension, i.e page size minus margins.

In your case, the original image is wider than the print area. Consequently, the expanded width is capped to the distance between the margins. The constraint on height is lighter since pages are commonly portrait-oriented leaving more room vertically. Then the height can expand to its original height.

Ideally, you would store all desired properties in a frame style. Unfortunately the size of a frame cannot be made dependent on its contents, here the image. If you know in advance the W/H ratio of your images and it is the same for all, you can store the fixed dimensions in the style.

When you consider images, you observe that they have additional properties compared to frame. The Crop tab would allow to set a Scale on H and W. But, again, you’d make a guess for all images and these settings cannot be recorded in a frame style.

The usual recommendation about images is to prepare them outside Writer: cropping, scaling, pixel density, … so that they can be used “as is” in Writer. This also facilitates the design of a “universal” frame style applied to all.

You’ll probably object that this is even more work than F4 and size adjustment. However, this is the more reliable and predictable method.

[lphilpot]

@ajlittoz

In your case, the original image is wider than the print area. Consequently, the expanded width is capped to the distance between the margins. The constraint on height is lighter since pages are commonly portrait-oriented leaving more room vertically. Then the height can expand to its original height.

Well, I want the pasted image reduced until the relatively longest side fits its margin. I don’t care if it doesn’t exactly fit the entire page – In fact it’s unavoidable unless all my images are exactly the same aspect ratio as the page margins. I’d just like Writer to reduce the size (while preserving the aspect ratio) until the relatively longer side fits its margin. I’ve tried manually specifying one dimension or the other, but the distortion remains. Maybe I’d need to start over so the pasted images weren’t initially distorted but that’s not feasible now.

Thanks.