The quickest way to load an image into the frame is to right-click on the frame, and select Get Image from the Context Menu. Pressing Ctrl+I or menu File > Import > Get Image will also work. A file dialog will appear, showing the image types that Scribus can import, which include bitmap formats like TIFF, PNG and JPG, as well as vector/mixed vector-bitmap formats PS (PostScript), EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) and PDF, which will be converted to bitmaps. Note that after import the image may only partly show. We’ll see below in Properties: Image how to adjust scaling and positioning of the image in the frame.
Descriptions, advantages and disadvantages of various file formats will be discussed elsewhere.
Right-click on the empty frame to show its Context Menu as seen to the right. An empty frame will not show all these choices.
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When an Image is first loaded, the default is for it to have Free
Scaling or as is set in File > Preferences/Document Setup > Tools > Image.
Under Free Scaling the spinboxes are:
In many cases, we may have a more or less set frame size we wish to squeeze an entire image into, in which case choosing To Frame Size (or Adjust Image to Frame from the Context Menu) makes sense. Without checking Proportional, the image is simply stretched to fit the frame and may be quite distorted. You should find the combination of scaling to frame size (proportional) and then Adjust Frame to Image from the Context Menu very useful for making a frame exactly the right size for your image. The Color Management section tells us that you can now specify per-frame profiles, as well as the Rendering Intent. Likewise, we can see that image compression type and degree on PDF export can now follow the Global settings or be on a per-frame basis. |
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![]() If you see this warning triangle in the lower right corner of your frame, it indicates that the image resolution is below 144 DPI, or whatever you have set as your minimum value in the Preflight Verifier settings in File > Preferences or File > Document Settings. This is strictly a warning. |
With image frames, Edit Contents mode allows you to click-drag with the mouse to shift the image relative to the frame, i.e., the same as adjusting the X-Pos and Y-Pos in the Image tab.