Images not resizing proportionally, any work around?

[the-handee-man]

Description

Thanks for taking a look at my issue,

I am in the process of writing a scientific manuscript in quarto and will be pivoting to writing my dissertation in the next week or so, and would like to figure out a workaround for my current issue. As a chemist, there are quite a few chemical structures that are inserted as images in the body of the manuscript, but not all structures are the same size. The standard size of the structure as a vector is set in the drawing software (ChemDraw for me), there is no easy way, that I have found, to save a single structure as a .png without first copying as an .png and pasting in PowerPoint. From there I can save the image as a .png to use in the quarto document. If I use the image directly, without resizing, more often than not the image is far too large. Therefore I have been resizing the image with {width=30%}, but this is only a close approximation. As I am writing this I am realizing that {width=30%} might refer to fill or fit 30% of the page size? However, I have operating on the notion that it is reducing the image size to 30% of the original size. If I resize the image in PowerPoint before saving, using the scale height function in picture formatting, I am able to insert the images directly, but for some reason I lose resolution of the structure - there seems to be some rasterization on the rendered image. This is after I changed the settings for images: Options-->Advanced-->Image Size and Quality "Do not Compress images in file" and "Default Resolution = High Fidelity". Like I had mentioned there quite a few chemical structures that would need to be inserted in a dissertation, so I would really like to reduce the current workflow that in reality doesn't actually work. Is quarto able to rescale an image based on the image size as opposed to the rescaling to the dimensions of the page? Below is the sample of my current .qmd file with both examples of resizing. Thank you for taking the time to read and possibly help me.

---
title: "**Sample**"
format:
    pdf:
        documentclass: article
        fontfamily: helvet
        hyperrefoptions: draft
header-includes: |

  \usepackage{lipsum}
---

## Synthetic Details and Characterization of Select Compounds

![](images/structure1.png){width=30%}

\lipsum[1-1]

![](images/structure2.png){width=30%}

\lipsum[1-1]

![](images/structure3.png){width=30%}

\lipsum[1-1]

![](images/structure1_min.png)

\lipsum[1-1]

![](images/structure2_min.png)

\lipsum[1-1]

![](images/structure3_min.png)

\lipsum[1-1]

And the rendered pdf.

sample.pdf

Disclaimer: Structures are not real, just quickly made to show the different sizes that I need to use

[mcanouil]

Unfortunately, your example is not reproducible.
Please use the placeholder and lipsum shortcodes to make one.

When working with "pdf" this LaTeX, use keep-tex: true to investigate the LaTex intermediate file and understand what is happening.

Finally, don't use bare raw contents. Use raw blocks as documented to avoid unpredictable side effects: https://quarto.org/docs/authoring/markdown-basics.html#raw-content

To be clear width works as expected, i.e., images are resized proportionally.

Input	Output
--- format: pdf --- {#fig-placeholder width=10%} {#fig-placeholder width=50%} {#fig-placeholder width=100%}

---

You can share a self-contained "working" (reproducible) Quarto document using the following syntax, i.e., using more backticks than you have in your document (usually four ````).
See https://quarto.org/bug-reports.html#small-is-beautiful-aim-for-a-single-document-with-10-lines.

If you have multiple files (and if it is absolutely required to have multiple files), please share as a Git repository.

R	Python
````qmd --- title: "Reproducible Quarto Document" format: html engine: knitr --- This is a reproducible Quarto document. {{< lipsum 1 >}} ```{r} x <- c(1, 2, 3, 4, 5) y <- c(1, 4, 9, 16, 25) plot(x, y) ``` {#fig-placeholder} {{< lipsum 1 >}} The end after @fig-placeholder. ````	````qmd --- title: "Reproducible Quarto Document" format: html engine: jupyter --- This is a reproducible Quarto document. {{< lipsum 1 >}} ```{python} import matplotlib.pyplot as plt x = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] y = [1, 4, 9, 16, 25] plt.plot(x, y) plt.show() ``` {#fig-placeholder} {{< lipsum 1 >}} The end after @fig-placeholder. ````

Additionally and if not already given, please share the output of quarto check within a code block (i.e., using three backticks ```txt), see https://quarto.org/bug-reports.html#check.

[the-handee-man]

Apologies, I am very very new to coding/markdown, so despite you sharing helpful information above it will take me some time to understand what you are referring to and are asking for me to do. Please be patient as I work through what you are telling me.

[mcanouil]

A side note, I don't understand what is all your workflow about PowerPoint but a 10 seconds search lead me to https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qipg8b0r67k

[the-handee-man]

I too had found this video several months ago when I started this project. Unfortunately, the example provided can only be applied to the entire document, not a single structure among many in a document. To clarify, most chemists work in large ChemDraw files that have multiple drawings, this makes it easier to track and make changes, adjust style types across the entire reaction scheme, and makes drawing new structures very easy. If I use the workflow in the video I would need to generate ~300 new files with single structures then creating the same number of .gif files instead of using the three ChemDraw files I already have to generate the ~300 image files.