Back in 2004 I attempted to use a scanned image as a background and lay my elements over the form so users would have the perception they were actually filling out the form. I had all kinds of trouble with image resolution and dealing with the elements on the screen so I ended up drawing a replica of the printed form on my database form using static text elements.

I now need to update the forms and add new forms so I thought with the many new features Sesame now has to make this task easier, such as layers and switch to alternate form it seems like a great time to attempt this again and hopefully this solution will be a lot simpler then drawing the form on the screen using lots of static text elements.

Has anyone succeeded at doing this already?   If yes what size and resolution did you use for the image?

The form I want to use is in a word document format. I have used a utility that saves a word document to a jpg to create my initial file. When I open the file using windows tools it looks good, but when I make my static picture element or an Image element it looks like pure junk.

I have tried modifying the jpg (improving resolution and increasing size) with Adobe photoshop 7 but have not had any success. (However this is not a big surprise as my Photoshop skills are even less then my sbasic skills)

All input and thoughts will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Robert

Robert,

The image size isn't really the deciding factor in the quality. Make it big enough without scaling to fit the size you need for your form. It is important that you make the element that contains the image bigger than the image itself. Sesame will scale images down, but not up. For quality, you want avoid all scaling.

Sesame is AWSOME!  I have the scanned form as the background (This saves me so much time compared to creating the form on the screen with static text ) and I added my elements and all is great! I really appreciate the layers feature now more then ever.

The key is to play with the size of  the static picture element until it fills the area desired perfectly. I also found it is best to view the image in preview or runtime before making changes. The way the image looks in designer is not as nice as it will be presented in preview and runtime.

Thanks All for the help.