Images

Photographs placed at the size and the position you choose, from the files a camera and a scanner already produce.

A photograph is placed on the page inside a box you decide. What happens when the picture and the box are not the same shape is a choice rather than an accident: fill the box and crop what sticks out, fit the whole picture inside and leave margins, stretch it, or keep it at its true size.

The usual formats are read as they come. What each file declares about itself — how large it is, how many dots to the inch it was made at, whether part of it is meant to be see-through — is read from the file rather than assumed, so a picture arrives on the page as its own maker described it.

What it saves you

A picture never comes out squashed
You say once how a picture that does not match its box must behave, and every picture after it obeys — including the one somebody uploads next year in the wrong shape.
It prints at the size it really is
A photograph placed at its true size comes out of the printer at that size, which is what matters when the page is a plan, a label or anything somebody will measure.
No conversion step beforehand
The files a camera, a scanner or a designer hands over are taken as they are, so nothing has to be prepared by hand before a document can be produced.

See it done

Every one of these is a real PDF this library wrote, with the source that wrote it.

A picture fitted into a box

One picture fitted into a box of one size eight ways: brought to four different sizes, stood against an edge, turned by a quarter and by an angle of its own, and mirrored — every panel drawn from the placement the rule worked out.