Using OpenOffice Draw for 600dpi scans .. bad choice?

[tmijs789]

EDIT: This is for:
OpenOffice.org 3.2.1 Build: 9502
Windows 7 x64 Home (6GBs/RAM)

I've been trying since Monday to make up some professional looking greeting card templates for my sister's Ontario cottage rental business. But the scans she's been sending me are all big 600DPI files. The pictures on her cottage pages are so nice, but way too small for print work, and the recent ones aren't even on the site.

When I import the website pictures, I get no grief from Draw, but when I load the 600DPI scans it starts crashing at random. I've printed off some samples with the low-res images but I feel bad showing her the results because they look really grainy/stretchy?

I know with Calc I had lots of options to change how much RAM is used and make it run faster/better, so I'm wondering if I need to tweak Draw's settings or if Draw isn't a bad choice for working with such large scans?

The files are .jpg format and 15mb to 21mb in size and other programs like The Gimp open them fine(well I did get "memory warnings" from TheGimp but then it loaded). The Gimp is too hard to use for making printed cards because it always prints them a different size and I need something where I can change the names really quickly too.

Has anyone done a lot of 600 DPI work with Draw where it doesn't crash? Should I convert the jpgs? Perhaps another program is better for this?

At this point I'm ready to give up.. I keep seeing these pictures of people fishing, golfing, and toodle'ing around in boats and I don't want to be in front of my computer.

[Ed]

You could try opening the pictures in The Gimp first and saving them as a smaller size before you import them into Draw.

A dedicated publishing program like Scribus might do a better job, but you can probably od it perfectly well in Draw.

[tmijs789]

Ahhh that might be the ticket.

I think everything she's sent me is 600 dpi but 300 dpi seems fine so I will try to save at half the size and see if works with less crashes.

Thanks!

[Beemur]

You might need a checkup or something cause I use it for doing exactly what you're doin' all the time!

Heck there's a half fold card template here: http://templates.services.openoffice.org/en/node/4677

And I just search for 'greeting card' or something and I get loads of cool templates for birthdays, Christmas, and even business cards, all from the openoffice.org templates site!

My computer teacher in school encouraged us to learn all the open software and I'm pretty good with the pixels so let me know if I can help? (I'm also quite possibly autistic when it comes to greeting cards..?)

-- Beth