Mrs. Mecomber’s Scrapbook

Before I had image-editing software, and before I knew what I was doing, I used to paste all my images in Microsoft Word. But after saving it, I had NO IDEA how to get the image onto, say, a web page. My image had been essentially locked by Word.

I came across a helpful blog post explaining how to extract images from Word.

Just open up the Word document, then go to file> save as option and save the document as a web page. This will create a new document with the images in a separate folder with the same name. Go into the folder and you will get 2 version of the image, one is in .jpg and the other is in .png.

The .jpg will be the smaller size and the .png will be the original size. If you like to use the original image since it is much larger to view but wanted in different format, just open up your image viewer and save the image in the format that you prefer.

I haven’t tried this yet, but I will. It looks like it would work perfectly. It’s a handy tip!

In a recent post of mine, a visitor asked where she could get photos for her blog. The Internet is a freedom-loving place, so there are scads of photos everywhere, but if you are like me, I prefer the copyright-free photos, or photos with permissions. You don’t want to steal other people’s photos (and don’t download MP3 files for your MP3 players unless you have permission, too).

Here’s a terrific plugin for photos– it’s the Photo Dropper plugin (Wordpress only). You can use this plugin to search the Flickr photo database for copyright-free photos. The plugin automatically displays a link from where the photo is taken, so that the author of the photo gets credit. Read all about the Photo Dropper plugin here. I’ve tried it on one of my other blogs, and it works well.

I was asked to explain how one captures a screenshot of your computer desktop. Believe it or not, it is extremely easy! And very fun.

Simultaneously press “ctrl” and “PRTSC/SYSRQ” on your keyboard. This essentially copies what’s on your desktop to your clipboard. What’s needed now is how to paste your copied content into a document. This is where things get varied, because not everyone has the same software.

The most basic graphic program is Paint. It’s not terribly sophisticated, but it will do the job. You can also download a plethora of free editing programs, like Irfanview or Paint.NET. I have a tutorial on using Irfanview here, and I have written something up about making small thumbnails here. You can find Irfanview for free by doing a search at download.com.

I use PaintShopPro, because I like to crop my graphics. Irfanview does not crop images, but it does resize them. Paint and Paint.NET do crop images; they resize images but I think Irfanview does a better job with resizing.

OK, so I’ll just tell you what I do, and you can choose your software program and take it from there.

I make a copy of my desktop image. I then crop the image so I only get what I want in the photo. Then I resize the image to, usually, about 180 width (about how wide my sidebars in my blog are). I then sharpen the image for clarity.

Then, I upload my little graphic to Photobucket. They have a cute little editing program, too. I use this to build a picture frame around my graphic, and I save it like that. And this is what I wind up with:

As always, if you have any questions, leave a comment or email me via the contact form, and I’ll try my best to answer your questions in a timely manner.

I found another terrific photo-editing program. It’s Easy Thumbnails, and it is amazing!

I do a lot of photographing (and photo-editing and uploading) pictures for my blogs. Because I usually deal with a large number of photos, I prefer to resize them all at once. Irfanview– my favorite photo-resizing program, does do batch editing like this, but I have found it confusing, and I have to reset all my settings every time I use it. So I’ve been looking around for something easier. I absolutely love Easy Thumbnails.

This little program (it’s free) will resize one photo or all your photos. The default setting is to resize them all to 200px by 200px, but you can change this to anything you like. It saves the newly sized photos in the same folder, but with a “tn_” in the title. This is helpful because you won’t have to go searching for your new photos (or have to make an entirely new folder to keep them), and it won’t copy over the original photos. Once again, the settings will change those features should you want them changed.

I love Easy Thumbnails. It has become part of my top ten favorite programs, ever.

For many years, I suffered under the grips of the only real word processing and spreadsheet program out there: the Microsoft Office Suite. At least it was better than Microsoft Works, ha ha. But Word and PowerPoint always crashed on me a lot. I learned to save my documents at every single change or line of new type (so MS Office did do one good thing for me– gave me a good habit). But the constant crashes and the burden it put on my laptop processor had me longing for something else.

I found it with OpenOffice.org. OpenOffice.org, like Firefox, is an open source program. This means that the making and the “engine” of the program is not a stealthy secret hidden in the confines of large file cabinets in Seattle, Washington. Open source means that everyone can see what the code is that makes up the program, and you can even contribute to it to make it even better. Ah, the beauty of the Internet.

I first became familiar with OpenOffice.org several years ago, when I had dial-up service. It took f o r e v e r to download. I am happy to say there have been many improvements to both OpenOffice.org and my internet service (now DSL).

OpenOffice.org is a great bundle of free software. It is split up into several smaller packages. I’ll give you a run down of what’s included, with a very, very brief summary description of each. Click on the links to learn more at OpenOffice.org website.

Writer is the word processor and desktop publisher. I use this the most. You can use it to make diagrams, letters, documents, indices, etc. Anything MS Word can do, OpenOffice.org can do better. OpenOffice.org has the added benefit of allowing you to save your files in PDF format with the click of a button. With MS Office, I had to download and configure a separate program to do that.

Impress is similar to MS Powerpoint. You can make slide shows and other multi-media documents with this.

Math is for stuff like… well, math. It can handle all those funky equations that mathematicians and my homeschooled kids need to use. Thisis something we were unable to do in MS Word, which was a continual frustration. I love OpenOffice.org Math!

Calc is a spreadsheet program. It’s very nice and more advanced than MS Excel. I like it much better.

Draw is a very fun program. My kids love it. I love it, too! I often use this program to concoct cover sheets and other image-based documents.

Base is a database program. I haven’t used it that much. Even though I love the computer, I still use a good old pencil and notebook for a lot of things. I’m getting there, though! I have yet to tranfer mounds of paperwork and archived administrative files onto computer. I’ll use Base when I do.

These are a lot of excellent features, all part of the OpenOffice.org package, and the best part of it all is that it is free! I love my OpenOffice.org. Give Microsoft a run for its money and try it out.

With the advent of internet phones, there has been an upward surge in voip deals. The internet voip is being used in every way imaginable. There is voip software for commercial as well as personal use. There has been an equal increase in skype download rate.

I have been visiting some local blogs recently, and was a little surprised to discover that some folks on computers are using an impractical method for resizing images (emailing them to themselves, using the email program’s automatic resizing feature). Using email to resize photos is easy, and I used to do it myself when I first started computing (9 years ago now!) but it is wasteful of resources and wasteful of ISP bandwidth. Not to mention very inconvenient.

What surprised me most of all is running into so many computer users who still do this and are not aware of the basics of photo alteration. I can understand this with the older generation (computing can be confusing even for younger folks) but especially for people who lead extremely busy lives and do not have the resources or time to discover new and improved methods. Yet staying in touch with their friends and family via email and photos is probably the most important use for their computer. They just aren’t aware of anything better. That is why I am here!

So I will no longer assume that the average computer user knows about (what are to me) “basic” programs and “basic” usage. I am here for the average/below-average computer user. Let’s start.

There exists this handy little photo editing program called Irfanview. It’s free. Irfanview can work with just about any photo file you have (.jpeg, .gif, .bmap, .ico, .tiff, etc). Go to the site and look for the download link. Once you have Irfanview all downloaded, start the program.

Once you have it open, go to the Menu where it says “File” (you know, File, Edit, Image, Options, etc). Click that, and a dropdown menu appears. Choose “Open.”

A new window will pop up, asking you what you want to open. Find the picture you want (let’s pretend you have a photo of a white house on the Desktop). You’d go to the Desktop until you see whitehouse.jpg. Choose that one. The photo should open in Irfanview.

Here’s our whitehouse.jpg photo. See how large it is? I have to scroll horizontally and vertically to see the entire image. This is too large a photo to email or post on a blog!

Now, go to where it says “Image” in the menu bar. A menu will drop down. Choose “Resize/Resample.”

A new window will pop up, asking you what size you want. For now, since you are new, you can choose something easy like “Half.” Obviously, this will make your picture twice as small. (In this example I opted for the “Set new size” and typed in width 500 pixels and height 375 pixels).

Click “OK.” The picture will immediately change. See below for our newly-sized photo.

Now you need to save the newly sized picture. If you want to make your photo of whitehouse.jpg permanently this small, choose “Save.” HOWEVER if you want to keep that larger picture of the white house for your own files, but want a smaller version in your email or uploaded on the web, choose “Save As” and rename the photo (for example, “whitehousesmall”). This will give you two photos of the white house in your computer– your original large photo and a new smaller photo.

Irfanview by default saves the images as jpegs. As you become a more advanced user, you can tinker with settings and make all sorts of files.

You can even use Irfanview to sharpen the image, remove red-eye, tint the colors, and do all sorts of nifty things. Explore with the menu items. Be sure to work on a “scrap” image and not one you want to preserve, in case you make a mistake.

Smaller images are much better for sending email. They also won’t annoy the email recipient, who hates getting gargantuan images! Smaller images are easier to upload. If you have a blog, this is very important. Some blogs I visit have enormous images in them, and my browser stutters and skips to display them. It is thrifty and courteous to compress your images. Use Irfanview, it’s free!