Working with images
About digital images…the basics.
The digital images we take with our digital camera are usually too huge to send via email, or to put on a website. Therefore, you need to resize the image before you send it via email or before you upload to Blackboard. There are heaps of software programs that resize images for you….from the high end professional software such as Adobe Photoshop, to freeware applications such as Picasa and Paint.Net.
When you resize an image, you change the image dimensions, which also makes the file size smaller. A digital image, without resizing would probably be around about 2MB in file size…It would more than fill the screen of your computer and also take too long to download (particularly if you have a slow internet connection.)
Image file formats
Digital images are usually in the .jpg file format (the .jpg is called the file extension)
What software will I use to resize an image?
I am going to show you how to resize an image (suitable size for sending via email) using Microsoft picture manger. If you have Microsoft Office (which most of you should have) then you will have Microsoft picture manager.
- Open up Microsoft Picture Manager….(start/programs/microsoft office/microsoft office tools, microsoft picture manager.)
- Follow the easy steps below…in pictures. (of course you need to find your picture first…left hand side will show the folders, click folders, images will appear in the workspace, double click the image you wish to work on.
- After you have completed the steps as below, you need to do a ’save as’ and give the resized image a new name so that you still have the original image.
You will notice other editing options available in Microsoft Picture Manager (cropping, red eye removal, brightness and colour) Have a play around with these as well. NB: The version of Picture Manage I used is from Microsoft Office 2007…if you are not using this your options may differ slightly.