Digital Photo Fundamentals

Pictures from Camera into Computer Using Irfanview Terms: View Size vs Print Size, etc. Free Photography - Naming Pics, Albums When Digital Camera Photos Can't Be Found Digital Photography for Not So Digital Seniors

   Basic Image-Editing

How to Crop - Resize a Photo Problem Enlarging Digital Pictures Understanding CYMK & RGB Colors How to Straighten (Rotate, Align) a Photo Darkrooms Replaced by Computers Be Your Own Photo Processing Shop

   Text in Pictures

Adding Text to a Photo Text & Picture In a Word Text Box

   Displaying Your Pictures

Printing Multiple Photos on a Single Page Displaying Your Photos as a Slideshow Printing Photo Thumbnail Sheets When Multiple Photos Don't All Fit on a Print-Out Print Yourself or Have Pics Processed Elsewhere?

   Online Images - Emailing Pics

Emailing Pictures Reducing a Digital Photo's File Size Red X Instead of a Picture Reducing the File Size of a Video Print Yourself or Have Pics Processed Elsewhere? Copying Images from a Web Site or an Email

   Pic Formats - File Extensions

Digital Picture Formats Difference Between "Drawing" & "Painting" Programs Digital Cameras & Megapixelss Choosing File Associations for Picture Files More PC Help & Free Programs Can Be Found Here. Some Favorite Links

Text Box & Other Image-Management Options in MSWord

After explaining recently how to insert an image-bearing Text Box into an MSWord document (so the picture can be moved at will on the page) — MSWord Text Boxes — a reader asked how to remove the box's outline. This is done by clicking on any edge of the box and going to Format>Text Box>Colors & Lines>Line, and choosing No Line. Alternatively, you can choose a color for the line, as well as choosing a style, such as dashed, double-line, and/or specify a line width.

A wide variety of color and texture options are also available for filling a Text Box with various background effects.

Other Text Box formatting options are available by clicking on Layout and choosing to have text flow around the box, or to flow around its left or its right side. You can even opt to have text flow over the face of the boxed image or behind it.

Clicking the picture inside a Text Box, followed by clicking Format>Picture, will display many similar editing options for the image. Furthermore, an image-editing toolbar will appear with additional choices, such as adjusting contrast and brightness levels, cropping the picture and/or converting it to gray scale or to a black and white image. You can even choose to convert it to a "watermark," which will appear in light gray behind your typing.

Personally, I prefer to do cropping and resizing with Irfanview (free from www.irfanview.com) or with Picasa2 (free from picasa.google.com) before placing the picture on a Word page.

However, proportional resizing can be done on an inserted picture by simply grabbing any corner and adjusting it with your mouse. Distorted resizing can be done by mouse-adjusting any edge of an image.

Beyond all this, Word also has an assortment of drawing tools that can be helpful for desktop publishing jobs. Click on View>Toolbars>Drawing to display a toolbar with options for drawing rectangles, circles, and other geometric shapes, along with special shapes such as odd-sized arrows, a heart, and even a happy face. Rectangles can even be displayed as 3-dimensional objects, or with drop-shadows. Furthermore, any selected shape can be rotated by clicking the Rotate tool and then grabbing and revolving any corner of an object.

If all the above MSWord graphic features weren't enough, you can click View>Toolbars>WordArt, and find tools for creating colorful stylized headlines or short specialized phrases. WordArt creations can also be resized and/or reshaped by mouse-grabbing and adjusting any corner of an object. Furthermore, a WordArt object can be moved to any location on a page.

Given the above image-handling options, one might assume that MSWord makes a reasonably good desktop publishing program for creating newsletters, church bulletins, and small posters. However, Word's page-layout functions tend to be rather unstable, thus making the above options reliable only on pages that have fairly simple layouts. MSPublisher is a better choice for fancier DTP work.

For those who might be writing and formatting a book with MSWord, most publishers and printers will only accept the document if it has been converted to a PDF file.