Digital Pictures
By John Beach
Every year I am asked questions about digital photos by other teachers. Most of the questions arise from pictures taken from a digital camera, or photos they have scanned into a computer. So these are the questions I will address.
Q3: How do I view my graphics in a slide show?
Q5: Sometimes people send me emails and the pictures are already open. How is this done?
Q1: How do I open them?
Answer: If double clicking does not open them, then your computer does not know what program will open them. You may not have software on your computer loaded to handle this task. If you have Microsoft Office, you should also have MS Photo Editor. This will perform most tasks you need (red eye, cropping, changing resolution, lighten, darken, convert to a new format,...).
To open it you need to find it in the program list. See below:
It is possible that it was not installed with MS Office. Have the technicians install it.
This will allow you to open the application and then the photo from the application.
If your computer does not know what program can be used to open a graphic, you may want MS Photo Editor to always open your graphic. Double click the graphic and click "Other..." and follow the path "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\PhotoEd\PHOTOED.EXE" Don't forget to click Always use this program to open these files.
Q2: How do I edit them?
Answer: Use MS Photo Editor as mentioned above. This is the only graphic editing software that I am aware of that all Aspenview teachers should have license to. A freeware program from HP (called HP Image Zone Express) was released this year and can do photo fixing and many other things. It is a viewer, editor, photo printing, and sharing via email software. See the link below for the download.
http://www.hp.ca/portal/hho/ize/home.php
Q3: How do I view my graphics in a slide show?
Answer: Use the the HP software as mentioned above. It is freeware.
Q4: I sent my photos to a friend and the graphics took forever to download. How do I make them send and download faster?
Answer 1: Picture resolution for a computer monitor only need to be 96 dpi resolution. For photo printing I use 300 dpi. If you only want the email friend to view the pictures, then resize them to a smaller size. The same problem exists for people who sell items on ebay. The graphic takes too long to open and bidders lose interest and moves on. RESIZE the picture to be a smaller file size. I use a freeware called Pixresizer. See the link below:
http://bluefive.pair.com/pixresizer.htm
Pixresizer will also change a batch of pictures from one entire folder in one click. Remember that small picture sizes will be created with this program and the smaller pictures will look unchanged on a computer monitor but the resulting emailed photos will not print high quality pictures. These resized photos are great for inserting on a web page.
Answer 2: The HP software mentioned early (HP Image Zone Express) is a new way to send pictures as small thumbnails (small images of the original picture), but allow the email recipient to print high quality pictures. In this way you don't need to resize the pictures
Q5: Sometimes people send me emails and the pictures are already open. How is this done?
Answer: Instead of adding your pictures as an attachment, go to Insert>picture in the menu of your email message in Outlook or Outlook Express.