Preparing Pictures, using PhotoShop for the Web and E-mail

Know where your pictures are on hard disk drive, (or place in scanner, see below) mine are usually on the desktop in separate folders, with very descriptive file names. Open PhotoShop and go to file, open. A standard Windows Open box appears. Notice and open , at the bottom the Files of types line at bottom. you will see all the file types ( extensions ) that PhotoShop can handle. To the right of the long narrow window at top, where it says" look in:"   Are two yellow buttons. The first is a level up button which moves you  back one directory at a time. Press it until you reach the end and you will see the desktop. You can also click the little down arrow, to the right of the word desktop and see all your partitions (drives), if your pictures aren't on the desktop.  What ever the window, at the top says is where you are. As the window should say desktop, look for your folder, then double click the folder and then double click your picture file located in the large center window and Photoshop should display your picture.   

Or Place your picture in scanner then in Photo Shop go to file, import, twain32 or scanner name and your picture will scan. I first usually set my Resolution to 150 dpi. Press preview, then crop and scan. My old scanner is a Epson, USB, Perfection 610 sold by BJ's.

Lets pretend your picture isn't upright. Go to image, rotate canvas and rotate until picture is upright. If you just scanned your picture you may have cropped it already, otherwise. Now lets practice cropping. The cropping tool is located in the upper top left of the large vertical tool bar selector on left. If you press and hold down this button for several seconds, you will see five cropping options, start with the one on the far right. Now move the mouse to the upper left corner of picture , then hold down left button and drag mouse to bottom right corner, and release mouse. Now press Enter on Keyboard and, a smaller cropped picture should appear. Lets pretend we didn't crop correctly and want to try again. Go up to edit, un do crop and picture will return to its original size. Now Crop Again, press enter and lets look at some other options. If picture is blurry, go to filter, sharpen, sharpen. Usually more than two sharpens will be worse. If you did too many sharpens , go to edit and un do sharpen. Later go to image, adjust and try many different options.  Many times you will go to image, adjust, Brightness/ Contrast. If facial tones are purple or green go to image, adjust, image/saturation and you will be able to touch up picture just like an old color TV set where Hue should be set for best face color and saturation changes color level from black and white to too much color. If picture seems too dark, try image, adjust, equalize. Now if we are all primed up, press, file, save for web. In the middle right it says Color Table, Image Size. Press Image Size. For a full size Page on the WWW, I use a height of 370 pixels. Type "370" in the height window and press apply.  Also on the WWW, smaller  .jpg  pictures load the fastest. Therefore in the upper right under settings we want the two upper lines set to JPEG and Medium. If you wish, vary the size between low, medium, high and maximum, while watching the picture sharpness and size in bottom left closely, in most cases you should find a size setting of medium will not degrade sharpness. ( Yes everyone should have at least a 21 inch monitor! ) Only occasionally  must I use a higher setting than medium, for no sharpness degradation with the longer loading time. Now if you look in the lower left now you should see JPEG and a nice small size of 34K or less. Now in the bottom middle press the Blue E or Gray N and preview the picture size and quality in your browser, then x away browser. Ok lets save the picture. In the upper right press " OK ". A windows " Save optimized AS ", window will come up. At top , save in , is where its going to go. I first change the file name at bottom to something like   k1deu_ham_shack_370h.jpg    using all lower case.   Then To the right of the long narrow window at top, where it says" save in:"   Are two yellow buttons. The first is a level up button which moves you  back one directory at a time. Press it until you reach the end and you will see the desktop. You can also click the little down arrow, to the right of the word desktop and see all your partitions (drives), if you don't want to save your pictures on the desktop.  What ever the window, at the top says is where the pictures are going!  As the window might should say desktop, look for your folder or create a new folder by pressing the second button to the right" create a new folder " typing in the name , pressing enter on keyboard twice , then pressing save button and your picture will go into this new folder on the desktop. When closing down your photo or Photo Shop say " NO " to saving changes so that your original is intact, for different editing at some other time.

E-Mailing pictures with Netscape Communicator mail as follows. Press " New Msg " and your Composition Letter will appear. As you know the location of the pictures you prepared, in letter, at top, press Attach, file and a " enter file to attach window will come up. At top get your look in, folder appearing and in large window double click the picture you want to send. You may send many more by repeating this procedure, with each file name appearing in letter. When all pictures are added add some Subject text and any text in body of letter you wish. If you are practicing for the first time just do one picture and address to yourself, send then press  " Get Msg " And see how it would look to others. Now press address at top and address as many people as you would like, and Send the letter.   PS:  Take it easy on bandwidth, most Mail boxes top out at 5 Mb or sometimes less and many mail programs reject single letters larger than 1.5 Mb.

Here's a little Big Brother link relative to Adobe  <<<here>>> . 

09/18/2004 07:52 AM