After spending a couple of hours with someone this week on how to get pictures from his camera over to his computer and then to an email, I decided I should talk again about pictures to the class. Here are the points, as I remember them, we touched on today with members both in the class and joining us online via Google Hangouts.
If you search the class notes you will find many notes on most of what we discussed today, so I will briefly write on each topic.
Pictures to the PC from our cameras and cell phones
Cameras and cell phones store the pictures you take in memory. Some have removable storage using SD or MicroSD cards. Even if they do not, the device can be plugged into a USB port on your PC. Windows see the device like it does a USB flash drive (a.k.a. thumb drive) and will display its contents in File Explorer. The pictures can be found in the folder named DCIM. I looked it up and it stands for Digital Camera IMage folder. Just like moving files to and from a USB flash drive, you can move files to and from your picture taking device.
Pictures from FacebookWhen you are viewing a picture on your newsfeed or in one of your friends (or your) page, click the picture to open it in its own window. Then right click and save image as to open a save as dialog box to give it a name a give it a location to store it on your PC. Remember, the pictures you are taking are not yours to use as you wish. They were taken by someone else, so be careful how you use them and perhaps ask permission to do so from the one whose page it is on.
Getting a picture off the Web using the Windows Snipping ToolIf you see a picture on your screen, you can save it as an image on your PC even if a save as image option is not available. Print Screen (Prnt Scrn on your keyboard) will take a picture of your screen and place it in the Windows clipboard. Paste it wherever you want and save it as an image on your PC. Since it is the entire screen you will want to edit that picture to crop it to get the actual image you want to save.
A better approach is to use the Snipping Tool that comes with Windows. This lets you drag a box around the piece of the screen you want to grab and save it as an image on your PC among other options. A non-Windows approach with many more options are available. One that I use is called Greenshot.
Resizing pictures
If you are using a cell phone for pictures, there is an edit feature built in that will enable you to resize and fix your picture before you even download it to your PC. A simple program I use to resize pictures in called Prish Resizer.
When we take digital pictures the resulting file size for each picture is 1mb or more, sometimes even as large as 4mb--depends on the megapixels of the camera and the complexity of the picture taken. The example I showed in class was a 1.4 mb or 1400 kb image that we resized to an 800x600 image using PrishResaizer to 80kb. Uploads to Facebook and attachments to emails go a lot quicker with a smaller size file.
Emailing pictures from our PC
Simply open your email (Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, Comcast, Embarqmail,etc) and compose a new email. Look for the button or picture of a paperclip to attache a file. Attaching means to send it along with your email giving the recipient the option to download it. Usually a thumbnail picture of the image displays at the bottom of the email. If you have the option (not available on all email types) to insert an inline picture that means the picture will display in the email itself so the recipient will not need to download it to view.
Editing pictures using Windows Live Photo Gallery
Photo Gallery allows you to edit your pictures. You can crop then, fix crooked images, brighten images, and much more. Thanks, Donna for showing us this great program.
Making a movie of your pictures using Photo Story 3
This is another free program that allows you to make an animated movie with sound of your still photos. Easy to use and works great.
I am sure we talked about a lot more, but this is where my recall is tonight..
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