Wednesday, June 30, 2004

Copyright Free Images

Pics4Learning
Collection of copyright-friendly images for education.
Accepts contributions of images.
Also has a collection of lesson plans.

Saturday, June 26, 2004

Uploading Photos (Cathednet)

1..Prepare the photos (See earlier posts) *Make sure there are no spaces in any of the filenames.
2..Access your mydesktop
3..Home Pages Button, Page Uploader
4..Open the Directory you want or you may want to create a new one (If you want to use a directory you have just created then make sure you open it).
5..Browse to select a file (you can repeat this for four files).
6..Tick both convert to lowercase and convert .htm to .html - a good habit.
7..Click on upload.
8..Move down the page to check that the files have uploaded.

Note: If a file is large then it may not upload - you may not get a message telling you that the upload was unsuccessful.

[Advanced: If you have a number of files to upload, you could zip them and then unzip them as they are uploaded. Alternatively, if your computer has permission for ftp (Check with your Sina Administrator) you can use ftp to upload your photos.]

Basic: Image Optimizer for easy photo prep

Launch Image Optimizer then:
1..Open - Open the photo you want to prepare
2..Crop – Click on Crop Tool (second on down). Drag an outline around the important part of the photo. Click on Crop.
3..Re-size – Make sure photo is full-size (click 1:1 button, or View: Normal Viewing 1:1). Click Resize Tool (third one down). Make sure maintain aspect ratio is ticked. Now drag the resize sliders until photo is the size you want.
4..Optimise – Click compress Tool (Clenched Fist). Make sure JPG is clicked. Drag the quality slider until the quality of the photo is acceptable for the use you want and the file size is suitable.
5..Save Optimised as – Click Save.. Button (or File Save Optimised As). Make the filename different in some way from the original photo.

About Image Optimizer:
Free Version: Can be used as above.
Standard Version: Adds automatic compression, saving as a .gif (good for graphics eg drawings with few colours)…
Professional Version: Adds photo-editing (change Brightness, Contrast..) …

Current Price of Image Optimizer: Standard USD39, Professional USD99

Friday, June 25, 2004

Basic: Software you can use to prepare photos for publication:

There are many graphics editors you can use. They include the following sophisticated editors:
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop Elements
Paintshop Pro

There are also simpler and less expensive software packages which include:

Irfanview (free) Irfanview Website
Image Optimiser (shareware) Image Optimiser Website

Basic: Preparing Digital Photos for publication

If digital photos are properly prepared:
Email will be quicker for you to send and for the receiver to download.
Powerpoint Presentations, Publisher and Word documents will be faster to save and take up less disk space.
Web Albums and Web Pages will load more quickly.

Preparing Photos for publication involves some or all of the following:
Crop – trim unwanted areas from around the main subject of the photo.
Re-size – change the full-size view of the photo to the dimensions you require in your publication.
Optimise – change the file-size of the photo on disk by using file compression to the optimum: minimum file-size for acceptable quality.

Some good Strategies:
If you ever need to re-work a photo start again from the original. You will get a better result than re-editing a compressed image.
Save changed photos with only a slightly different filename. As a result:
The original remains unchanged and can be used again in a different way.
You know which is the original and which is the optimised image.

Examples of filenames:
guitar - original
guitaro – optimised
guitarto - optimised thumbnail (small size)
guitarao - optimised and adjusted (ie large crop or major re-size)

Diji Album - some photos from Ngalangangpum 25 year celebration

Ngalangangpum 25 years Album 1
Photo Album created using Diji Album.
The opening book style of the Diji Albums is attractive as well as the ability to click on an image to see it full size.

Thursday, June 24, 2004

Welcome

Welcome to barkochre. Sometime soon you'll see some activity here.