Technology Tip of the Week - July 3, 2007

Resizing Pictures in FrontPage

I'm sure everyone who has worked with web pages has had an instance where they dragged a photo or graphic to fit a particular space and ended up with something that looked like it belonged in the funhouse! Usually we'd have to bring the photo into a program like Adobe PhotoShop to resize it correctly and then upload and insert the modified file. Since not everyone has this expensive program, or is comfortable using it, this can be a problem. Well, did you know that FrontPage could do this for you? Using a process called resampling, FrontPage can actually change the pixel dimensions, and therefore the physical size, of a picture or graphic. Graphics can be resampled down (the number of pixels decreased) or resampled up (the number of pixels increased) according to its new size, which can provide improved clarity while increasing or decreasing the size of the graphics file. Who knew?

Resize a Picture or Graphic

First you would resize your picture or graphic to the desired size using one of two methods in FrontPage - either manually resizing or by specifying pixel or percentage.

Manually resizing

To manually resize a photo or graphic that you've inserted on your web page:

  1. Click on the photo or graphic to select it and display the sizing handles
  2. Clicking on a corner handle, drag to the desired size (remember to always grab a corner handle so that your picture or graphic is sized proportionately.)
Resizing using specific pixel or percentage instructions

If you have an area on your web page you want to fit your picture or graphic into, you can resize your original by specifying the coordinates of that area. To resize this way:

  1. In Page view, at the bottom of the document window, click Design.
  2. Right-click the picture, and then click Picture Properties on the shortcut menu.
  3. On the Appearance tab, under Size, select the Specify size check box. To retain the current aspect ratio select the Keep aspect ratio check box. In the Height and Width boxes, enter the pixel or percent values that you want. If you select the Keep aspect ratio check box and then enter a value for either Height or Width, FrontPage automatically changes the value in the other box to preserve the original proportions.

Resampling Your Picture or Graphic

Resizing a picture changes only the HTML tags that tell a Web browser how to display that picture. The graphics file itself is not changed, and neither is its size or its download time. Resampling will actually change the pixel count, thus the size, of your resized graphic. To resample your new picture or graphic:

  1. Click on your resized picture or graphic to select it
  2. You should see a little icon in the lower-right corner of the picture, which is called a Picture Actions button
  3. Click the Picture Actions Button Image button
  4. Click Resample Picture to Match Size

That's it! How easy was that?

For more help with this feature, please contact one of the IT Instructional Support team (Norm Grant, Gene Grande or Linda Beith) or faculty mentor Kathy Beauchene.

Website of the Week

The Digital Library for Earth System Education

The Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE) is a distributed community effort involving educators, students, and scientists working together to improve the quality, quantity, and efficiency of teaching and learning about the Earth system at all levels.

DLESE supports Earth system science education by providing:

DLESE resources include electronic materials for both teachers and learners, such as lesson plans, maps, images, data sets, visualizations, assessment activities, curriculum, online courses, and much more. Funding for DLESE comes in part from the National Science Foundation. View this website at: http://www.dlese.org/library/

Feel free to post your thoughts or opinions of this article in the Teaching Forum message board.

These tips are provided by the Department of Information Technology instructional support team. If you have any questions on these tips, or wish to offer your own, please feel free to contact Linda Beith at lbeith@ccri.edu. View an archive of past technology tips at http://it.ccri.edu/Training/Tips/tip_week.shtml.
 

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