TUESDAY'S TIPS
As genealogists we work with all sorts of documents & images. Right? Many times these documents or images are crooked, difficult to read or have extra borders around them. When you are ready to work with these items (after downloading them from an online site or scanning), how do you go about "fixing" the problems? Here are the questions:
1. Do you buy an expensive photo editing software?
2. Do you just leave them the way they are?
3. Do you use the programs that come with your computer?
Many people cannot afford to buy or don't want to have to learn to use programs like Photoshop, Photoshop Elements or Corel. The learning curve on some of these programs can be daunting.
If you are like me, you want the documents that you attach to your ancestors files to look good. Especially if you plan to use them in reports or share them with family or online.
Your downloaded or scanned document may look something like this. It's not pretty, that's for sure.
Wouldn’t
you rather that it looked like this?
Here is what I do with my images.
I use Microsoft Office 2010. This is a program can be purchased for $94.99 at the following site http://www.softwareking.com/O2K10HSPKC.html?gclid=CI7n7MCI4LoCFaQ9QgodUEAA
It is part of the Microsoft Office suite. Many people are not aware that there is a photo editing software included with the office suite.
(If you are using a Mac, I apologize. I
cannot speak to the programs included with a Mac.)
You can go to any image in your
computer, right click and choose “open with” and then choose Microsoft Office
2010. Here’s a question – was this program
called Microsoft Office 2008 or 2009, prior to this? I don’t know.
What I do know is that I also used this program when I had Windows
XP. I am currently using Windows 7.
Once you have the image opened in the
program you should see a screen like this. Now click on "Edit Pictures"
A new section will open up and look like this:
Now you will click on rotate first, as you want to straighten this item before cropping it. When you click on the ROTATE option it will open up a menu on the left. Use the arrow in the "by degree" area to rotate the item either left or right. TIP: You can actually select increments like 1.5 or 1.8 or -1.5 or -1.8 to get the item as straight as possible. Now it looks like this:
To crop the item click on "Edit Pictures" in the top menu again. Now select "CROP" from the menu on the right. You will see corner brackets around the image. Move them to crop your item and then BE SURE to click the OK button (located under the menu on the right) to finish the crop.
TIP: If your image is too light click on the "AUTO CORRECT" in the top menu.
Please remember to SAVE your image or you will lose all your changes. Now your image looks just like the second one I showed you at the beginning of this post.
I do hope this was helpful. Play around with this program. You can resize images or o adjust the color. How about removing red eye from pictures? This little FREE program has some very nifty features. If you like it, set it as the default when you open any JPG or PNG image. I don't work with TIFF or BMP or GIF files, so I will be honest and tell you that I don't know if the program works with them.
Happy cropping,
Michigan Girl
Copyright © 2013 Diane Gould
Hall
