Computer Info – August 7, 2002

 

This Week’s Meeting

            Take a quick look at UltraWipe – and Norton Anti-Virus 2002 – and look at the photo pages I have made.  Let’s finish up with basics and repeats.

 

Making Photo Pages in PhotoShop

            Start with a blank sheet  Start with a blank sheet  (FILE – NEW ).  For printing on a 8 ½ x 11 sheet of paper, I make the size 7.8 inches wide by 10.2 inches high.  Remember when you are placing text or pictures on this sheet that you do not have to allow for any margins.  You can see that our sheet is already smaller than the 8 ½ x 11 sheet of paper – so you can place any of your information all the way to the edge.  Be sure to set the resolution to 300 – the mode to RGB color.

            Find your pictures Now open a picture that you would like to place on this blank sheet  (FILE – OPEN ).  This, of course, is one of the hardest steps – locating the picture.  Once the picture is opened – you can then crop it or select only a portion of it.

            Crop  To crop it – locate your CROP tool.  Left click and hold the button down on the top left icon on the tools and a fly-out menu will appear that contains the CROP tool.  Move your mouse to it and then release the mouse button.  With this tool chosen, you can move to your picture and draw a box around the portion of the picture that you want to use.  When you have the area chosen, then double-click with the left mouse button in the center of the area – this will make the rest of the picture disappear.

            Select   Determine if you want to place the entire picture on your blank sheet or just a selected area.  To choose the entire picture, choose SELECT – ALL.  This will place a dotted marquee around the entire picture.  To select only a portion of your picture (like the zebra toward the front of your picture and not the animals in the background) – then on the tools, choose the LASSO (second icon down on the left column) and draw around the object to be chosen leaving a nice margin between the object and your lasso.  When you are finished, you will see a dotted marquee surrounding the object.  It is much nicer to soften the edges – so you should FEATHER them.  To do this, choose ( SELECT – FEATHER ) then type in an amount (probably in the range of 10 to 20) then click OK.  You will not see anything different until your selection is moved or copied and pasted.

            Copy & Paste  Next we copy it  (EDIT – COPY ).  This will just copy the area that has been selected.  Before you choose the PASTE command, you must click on your blank sheet to make it the active sheet.  Now you can choose paste  (EDIT – PASTE ).  Your object should now appear on your blank sheet. 

            Moving your object and resizing it  To move your object on your page, use the MOVE tool – this is located on the tools – top right.  Place your cursor on your page, hold the left mouse button down – and you will be able to move your picture to the desired location.  If your picture is to large or too small, you can resize it by choosing ( EDIT – TRANSFORM – SCALE ).  This will place handles on your picture that you can use to adjust the size.  REMEMBER – IT IS BE TO ONLY USE THE CORNER ADJUSTMENTS – AND BE SURE THAT YOU HOLD THE SHIFT KEY DOWN WHEN DOING THIS.  The reason for holding the SHIFT key down, is to maintain the aspect ratio to keep your object proportional.  When you have made your adjustments,  double click inside of the selection to make your adjustments permanent. 

Layers  Once you have placed an second object on your sheet, you may have noticed that you cannot move the first object that you placed – because the last object that you placed seems to be the only one that will move.  The solution to this is to be able to change the layer that you are on.  To see what is on each layer, choose  ( WINDOW – SHOW LAYERS ).  This will open up the layers window.  In order to move an object that is on the first layer, click on that layer in the layer window.  Then when you move your cursor back to your sheet that you are working on, it will be the object that is on your first layer that will move.  Use this method to go back and forth between the layers.

Move object to the back or front  Sometimes you will find that your pictures are overlapping each other.  This might be the result that you are trying to achieve.  But, maybe you would prefer to have the picture you are working on – to be the picture that is in the front.  To change this, choose  ( LAYER – ARRANGE ) – from there you can send your picture to the FRONT or send it to the BACK.

Text  It is always nice to title and date your page of pictures – maybe place a few comments or descriptions by some of the pictures.  To do this, choose the TEXT tool.  Click on your page where you would like the text to start.  This will open up the TYPE TOOL window.  Here you can set the FONT and FONT SIZE for your text.  Notice that there is no drop down menu choice for the FONT SIZE – therefore, just type in the size – then type in the text that you want on the page.  Click OK, and your text will be placed on the page.  If the size seems to be too large or too small, this is a good time to DELETE the layer  ( LAYER – DELETE LAYER ).  Click on the text tool again and change the size of the font.  Once you have placed your text, you can use the MOVE tool to re-position it.  You will notice on your LAYERS window, that the text has become a layer of it’s own.  Every time that you add text, it is placed on another layer.

Saving your work  When you have finished with your photo page, it is time to save it.  By choosing  (FILE – SAVE AS ) – you will notice that the only choice that you have, is to save it as a  .PSD  --  this is a photoshop format that is not recognized by all photo viewer programs.  You would only save it in this format, if you still wished to edit the photo page – because the layers are still maintained.  A photoshop format is a very large file.  If you are finished with it, you can save it as a JPG by choosing

( FILE – SAVE A COPY ) – you will see JPG listed there.

 

UltraWipe

            UltraWipe is a utility program that enables complete removal of sensitive data from your hard drive by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns.  You can quickly select common file types like browser cache, temp files and others.  The program comes with an “Urgent Wipe” feature that enables a “panic button” which will instantly delete a users defined range of files by either pressing the tray icon or a keyboard shortcut.  It can clean up your browser’s cache, cookies, history, recent document list and custom entries.  It will also wipe your RAM for any bits of information that were not lost when your computer was turned off.

            If you are interested in the program, you can download it free from

                        http://www.webattack.com

 

1881 Canadian Census – Windows XP

            If you have the 1881 Canadian Census on CD and you are running Windows XP – it’s possible that you will get a “run time error 7” and you will not be able to access the CD.  There is a software patch that you can get to correct the problem.  Send an email to

                                    help@productsupport.familysearch.org

Ask for the text file  (  XPError7.rtf  )  and the software patch  (  Err7Fix.bat  ) – and they will email them to you.