Computer Info – March 19, 2003

Computer Info – March 19, 2003

This Week’s Meeting

First we will look at combining two photos by using layers and an eraser. We will use PhotoShop Elements for this. Then we will look at creating a quick photo album in PowerPoint 2002. I’m sure we will have time for questions afterwards.

April’s meetings will be on the 2^nd and the 23^rd.

Photo Album in PowerPoint

The Photo Album feature is one of the new feature to PowerPoint 2002.

To create a new photo album, choose INSERT, PICTURE, NEW PHOTO ALBUM. Here you will create, format and modify your albums.

To insert pictures from your hard drive, click the FILE/DISK button under INSERT PICTURE FROM. Click the file or files that you want to insert and click the INSERT button. You can then do some small photo editing to the pictures such as rotating them, adjusting the contrast and brightness. Click the CREATE button to create your photo album.

To adjust your album’s looks, choose FORMAT, PHOTO ALBUM. Choosing FIT TO SLIDE in the Picture Layout option is the most restrictive. This option won’t let you add captions to slides, and don’t even think about putting an artistic touch on frames or album layouts. Choose one of the other options and you can have lots of fun formatting your photo album.

The Picture Layout drop-down menu lets you select various slide layouts that include title text boxes.

Notice that the default background for your photo album is roughly as exciting as the label on a box of generic brand cereal. To add a little more flair, select a Picture Layout other than FIT TO SLIDE and then click the BROWSE button beside the DESIGN TEMPLATE line at the bottom of the dialog box.

Choose SLIDE SHOW – SLIDE TRANSITION and pick a transition . Under Advance Slide, click Automatically After and enter a time interval in seconds (3 is a good choice for self-running presentations). Click the APPLY TO ALL SLIDES button.

Replacement for Family Origins

http://www.Rootsmagic.com

Family Origins is being discontinued and will no longer be supported by Genealogy.com as of June 30, 2003.

FormalSoft is best known as the developer of Family Origins, a genealogy program that was licensed to Parsons Technology in 1990. The license was bounced from company to company, to the point that FormalSoft basically lost control of the program. They decided that it was necessary to write a whole new genealogy program. The new program is RootsMagic – and it was written by the same programming “team” that has written every version of Family Origins (for the past 13 years).

There are hundreds of thousands of Family Origins users out there that might like to know about this newest version (named RootsMagic) -- so if you have friends or relatives that are using Family Origins, let them know about RootsMagic.

RootsMagic was available for a limited time (previous to March 15^th) for an introductory price of $19.95 plus shipping/handling. The price now is $34.95.

Combining Two Photos – Using PhotoShop Elements

One method of combining two photos is to work with layers and an eraser.

Of course, your first decision is what photos to use and where you have them. Open your two photos. Next create a blank sheet of paper to work on – FILE – NEW – make it slightly larger than your largest picture.

The next step is very, very important. YOU MUST SIZE ONE OF YOUR PICTURES SO THAT THE SUBJECTS ARE THE SAME SIZE IN BOTH. This is NOT done by zooming the picture. You must RESIZE it. When viewing the pictures, view them at the same ratio – 50%, 1:1, etc. When you have determined that one of them needs to be resized – go to IMAGE – RESIZE – IMAGE SIZE. Change either the height or the width – when you change one, the other will be automatically changed. Now look at both of your pictures again and determine if they are the right size.

Now, the picture that you are taking a piece of to place into the other picture – from the main menu, choose SELECT – ALL then EDIT – COPY. Now click on your blank sheet of paper and choose EDIT – PASTE. You now have one layer. Next, repeat these directions for the second picture. You now have two layers. From the LAYERS dropdown menu, click on the second layer and change it’s opacity to about 50 to 60 percent – so that you can see through that layer to see the other layer. Now you can position your first layer.

Choose the ERASER tool – set your brush size and start erasing. Zoom in to do the detail work.

When combining pictures by using the ERASER tool, you only have to watch one picture. When combining pictures by using the CLONE tool, you have to keep an eye on two pictures.

Sound on Your Web Page

Not all html coding is recognized by both Internet Explorer and Netscape.

When adding sound to your web page, the html code (embed) worked only for Netscape and, likewise, (bgsound) worked only for Internet Explorer. There was no single HTML tag that would embed music on a page in such a way that both browsers would play it. This caused a great deal of confusion as webmasters strived to make their pages equally accessible to all users. The agreed upon solution was to simply use both tags, and that seemed to work well enough.

It appears that Internet Explorer 4.0 and up now recognizes the Netscape EMBED extension, and conventional webmaster wisdom is leaning towards using EMBED as the sole means of putting music on a page.

Here is the code that will allow your music to play when a person visits your web page. Of course you know, you must replace the filename.mid with your music file.

This will NOT have a music player visible on your screen. The music will be hidden. It is the hidden=true tag that hides the player from your viewers. This coding will produce automatic start and continuous play music.