Basic Photo Editing with MS Office

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24 years 2 months

Posts: 12,009

Right, here we go. This is intended as a bit of instructional advice on basic photo editing. We'll move on to some more advanced stuff at a later date.

The rules: feel free to post questions and/or comments, but keep them limited to the topics I go over in order to keep this from becoming a massive thread rivalling the Hello! debacle over on GD :D

To start off with, here's what we'll cover in general photo editing.
-resizing
-cropping
-autocorrecting

The program I use for all this is Microsoft Office Picture Manager, available with Microsoft Office 2003. Later on I'll cover how to do some of this with more basic applications such as Microsoft Paint if anyone requires the help.

RESIZING

This is generally simple. Make sure you start with 100% selected of the picture being viewed. Yes, that'll more than likely mean it extends beyond the size of your screen, but since the basic intent here is to get it down to a size where it's viewable on-screen here on the forum, that's no big deal.

Anyway, click on Picture, and then select Resize. Select Percent of original width x height. To retain clarity, don't try some weird measurement like 27%. You'll get the best results keeping it to multiples of 100, as in 25%, 50%, or 75%. 50% is usually the way to go and works the best for me, although you might end up with a bit smaller image than you'd like. For a forum, that generally isn't a problem, as people who want the original image can PM you anyway.

So, try 50%. Then hit OK. Your picture is now resized! Close the resize window and move on.

CROPPING

Click on Picture, and then select Crop. Use your mouse to drag the black bars along the edges of the picture to select the part of the image you want to keep. Now hit OK, and close the crop window.

AUTOCORRECTING

Autocorrect can clear up a lot of things for you with very minimal effort. Colors are redefined, for one. This one is up to you if you like it or not. If you don't like the results, you can always click on Edit and select Undo Auto Correct.

Anyway, to autocorrect an image, click on Picture and select Auto Correct. This is done automatically, so you won't have to mess with any toolbars. As stated before, if the results don't work for you, hit Undo (Control-Z or find it in the Edit menu).

To achieve the best results, I've found that it works best to do these in the following order:

1. Autocorrect, then keep or discard the changes.
2. Crop out what you want.
3. Resize the image for posting.
4. Save the image to your desktop.

What's that? A fourth step? This one is important! Don't save the image by clicking on the Save icon at ANY point, or you'll overwrite your original image. I always keep the originals around for future messing with. To save your edited image, follow these steps.

1. Click File.
2. Select Save As.
3. name your image and save it to your desktop, or wherever else you want.

Then you've made sure you have an edited image for posting, and your original image is kept free of changes as well. One quirk this program has is that even if you save the edited image, it'll still pop up a window when you go to exit asking if you want to save the changes to your original image. Always make sure you hit Don't Save. Otherwise, your original image will still be overwritten with all your changes.

That's about it. Now you can successfully crop, resize, and if you want autocorrect your images for display here on the forums.

Original post

Member for

20 years 4 months

Posts: 1,713

Using Microsoft Photo Editor

For those of us still using Microsoft Office versions from before Office 2003, Picture Manager is not available. Before Picture Manager, Office was shipped with a copy of Microsoft Photo Editor (available in Office 2000, Office XP and I think also in Office 97). The same options are available in this program.

Installing Photo Editor (Assuming you are running Windows XP, refer to the Office manual of your version for instructions on how to install on other versions.)
Sometimes Photo Editor isn't included in the standard installation. If you have the Microsoft Office CD(s) available then installing Photo Editor is quite easy.
1. Go to Start - Settings - Control Panel - Add or Remove Programs
2. Find your Microsoft Office installation in the list, select it and press the 'change' button. Insert the CD in the drive if you haven't done so already.
3. In the wizard select 'Add or Remove components' and select 'next...'
4. In the tree view that opens, click on the plus sign next to 'Office Tools'
5. Find Photo Editor in the subtree that opens, and select 'Run from my computer' from the icon next to it.
6. Press the 'Update' button at the bottom, you may need to restart your computer afterwards.

Microsoft Photo Editor should now be available from the 'Microsoft Office Tools' folder in the Start menu.

Resizing
Once the image is opened, select 'Image' and 'Resize...'.
With the Units set to Pixels, I tend to resize images to 700 or 800 pixels wide, or 600-700 pixels high if in portrait format. This will give you an image which, when viewed in full size, is fully visible on most screens (as most of the computer screens are set at 1024x768 pixels). If you want to make sure that people with a 800x600 setting can see your photo, make this 700 pixels wide or 500 pixels high (you will always need to leave some room for toolbars etc).

Cropping
With the image selected, click on the select tool on the toolbar (A dotted rectangle between the Zoom tool and the Undo/Redo buttons). Draw a rectangle on the image and adjust with the 'handles' if necessary. After this, right-click inside the rectangle and select 'Crop'.

Autocorrecting
Through the 'Image' menu and 'Balance' it is possible to adjust the Contrast, Brightness and Gamma of the image. If you are not comfortable playing with these values, then the 'Image' menu also has an 'Autobalance' option which adjusts them for you. If you are not happy with the results, select 'undo' from the edit menu.

Saving your image
After editing the image to your liking, select 'Save as...' from the 'File' menu.
NEVER use the 'Save' button on the toolbar as this will overwrite the original file!!
Give the image a new name or select a different folder to save it in, and press the 'More>>' button at the bottom of the dialog. On the slider that is now visible, adjust the JPEG quality factor to 50-60%. This should give you an image which is small enough (in filesize) to upload to these forums. If you are saving an edited version of an image for your own archive, it is better to save as a .TIF file without any compression as you will not lose any image quality in this format.

Member for

24 years 2 months

Posts: 12,009

Archer-nice addition! I was thoroughly irritated when Office 2003 was found to lack Photo Editor until I figured out Picture Manager was the same basic thing; I got a lot of use from Photo Editor.

Member for

20 years 8 months

Posts: 1,964

MS Photo Editing Software

Please be careful - some MS applications make irrevocable changes on the original image - which means you could loose the original if you're not careful.

Always, always, copy an image to another folder, and work on that copy, never an original you will want to leave that completely untouched (even if it is just to revisit and redo the job at a later date).

In fact, the default Windows XP viewer may change an image if you simply rotate it to view it (it does warn you, but it is easy to make a mistake, even so) - so I would say don't even view an original image, unless you're confident it isn't likely to be changed.

Saving your image
After editing the image to your liking, select 'Save as...' from the 'File' menu.
NEVER use the 'Save' button on the toolbar as this will overwrite the original file!!
Give the image a new name or select a different folder to save it in, and press the 'More>>' button at the bottom of the dialog. On the slider that is now visible, adjust the JPEG quality factor to 50-60%. This should give you an image which is small enough (in filesize) to upload to these forums. If you are saving an edited version of an image for your own archive, it is better to save as a .TIF file without any compression as you will not lose any image quality in this format.

I would revise this to reflect what I say above - that is create a new folder for images you want to work on, and copy the target image file there - leave the original completely untouched otherwise.

That way, if you do make a mistake and use the "save" option, you'll save yourself a lot of hair (and I know a few of you are somewhat deficient in that area as it is).

Member for

20 years 8 months

Posts: 1,964

Resizing
Once the image is opened, select 'Image' and 'Resize...'.
With the Units set to Pixels, I tend to resize images to 700 or 800 pixels wide, or 600-700 pixels high if in portrait format. This will give you an image which, when viewed in full size, is fully visible on most screens (as most of the computer screens are set at 1024x768 pixels). If you want to make sure that people with a 800x600 setting can see your photo, make this 700 pixels wide or 500 pixels high (you will always need to leave some room for toolbars etc).

Don't confuse this with compression.

Compression can be used to reduce the file size WITHOUT reducing the physical dimensions. Of course, resizing will have an effect on the file size by virtue of the fact that the image is smaller - but if you want to simply make the file size smaller it is possible in tools like Picassa, Gimp, Paintshop Pro and Photoshop.

Compression will have a deletarious effect on image quality, of course, but most images can be compressed a little without visibly affecting the image.

Member for

20 years 4 months

Posts: 1,713

Compression can be used to reduce the file size WITHOUT reducing the physical dimensions. Of course, resizing will have an effect on the file size by virtue of the fact that the image is smaller - but if you want to simply make the file size smaller it is possible in tools like Picassa, Gimp, Paintshop Pro and Photoshop.

Compression will have a deleterious effect on image quality, of course, but most images can be compressed a little without visibly affecting the image.


A true statement. When I wrote the piece (a while ago it seems) I wanted to present a simple workflow to create images suitable for posting on the internet. Because of this reducing the physical size of the image is a good first step which has the by-effect of also reducing the file size by a fair bit as the image file now has to store less data (3000x2000=6.000.000 data points, 1000x680= 680.000 data points).

As for compression, that's a different story. With compression you are also throwing away data from the image but without changing the physical dimensions. When archiving images it is best to use no compression (uncompressed TIFF, BMP or another format) but again, for viewing on the internet a bit of compression isn't a bad thing. The trick is to find a level of compression that doesn't degrade the image too much when viewing it. I mentioned 50-60% above for use with photo editor, in Photoshop I tend to save at setting 6-7 (out of 12) for this purpose. With other software this could be different again. Remember that when an image is compressed and saved, the information is lost! Always keep the originals safe in another folder!

Good to have this topic back in view again, it might be worthwhile to keep on adding to it so that it can serve as a 'tips and trics topic' or 'graphics survival guide' ;)

Member for

24 years 2 months

Posts: 16,832

In which case the warning not to keep resaving compressed files such as jpgs should be here writ large.

If you are doing any editing and then saving and then want to do further editing you must go back to the original file and start again, not the edited file or you will get progressively poorer results.

Moggy

Member for

17 years 6 months

Posts: 529

I always save my shots to disc unedited first, that way if I over write the image I have a true backup to fall back on.

Phill

www.outflankeduk.com- my website(soon to be rebuilt!)