Adventures of a Computerphobe

by

Buck E. Bohlz

Chapter 4

"A Picture's Worth..."

You may recall our adventure of Chapter 3, in which we described our adventure in opening a pc-disc to retrieve three forms needed for recording our activities on a current project assignment, and then finding that Macintosh was able to translate the forms from pc-cuneiform into language and format which we could readily use.

Unrecounted at that time, and the subject of this current Chapter, were the trials and tribulations we endured in modifying an improperly-constructed form. Learning to fax the filled-out documents to our Client and Employer offices will be the subject of a future Chapter.

Two of the three forms, when retrieved from the pc-disc with the aid of the built-in translator in ClarisWorks, appeared exactly as needed. The third form, while textually correct, had a fatal flaw - the Project Logo (a full-color view of the Gulf Coast with a superimposed image of a Greek Goddess), instead of being at the left side of the header, was sandwiched between the header box and the document text.

The problem, simply put, was how to move the logo back into the header.

We tried a number of unsuccessful ploys:

- Delete and forward delete keys. Our logo remained motionless.

- Arrow keys. These moved the cursor but not our logo. We imagined a sneer appearing in the goddess's expression.

- Cut and Paste commands. Her sneer seemed more pronounced.

- Highlight and Delete. We were able to remove the header, or remove the logo, but getting the logo within the header as needed was impossible. Did we hear a high-pitched laugh coming from the page???

Our frustration level rose, along with our blood pressure. In desperation, we even tried:

- Promising the goddess a new wardrobe and dinner at Tony's. She remained stoic and immobile, although we detected (or imagined) a subtle realignment of her fingers.

Frustrated, we pondered our options, neither of which seemed satisfactory: We could remove the logo from the document completely, or we could leave it between the header and the text at the top of the page, which not only looked bad but shortened the usable page length by the height of the logo.

Having exhausted our keyboard options in ClarisWorks, we could have given up, asked the Project administrator for a hard copy of the form, scanned it into the Mac and used it as a "Draw Document" to generate our reports, but this option would entail our admission of defeat and admit to inferiority of the Mac vs. a pc, an option as repulsive as it is untrue.

Having full confidence in the Macintosh, we reviewed in our mind the steps taken to this point:

1. Insert the disc

2. Click on the icon of the "pc disc" to open a window showing the contents as documents

3. Double-click on the document wanted to open it

4. Elation as the Mac offers to translate the document! Click "OK".

5. Become ecstatic as ClarisWorks opens and the translated document appears in all its glory.

6. Get frustrated trying to modify the document.

Obviously, there was nothing wrong with steps 1 - 5, the problem had to be with step 6.

Remembering the advice of a wise mentor to learn from mistakes, build on successes, and remember the basics, we reviewed in our mind the features of the Macintosh that had served us well in past adventures. Inspired, we remembered having used a nifty feature that allowed us to take a picture of our screen. What was it called? Oh yeah, "Screenshot" or something....

A plan emerged. If we could take a picture of the header box and another picture of the logo, maybe we could lay the picture of the logo onto the header....

In fact, gentle reader, that is exactly what we did. The steps we took, with a few parenthetical comments, follow. Readers already expert in the feature may want to skim this article or skip it completely.

1. With the document to be photographed displayed on the screen (i.e. Step 5 above), (simultaneously) hit . A "crosshair" cursor appears.

2. Move the crosshair to a corner of the area you want to "photograph" and click and hold the mouse, use the mouse to enclose the field you wish to photograph. Release the mouse to take the picture (you will hear a camera shutter sound).

(If you find you have surrounded the wrong area or aren't happy with what is in the "view" thus created, hit ESC (Escape) BEFORE you release the mouse and repeat steps 1 and 2. Don't panic if you take a "bad" picture - you aren't going to run out of film AND you don't have to pay to have it developed.)

3. The snapshot ("Screenshot" if you are a purist) you just took will be stored automatically in the root directory of your start-up disc. To see it, open your start-up disc (by clicking on it). The snapshot will show as "PICTURE" with a suffix number. The last picture taken will have the highest number (Duh!).

(If you get confused as to which snapshot was which, you can click on the window icon to highlight it and go to "file" on the menu bar to "get Info" or just hit which will bring up a pop-up window which provides the date the snapshot was taken. This is especially helpful if you are not tidy enough to delete unneeded pictures when you have finished with them, by dragging their icon from the start-up disc window to Trash.)

4. To work with the picture, drag the file icon and drop it onto your Graphic Converter.

(You don't have Graphic Converter??? Here is where your patronage of the STMUG website begins to pay off...Graphic Converter is available in the Software section of the STMUG Website! Just download and install it before trying to work with your snapshots.)

Dropping the file icon onto the Graphic Converter icon on your desktop opens Graphic Converter and reveals the picture!

5. The Graphic Converter toolbox MAY open automatically as well (depending of preferences settings). If it does NOT, open it manually by going to "picture" in the Menu Bar, clicking, and then clicking on "show toolbox".

(I find it convenient to enlarge the image on the screen at this point to make it easier to work with. To do this, toggle at the "%" box at the bottom, left of the window containing the image, and select your preferred viewing size. Making a wrong selection doesn't trash anything, you can resize at any time you are in this screen.

After enlarging the image, you may want to use the "zoom box" to expand the window size to reveal more of the enlarged image. For you first-timers, the zoom box is in the upper right side of the window bar and looks like a square with a little square in the upper left corner - like a lousy framing job on a photograph.)

6. Click to select the "marquee" icon in the toolbox (it contains a dotted square) and use it to outline the area of interest in your snapshot, to "select" it. In our case, this was the logo per se.

(Graphic Converter allows you to resize the selected area by clicking and dragging on one of the eight larger squares in the "racing border", either inward or outward to suit your needs.) 7. Placing the cursor over the selected and (possibly) resized area, clicking and holding reveals a hand which can be used to move the selected area wherever we want it to be.

(This allowed us to put the logo into its proper position adjacent to the header text.)

8. Again using the marquee icon, outline just the area you want to appear in the final document (that is, to cut off the now-blank field where the logo used to be). After outlining the desired area with the marquee, hit command/y to trim the excess material.

9. Save the trimmed snapshot under a different name.

(Save in PICT format for subsequent use in a ClarisWorks document.

If you were intending to use the saved image for use in a website, you would want to save it in GIF format. If you want to print it as a "photographic" image, save it in JPEG/JFIF format.

The reason for the different formatting is that GIF compresses more readily and loads more quickly on your browser, and JPEG/JFIF handles colors more accurately and more easily - up to "millions of colors" as Mac is proud to say.)

10. Before saving, check the "Options" in the "Save" Dialog Box to make sure "Standard RLE" compression has been selected.

(Other compression options require detailed and complex explanation that your Computerphobic author is not qualified to present - at least not yet. We are learning, AND it IS Macintosh, which means it IS learnable.)

11, Quit Graphic Converter, remembering where the refined image (in our case, header) has been saved, and open Claris Works.

12. Open the saved, translated pc document that needed modification.

13. Highlight the faulty area of the document with the cursor and delete it.

14. Open the location (folder) where the refined image was saved in step 10, drag the image icon and drop it onto the document where you want the image to appear. The new header, complete with logo, appears on the document as if by magic (Mac-gic?) and you are ready to save the finalized document in ClarisWorks for future use.

We hope to see you at the next meeting!