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Scanning and Manipulation
So you have brought the shiny new computer home and the
14yo kid next door has set it up for you and connected your
peripherals (including that nice scanner), he has even shown
you how to turn the damn thing on!
You have even found that 'Sportsfish' site your mate was
telling you about.
Great! now to get that secret pic up on the web, the one
of your mate holding a tiddler and you holding a beauty.
Hang on.... whats all this 'dpi' 'bmp' 'jpeg' 'gif' stuff,
and what the heck is a pixel?
Terminology
- dpi or 'dots per inch'. The number of dots a printer
can print on an inch of paper.
- bmp an image file format called a 'bitmap'
- jpeg or jpg a compressed image file format (good for
photo's)
- gif or 'graphics interface format' another compressed
image file (good for those animated thingys on the site)
- pixel a dot or unit on your screen (we can use pixels
as a measurement)
Do I need to know this?
Well yes and no! Rudimentary knowledge will suffice for
what we want (I bet that makes you feel better!)
Three Things to remember
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 The
first thing to consider is what resolution 'DPI'
to save your picture at. As the image is being
displayed on a monitor via the Internet it can
only be displayed at 75dpi on the vast majority
of monitors set at 800 x 600.
The
second thing to consider is the actual size of
the image. The maximum width recomended here at
'Sportsfish'
is 400 pixel's so that they do not take up
too much space
If you scan a 6 x 4 photo at 100 dpi it
would have the following size.
(6 inches x 100 dpi) x (4 inches x 100 dpi)
= 600 x 400 pixel's
You can then crop, resize and resample
the image once you scan it with 'image software'
(yep, you got image software on your computer,
dont panick)
When referring to image size for viewing
on monitors we refer to the size in Pixel's.
A pixel is a dot on your monitor, a 800
x 600 monitor resolution is made up of 800
pixel's horizontally and 600 pixel's vertically.
(simple huh?)
The
third thing to consider is what format to save
the image in. Photographs on the Internet are
best as JPEG or JPG (.jpg extension).
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Lets Scan our image
There are 37 different scanners and 59 different software
bundles on the market but they all do roughly the same job,
some better than others. Push the button to start your scan,
or alternatively open your "imaging" software"
(hidden away in "programs"-"accessories"-"images")
In that program click "File"-"aquire image"
you should be presented with 3 choices "type of photo"
"preview scan" and "final scan". We
will choose "color photo" and "preview scan"
to start.
At this point you can now crop your photo by using your
mouse to draw a square or rectangle around the part of the
photo preview you want, then hit "final scan".
Save the photo somewhere safe (dont loose it) Save it as
a .jpg (from the dropdown menu in the save box) This is
what I've got so far! (these photo's are smaller than on
the computer) (ps. Dont take your son fishing. Grrr).
Lets Make it the right size
In 'Windows' along with the 'image' software you should
have a program called 'paint' I used this to resize the
pics that I saved from the scan. Open 'paint' then click
'File' and click 'open' look for your picture that you saved,
open it. At the top, click the 'Image' button then click
'stretch/skew' IMPORTANT: when you change the 'horizontal'
size by whatever percentage make sure you change the 'vertical'
by the same amount or your pic will skew up and look terrible......
Hmmm the purple pub in the Gulf country....make anybodys
pics skew up..................
When you save the pic after resizeing it will ask if you
want to replace the pic you allready 'had' click yes!
This pic is 413 pixels X 265 pixels and is 15kb in size,
just about right for 'Sportsfish'
Lets Upload it to 'Sportsfish'
When you are ready to post your pic and have opened up
the dialog box you will notice a button on the control panel
that looks like this 
this button will open up an up-load panel, click browse
and find your pic to be uploaded, follow the prompts and
post your photo. Easy dont you think 
Acknowledgements
Lets thank Neil for even suggesting I try and write this damn thing! 
Thanks David:
Sportsfish Australia would like to thank our very own David 'Sailfish',
for putting together this step by step help on scanning and manipulation.
We're sure this will give you a good start.
David builds and maintains a number of fishing websites; Click on the
Sailfish to check them out!
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