Cmptr Help: How to edit JPEGs

Subject: Cmptr Help: How to edit JPEGs
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 08 Jun 01 - 11:00 AM

I have some pictures in JPEG form on a CD from the camera store. I need--or at least desire--to crop them. I know that some processors include the requisite software on the CD, but not this one. What do I need to get or do?

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Cmptr Help: How to edit JPEGs
From: GUEST,UB Dan
Date: 08 Jun 01 - 11:09 AM

Try this site:
http://hotfiles.zdnet.com/cgi-bin/texis/swlib/hotfiles/search.html

or if that fails go to www.zdnet.com click on Downloads at the top banner and search PC Downloads for JPEG...they have lots of freeware and shareware. ZDNet is a reputable site and I have always used them as an information and tool resource.

Subject: RE: Cmptr Help: How to edit JPEGs
From: Justa Picker
Date: 08 Jun 01 - 11:15 AM

For simple cropping and image manipulation I use a shareware program called L-View.

For more advanced things Adobe Photoshop is the defacto standard for PC's.

If you want a copy of L-view, Dave,PM me with your e-mail address and I'll hook you up.

Subject: RE: Cmptr Help: How to edit JPEGs
From: SDShad
Date: 08 Jun 01 - 11:58 AM

True to Mudcat, you've already got some good suggestions here, Dave, on what program to use. But I do have one caveat regarding editing jpegs at all: every single time you re-save a jpeg file, it recompresses it, unless you go into the settings not to do compression. And each iteration of saving/compressing causes an additional round of loss of detail in the image. Beth just rolls her eyes about it whenever someone brings her jpegs that are all grainy or bitmappy from repeated saving, and they expect her to do something useful with them.

So the best advice for all this is to start with a non-lossy format like TIFF rather than JPEG, but since you're already starting with jpegs, I'd say to be careful not to re-save it more than necessary--preferably just the once to crop it. Or, if you find you need to do further editing later on after you've already cropped it, return to the original source jpeg rather than re-editing the cropped one.

Hey, I've at least picked up this one useful thing from being married to a graphic artist.

Chris

Subject: RE: Cmptr Help: How to edit JPEGs
From: katlaughing
Date: 08 Jun 01 - 12:17 PM

Wow, SD, thanks for that. Now I know why they look progressively worse! Not a word of that in Adobe or Corel! Buggahs!

Subject: RE: Cmptr Help: How to edit JPEGs
From: Mary in Kentucky
Date: 08 Jun 01 - 12:44 PM

Yeah Chris, thanks! I've struggled for some time just trying to manipulate pictures. I finally bought Paint Shop Pro (~$70) so I could use the transparency feature and also to resize pictures. I was always confused (still am) with canvas size (in pixels or inches) and byte size. Before I got Paint Shop Pro, I could enlarge and shrink images just using HTML for the dimensions of the image. I really like being able to crop them though. As far as the compression...all I know to do is use more or less when I transfer from my digital camera. I've played a little with reducing colors, but not real good at it.

Subject: RE: Cmptr Help: How to edit JPEGs
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 08 Jun 01 - 12:55 PM

geeze Mary... I coulda got you PSP for free...

On a similar topic...

Anyone know how to 'crop' in a circle?!?! I can't seem to figure it out... (the pun is unintended, really!)

;-)

Subject: RE: Cmptr Help: How to edit JPEGs
From: katlaughing
Date: 08 Jun 01 - 01:07 PM

I've been trying to figure that one out, too, CH! Without the aliens' help, of course.:-)

Subject: RE: Cmptr Help: How to edit JPEGs
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 08 Jun 01 - 01:16 PM

what aliens? there are no aliens...

Subject: RE: Cmptr Help: How to edit JPEGs
From: mousethief
Date: 08 Jun 01 - 01:20 PM

If all you want to do is crop, Lview is super. Cheap, too.

Alex

Subject: RE: Cmptr Help: How to edit JPEGs
From: harpmolly
Date: 08 Jun 01 - 01:23 PM

For the last 6 months or so, I've been working on creating my own Tarot deck in MS Publisher. It's been fun but frustrating. I'd give my left foot (arms are far too valuable for the harp! ;)) for Photoshop--Publisher has its charms, but it's fairly primitive for some of the things I'd like to do. It does have cropping, though.

While we're on this subject--anyone know any really good clip art sites for icons or symbols? I'm having the Fool's own time finding an icon for the suit of Wands, and it's driving me up the wall. Sigh.

Anyway, there's my as always slightly OT rambling. :)

M

Subject: RE: Cmptr Help: How to edit JPEGs
From: Pene Azul
Date: 08 Jun 01 - 01:35 PM

Mary, changing canvas size will either add area outside of your image or will clip (crop) your image to change the overall size of the image. The byte size is probably the uncompressed size of the image, which is the product of the (width in Pixels) x (height in pixels) x (bytes of the color depth (often 24)). Definitely don't resize using HTML.

Clinton, attach some large boards to your feet... oh... er... In Photoshop, use a circular mask, select inverse, delete. Maybe there are other ways. Perhaps it works the same with other programs.

Jeff

Subject: RE: Cmptr Help: How to edit JPEGs
From: hesperis
Date: 08 Jun 01 - 01:44 PM

In PSP5, to crop in a circle, use the select tool, and then go to the brush menu thing... there's a drop-down menu on it that lets you select an area as a rectangle, square, oval, or circle. When you have your circle selected as you want it, then go to the "selections" menu, and "invert selection". Then just cut.

Mary - html resizing uses pixels, or percentages. In PSP5, if you set your picture to be 100 pixels per inch, then it will come out as equal to the html value that you would do normally.

Use smart resize. Then use either: absolute resizing - height, width and resolution (which should be set to 100) - or elative resizing (percentages).

If you are using percentage resizing, and want the image to look as it will on the html page, then set the resolution to 100 before you switch radio buttons and do a percentage resize.

Subject: RE: Cmptr Help: How to edit JPEGs
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 08 Jun 01 - 01:45 PM

sorry.. Did I say Photoshop?

I ment Paint Shop Pro... sorry aobut that...

any help?

Subject: RE: Cmptr Help: How to edit JPEGs
From: Grab
Date: 08 Jun 01 - 01:59 PM

Jasc releases old versions of Paint Shop Pro freely on magazine cover disks - this isn't too bad and has all the features on it. And it's free.

My problem is too _many_ bitmap editting programs. I started with Win95 and Wang Imaging (and Paintbrush, but that's BMP only). Then I installed Office - add MS Photo Editor. Then I got a printer - that came with Corel Paint, and some "artistic" image renderer which did editting as well. Then I got a scanner - that came with some picture library software with another editor built in. In the meantime, I got coverdisks with 3 versions of PSP...

Graham.

Subject: RE: Cmptr Help: How to edit JPEGs
From: YOR
Date: 08 Jun 01 - 01:59 PM

After using Lview shareware for many years I bought the full version for 50 dollars last year. The only thing bad about it is no book, only help files (I hate help files, about 400 seperate help files). I don't use any of the various software that came included with my scanner. Tried them but Lview can do it all.

Roy

Subject: RE: Cmptr Help: How to edit JPEGs
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 08 Jun 01 - 02:07 PM

Ta hes!

that got it!

Subject: RE: Cmptr Help: How to edit JPEGs
From: Pene Azul
Date: 08 Jun 01 - 02:10 PM

That's what I thought Clinton. I thought perhaps it was similar, or maybe you had PS too. There's a tutorial on this page that shows how to make a soft vignette, which, in part, involves an elliptical crop (you could also do it with a circle). Looks pretty much the same as in PhotoShop.

Jeff

Subject: RE: Cmptr Help: How to edit JPEGs
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 08 Jun 01 - 02:11 PM

well.. maybe not Hes... or maybe I'm just stupid about this stuff... now I have my circle image, but it's in a grey field... all I want to see is the circle image...

How do I do that?

;-)

Subject: RE: Cmptr Help: How to edit JPEGs
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 08 Jun 01 - 05:33 PM

Jeff (Pene) I don't think there's a smarter way than the one you suggested for "crop circles" in Photoshop. (Photoshop is by no means just PC-specific, Justapicker. Most of the publishing industry still cherish a belief that Photoshop - like all graphics packages - is handled better by Macs.)

Clint, in Photshop it would probably be easiest to select your circle, copy, open new file (which by default will be the size you need) and paste into the new file. Maybe that would work for PSP too?

Subject: RE: Cmptr Help: How to edit JPEGs
From: hesperis
Date: 08 Jun 01 - 05:59 PM

If you are not in 16 million colours, then when you cut, the background will fill in automatically. If you are in 16 million colours, then if you have grey around the edges, it's the colour that your PSP is assigning to "transparent". Make a new layer and fill it with some horrible colour and then drag it to under the part you want to see, to check if it is really transparent.

If you are not in 16 million colours, go to color - increase colours - 16 million.

If you want to make a background transparent for a gif, then fill in any "transparent" spots with a specific colour. Then make that same colour the background colour. (be careful to use a colour that is not used anywhere else in the image, or you will have interesting holes...) Then go to color - set palette transparency.

It will ask if you wish to convert the picture to a single layer and 256 colours. Say yes, then experiment with which method of reducing colour works best. I usually use ocree. Then, "set transparency to background color". Then save as a GIF and not as psp or jpg. This is usually the last stage I do in editing, and I save in psp format often.

If it doesn't work quite the way you want, well, that's what the undo is for.

Have fun!

Subject: RE: Cmptr Help: How to edit JPEGs
From: Blackcatter
Date: 08 Jun 01 - 06:33 PM

I use ThumbsPlus for most of my croping, etc. - it is a great thumbnail generating program for about $80.

It is terrific because I have about 10,000 images and the instantaneous access to them through their thumbnail is the best way for me to find things.

The rest of the program is very easy to navigate as well (no instruction book and the help pages are lame)

pax yall

Subject: RE: Cmptr Help: How to edit JPEGs
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 08 Jun 01 - 06:34 PM

Undo? Hell, that's what the back up file is for!

Ta everyone...

;-)

Subject: RE: Cmptr Help: How to edit JPEGs
From: hesperis
Date: 08 Jun 01 - 07:03 PM

Fionn... didn't see your post!

Yes in PSP you can easily select your circle, copy, and paste into a new image. However, if the original image is in less than 16 million, it will still fill in a background colour for the new image, too.

Subject: RE: Cmptr Help: How to edit JPEGs
From: Bill D
Date: 08 Jun 01 - 09:00 PM

for simple cropping and editing, the best FREE program seems to be Irfanview what this guy gives away is amazing!

for a newly free program with MANY features like PSP, try Satori

for lossless JPEG rotation and compression, including regional compression settings, look at JpegWizard

(Irfanview 'may' include lossless JPEG editing now also)

for MANY freeware graphics programs (and other things)look at Pricelessware which is part of Son of Spy Freeware

Subject: RE: Cmptr Help: How to edit JPEGs
From: Jande
Date: 08 Jun 01 - 09:41 PM

I just want to add a brief note about JPEGs and PSP.

In PSP6 there is an item on the FILE menu called EXPORT|JPEG file, which opens a dialog box that allows you easily change the % of compression.

My own trick with JPEG photos from my digital camera is to first use the IMAGE|BLUR|SOFTEN menu item which reduces the blockyness of the "lossy" jpeg format,

Then I save it as a tiff file, because that gives the best non-lossy compression, IMO. And then it is available for manipulation until you are ready to save it as a transparent gif (FILE|EXPORT|Transparent GIF) or a JPEG.

Also, just to add to Hes' excellent advice about PSP:

The bottom layer cannot be moved up, nor can anything be moved under it, to check the transparency. But you CAN select all and then choose LAYERS|DUPLICATE, after which you can "turn off" the bottom layer, and then slip Hes' coloured layer underneath it.

I've been using PSP since version 3 and I find it much more intuitive than Photoshop, though I have 6 different graphics programs on my p00ter including Corel 10. I find that PSP is the one I use the most for Graphics work, though Painter 5 and 6 are still my first choice for fine art/creative stuff.

Hope this adds something helpful to the thread.

~ Jande

Subject: RE: Cmptr Help: How to edit JPEGs
From: hesperis
Date: 08 Jun 01 - 10:40 PM

Aha! But, if you double-click on the "background" layer, it will automatically rename it to "layer#"...! And then it can be treated as any other layer.

This seems to be turning into a "PSP Supertips" thread... lol!

Subject: RE: Cmptr Help: How to edit JPEGs
From: Mary in Kentucky
Date: 08 Jun 01 - 11:22 PM

WOW! Good stuff here. I'm bookmarking this thread...AND I'M TAKING NAMES! (for when I stuck again) Thanks guys.

Subject: RE: Cmptr Help: How to edit JPEGs
From: Mary in Kentucky
Date: 08 Jun 01 - 11:33 PM

Mollificent, I've used this Clip Art Searcher to find specific things.

Subject: RE: Cmptr Help: How to edit JPEGs
From:
Date: 09 Jun 01 - 05:56 AM

I have used Paint Shop Pro both to crop, enlarge the image size and reduce the colours.