Inserting and Manipulating Images in Microsoft WordCreated by: Keith Dennison

August 2007

Part I – Retrieving and Saving Images There are many sources for images (photographs, ClipArt, maps, diagrams, .jpg’s, .bmp’s, .gif’s, etc.). Each one has its own unique way of allowing you to access them. The most common way to access images are:

digital cameras and digital video cameras – images or movies are stored on the camera’s memory or on removable media such as SD cards or memory sticks

the Internet – images are uploaded to a webpage and stored on a server for access by visitors to the webpage

subscription services – services such as unitedstreaming.com, news services (AP, T.V. networks’ webpages, Corbis, etc.)

Each digital camera or digital video camera comes with instructions on how to save images and movies to a computer’s hard drive. If you have these devices, please refer to the manufacturer’s instructions that came with the camera. Failing that, refer to the manufacturer’s website for instructions.

Subscription services also have their own unique way of allowing users to save images to their hard drives. Please consult the service’s instruction guides (i.e. Hunterdon Central’s NJN Digital Classroom Guide) on how to do this.

Using Search Engines to Retrieve and Save Images

The Internet has a pretty uniform system to access and save images. NOTE: Images on the Internet are often copyrighted. You must follow copyright law if you are using images from a general Internet search. The most efficient way to use the Internet to find images is to use a search engine (Google, Yahoo!, Lycos, Ask.com, Vivisimo, etc.).

Google and Yahoo! are very similar in their setup and function. To find an image, go to www.google.com or www.yahoo.com. For this example, we’ll use Google. Once you get to Google’s homepage, you will see this:

1. Click on “Images” at the top left of the screen. Click on this link and you will be brought to a new page that looks almost identical.

2. In the search box, type in your search term. The more specific you are, the narrower the results field will be. For instance, if you type in “New Jersey”, you will get hundreds of thousands of images. If you

type in “Jersey Shore” you will get fewer results back (but also images of Jersey Shore, PA!). If you type in “Cape May Jersey Shore” you will get even fewer images, mainly beach scenes from Cape May or Cape May County. For the example below, I used “Cape May” as my search term. The results page that I got looks like this:

3. As you can see many images came back. In the upper right hand corner Google says there are 1.73 million images for Cape May. If I was more specific, like “Cape May beaches” fewer results would have come back.

4. You can filter image results by size. In the upper left hand corner is an “Image Size” drop down menu. Using the menu you can narrow your results to Large, Medium or Small sized images.

5. Below each image you will see some information:a. title or the part of the sentence on the webpage that the image accompaniesb. size of the image (in pixels) and the type of image file it is (.bmp, .jpg, .gif, etc.)c. in green type is the address of the webpage where the image is hosted – not a hyperlink though

6. Once you see the image you want, click on it. A new page will open and it will be divided in two panes, like the image below:

7. The top portion of the screen has the image in thumbnail size. The bottom portion shows you the website where it came from. You can use and browse the website from the lower pane if you wish.

8. Click on the image to see it by itself and at its full size. You will get a screen that looks like this:

9. Now to save the image, right click on it and choose “Save Picture As”. Navigate to the folder in your My Documents or P Drive and save the image. Congratulations, you’ve just saved an image from the Internet to your computer!

10. This process is very similar with other search engines. Visit the site of your favorite search engine and explore it to find its images search.

11. Sites like Flickr and web-hosted digital photograph albums (Kodak Gallery, etc.) function in a similar way.

12. Sometimes an image is protected and you cannot right click on it to save. If this is the case you need to select another image from your results page.

Copyright-free and Copyright-usable Images on the Internet

A place to find non-copyright protected images is Wikimedia Commons (http://commons.wikimedia.org). Currently there are about 1.7 million usable media files on the site. It is run by the same people who run Wikipedia.

Part II – Inserting an Image into a Microsoft Word Document1. Once you are in Word, find the place on the page where you would like to insert your image.2. Place your cursor on that spot and go to the “Insert” menu Picture From File. A dialog box will

appear and you can then navigate to the image you’ve saved in a folder.3. Click on the image and hit the Insert button.4. Now your image is in your document!

Part III – Manipulating an Image in Microsoft Word

Placing Your Image in the Document1. You can re-size, move and do some limited editing to an image once it has been inserted into a Word

document.2. Click on your image. You will then notice the image has a black border around it, and at each corner

and in the middle of each side are black boxes. A “Picture” toolbar also pops up. It will look something like this:

Manipulating the Image

3. Microsoft Word has an invisible grid on the page that keeps images, lines, drawings, etc. “snapped to the grid”. In other words, you can only move things up, down, left, right, and diagonally in set increments. Most times this is fine. But if you wish to move things very precisely, or to a spot between the grid points (that you can’t see anyway!), hit the “Alt” key on your keyboard and hold it down while you move your image, line, drawing, etc. This temporarily shuts off the grid feature. Once you get your image, line, drawing, etc. to where you want it, release the mouse or stylus first, and then let go of the Alt key.

4. To resize the image, click on any one of the boxes and drag them to create the new dimensions for your image.

a. IMPORTANT: dragging the boxes in the middle of each side will only change the height or width dimensions (depending on which side you choose). To keep the image’s height and width ratio in proper proportion, drag the boxes at the corner. Both the height and width will simultaneously resize so that your image stays perfectly proportioned.

b. IMPORTANT: The larger you re-size your image, the more pixilated (grainy and blurry) it will get.

5. Let go of the mouse and your image will snap to its new size. You can also do the same with your stylus on your Tablet.

Using the Picture Toolbar

6. The features on the Picture toolbar, from left to right, are:a. Insert new imageb. Color – you can change the appearance of your image

i. Automatic – its natural colorsii. Grayscale – looks like a black and white photograph

iii. Black and White – becomes a black and white line drawingiv. Washout – becomes almost like a watermark with very faint color

c. More Contrastd. Less Contraste. More Brightnessf. Less Brightnessg. Crop – allows you to crop the sides right in Wordh. Rotate 90 degrees left – keep on hitting this to rotate it or flip iti. Line Stylej. Compress Picturesk. Text Wrapping – have text wrap around the imagel. Format Picture – opens up a new window for more fine tuned editing features for your imagem. Set Transparent Color – choose one color on your image to become transparent, it disappears and

the background shows through the imagen. Reset Picture – reset your image to the way it was before you started to edit it

7. If you click on your picture you can also right, center or left justify it using the justification buttons on the toolbar at the top of the Word screen.

Placing Text over Images

8. If you want to place writing over the image, go to the “Tools menu” “Customize” and in the “Toolbars” tab of the new window that pops up place a check mark next to “Drawing”. Hit OK and you get this at the bottom of your screen:

9. Choose the Textbox icon, and then a very large window will insert itself into your document with the words “Create your drawing here.” Using the mouse or your stylus, draw out the textbox that you want to use. You can always resize it, so don’t be too concerned about that at this point.

10. Once you are done, drag your new textbox over your image. The window where you created the textbook is still there, but you cannot see it. What you can see is a large white space. Go back to that space and click it. Then hit delete.

11. Notice that your textbox has a white background. You can leave it white if you want, or you can make it transparent so the text is directly over your image. To do this, click on the black triangle next to the Fill Color icon on the Drawing Toolbar (paint can). Choose “No Fill”.

12. To get rid of the black border around the textbox, click on the black triangle next to the Line Color icon (paint brush) and choose “No Line”.

13. Of course you can use these features to change background colors and line colors too if you want them around your textbox.

14. To choose text color, click the black triangle next to the Font Color icon (the large “A”) and choose your text color.

15. To resize your textbox, click inside and use the white circles on the sides or corners to drag it to its new dimensions.

The End!

16. That’s it! You’ve successfully manipulated an image in Word.17. Be sure to save your file frequently so that you don’t lose all of your hard work!