Not all that long ago, the only people who had to know how to manipulate photos and other digital images were graphic designers. But nowadays, almost anyone might need to do so—to resize a vacation pic to make it small enough to e-mail; to post a stock photo on your blog; to create a profile picture for Facebook or Twitter.
However, a lot of these people are not going to want to shell out several hundred dollars for professional graphics software like Adobe Photoshop or Corel PhotoPaint. Fortunately, if you have Microsoft Office on your computer, you actually have a graphics program that will let you do some very basic editing on your photos.
In Office 2003 and Office 2007, it's called Microsoft Office Picture Manager. Earlier versions of Office come with Microsoft Photo Editor, which actually included a lot more functionality than Picture Manager (which is primarily designed for file management, not image editing). I guess they removed the free Photo Editor to try to get you to buy their own graphics program, which I know nothing about, so I can't help you with that.
Caveat 1. Unfortunately, I don't have anything earlier than Office 2003 on my computers, so I can't check how it works. I'll be illustrating this entry using Picture Manager. However, the basic principles will be the same so, if you have Photo Editor, you might want to try out these steps anyway, knowing you may have to look in different places to find the specific commands.
UPDATE: I managed to get my hands on a copy of Photo Editor and it turns out it works completely differently than Picture Manager. So I'm going to provide the instructions with screenshots for Picture Manager first, and then put the corresponding Photo Editor technique under each step. I do recommend you read the Picture Manager instructions first so you can see the underlying logic behind each step.
Caveat 2. If I ever decide to create a Bad Interface Design Hall of Shame, Microsoft Office Picture Manager is sure to be included. It has some of the weirdest features I've ever seen. So as you're following along, know that I'm fully aware that some of the steps don't make any sense at all. But in the end, it does what it needs to for our purposes.
Open Picture Manager or Photo Editor.
From the Start menu, go to your list of Programs and find the folder for Microsoft Office. Open that, then open the folder for Microsoft Office Tools. Click Microsoft Office Picture Manager or Microsoft Photo Editor to launch the program.
Note: A dialog box may come up asking you about what file types you want to associate with Picture Manager. Just click Cancel.
Open an image you want to resize.
Okay, this is the first really bizarre thing about Picture Manager. There is no Open command. I don't think I have ever seen a program of any type that did not come with an Open command.
Instead, click the button that says Shortcuts, which will open a list of folders on your computer. By default, it will start with the built-in Pictures (or My Pictures) folder. If the picture you want to edit is somewhere else, click the Add Picture Shortcut link and browse to the folder where the image is. Don't try to find the specific picture—just the folder it's in.
Once you've selected the folder where the image is, thumbnails of all the image files in it will display.
Now for the purposes of this exercise, I'm going to create an image that I could use as my Twitter profile picture, and I'm going to use one of my many squirrel photos. (For those who don't know, I foster orphaned squirrels for a local wildlife rehabilitation center.)
Double-click the image you're going to work with.
Click the Shortcuts button again to close the list of folders.
On the toolbar, click Edit Pictures.
Instructions for Photo Editor
Photo Editor has a standard File > Open command, so simply browse to your picture and open it.
Crop the image.
Depending on your photo, you may be able to skip this step. However, the standard Twitter profile picture size is 73 pixels wide by 73 pixels high, i.e. it's square. Since most photos are rectangular in shape, you're probably going to want to choose a particular section of the picture to highlight. Likewise, you may want to cut out a lot of the background so the main subject fills the smaller image. In my case, I want to use just the face of the squirrel.
In the right-hand panel, click the Crop link. Handles will appear on the sides and corners of your image. You can drag them to focus in on the area of the picture you're interested in.
Note: Near the bottom of the right-hand panel, you'll see the original size of the image in pixels (the first number is always width and the second is height) as well as the size of the crop area. Don't worry about making a perfect square at this point. Just approximate one and we'll clean it up later.
Click the OK button.
Instructions for Photo Editor
When you first launch Photo Editor, it sets the measurement units to inches. Since we're working in pixels, go to View > Measurement Units and change the setting to Pixels.
From the Edit menu, choose Select All. Your image will be surrounded by a selection border with handles you can drag to highlight the area you want to crop to. Again, don't worry about making a perfect square; just approximate it for now.
Note: In the status bar at the bottom of the window, you can see the width and height of the area you're selecting as well as how many pixels away from each edge the selection border is. Notice how the numbers change as you drag the handles.
From the Image menu, select Crop. A dialog box will appear but you don't need to change any settings in it. Simply click OK and the image will be cropped to the selected area.
Resize the image.
Click the Back to Edit Pictures link at the bottom of the Edit panel.
The program has some predesigned sizes you can choose but, for our purposes, click the Custom Width x Height radio button.
This is another really weird thing about Picture Manager. The size boxes automatically prefill with 1024 x 768. I have no idea why. And the New Size listed at the bottom of the panel is meaningless, so just ignore that.
As I mentioned, a Twitter profile picture is 73 x 73 and, at the moment, my cropped image is 835 x 758. That means it's wider than it is high. This is important because if I were to resize it so the width was 73 pixels, the height would be less than that, so it wouldn't fill the entire image area on Twitter. (When you select a width size, the program automatically calculates the height—and vice-versa—to keep the proportions the same.)
So instead, I'm going to change the height to 73. That means the width will be larger than 73, but then I can crop it again to get the perfect size.
Enter 73 in the Height box. You'll see the New Size changes to show you what the new width will be. In my case, it's going to be 80 x 73.
Click the OK button.
Instructions for Photo Editor
From the Image menu, select Resize.
In the dialog box, enter 73 in the box for whichever dimension is smaller, width or height.
Do NOT check the Allow Distortion box. DO check the Smooth one.
Click OK.
Crop the image to its final size.
Click the Back to Edit Pictures button and then the Crop link again.
I need to crop the width by 7 pixels to go from 80 to 73, so I'm using the Crop Handles boxes to specify exactly the amount to cut out. I've set it to crop the left-hand side by 3 and the right-hand side by 4.
Click the OK button. Now you have the picture at the final size you need.
Instructions for Photo Editor
From the Edit menu, choose Select All again.
Now you can drag the handles and watch the size values in the status bar change to see when the selection is 73 x 73. It's a little finicky so you might need to play around with it a bit to get it to that exact size.
Once the selection size is set, go to Image > Crop.
Before we save this, I'm going to show you one other editing feature that can really improve the quality of the image.
Adjust the brightness and contrast of the image.
Click the Back to Edit Pictures link one more time.
Click the AutoCorrect button.
I have no idea how this works, but I'm always amazed at the difference that an AutoCorrect feature makes in any graphics program. In this case, it definitely brightened up the image and brought out some features that were not as distinct in the original.
Note: If you don't like the results of the AutoCorrect function, you can click the Brightness and Contrast or Color links and play around with the settings until you find something you like.
Instructions for Photo Editor
From the Image menu, select AutoBalance.
We're now ready to save the image. (Fortunately, Microsoft did not remove that function from the program!) The following applies to both Picture Manager and Photo Editor.
Click File > Save As. Obviously, we want to change the name so we don't overwrite the original image. I like to add the dimensions to the file name so I'll easily know which one to use for which purpose. So, in this case, I've renamed the file to "grinning_73x73.jpg".
So, as you can see, even with these really basic programs, you can now do some graphics editing on your own. If you have any additional questions about either, please send them to me at F1@TechForLuddites.com.
*****
Updates
Re. the image size for Twitter, I had forgotten that you should upload a much larger photo and it will automatically be resized down to 73 x 73 for the thumbnail on your profile page and even smaller for the one on your home page. The reason is, if you click on your picture on your profile page, it will take you to the much bigger version. So if you upload a small pic, Twitter will resize it to make it bigger, and that really deteriorates the quality. (Programs do a better job of making images smaller than of making them bigger.) This doesn't change anything with regards to the instructions above—you would just change the dimensions when doing the resize step. But I wanted to mention this so that, if you are actually creating a pic for Twitter, you can make it bigger. As a guideline, the one I uploaded was 500 x 500. You can see the full-sized version here.
Posted in Facebook, Graphics, How To, LinkedIn, MS-Office, Twitter
