Back to the Classroom HINTS FOR PREPARING SCANS FOR WEB SITES AND E-MAIL (Written in English instead of computerese because I'm not a computer guru!) A monitor (not the new flat ones) is the same as a TV picture tube and can only show 72 dpi (dots per inch) no matter how large the screen. There are a few that will show 100 dpi but very few. Anything larger than 72 dpi is wasted and slows the loading or sending time tremendously. When you scan your photos or beadwork name the file with something you will recognize and store them in a folder on your hard drive. i.e. pinkrose.jpg Do not put spaces or periods in your title. You can put a dash ( - ) or underlilne ( _ ) to seperate the words if you want to. i.e. pink-rose.jpg or pink_rose.jpg Open your photo or paint program and open your scan from it. I use Adobe Photoshop so I can't give you exact directions but hopefully I can give you a few hints. CROPPING: Look at your tool box and find your "crop" tool. Mine looks like the pound sign (#) . Drag this tool over your scan to get rid of any excess background. MENU BAR: You should see a "menu bar" across the top of your page. Pull down each of the areas and see what you can find! The following is a portion of the things in Photoshop that you will use all the time. There are many other things but these are the basics. FILE Open: Opens your saved scans Save: This saves your changes. Save As: This is a most important command! Choose either a JPG or a GIF file for the internet. Most people choose JPG for a photo. You must have the photo in the proper "mode" in order to save the JPG. See below.This can also save your changed scan with a new name and leave your original one intact in case you need to go back to it. Save a Copy: Just what it says! It saves an exact copy. The name will automatically have the word "copy" behind the original title. Print: I'll bet you can guess what this one does!!! IMAGE MODE Indexed Color: This is the mode used for GIF files. RGB Color: This is the mode used for JPG files. CMYK Color: This is the mode used for printing with a commercial printer. ADJUST BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST: I have found that most scans improve tremendously by simply brightening them. Play with the scan and see what happens. Don't worry because you can always go back to your saved file it you mess it up! COLOR BALANCE: This allows you to add or remove color on your scans. Too much yellow is often the culprit so try removing some and see if your colors look better. ROTATE CANVAS Use this to change the angle of your scan. Do this before you crop the image to insure that you will have enough background. IMAGE SIZE HEIGHT & WIDTH: You can change this to show the sizes in inches, millimeters, etc. When you change one of the measurements the other will change proportionally. RESOLUTION: This is the one that seems to be the problem with most scans. This is where you see the dpi (dots per inch) of your scan. Change this to 72. Don't panic if your scan appears to be very tiny. Pull down the VIEW on your menu bar and select "print size" to see the actual size.