How To Resize Photos Using GIMP

I must admit that I am still learning GIMP. So it is safe to say that I am not that expert in using GIMP in comparison to Photoshop. But if you are a minister, or someone that sends out e-newsletters, I think this post is best for you.

Have you ever sent a newsletter with your pictures? Do you ever wonder why sometimes your newsletter is hard to upload in your email and in return the recipients of your e-newsletters find it very hard to download your PDF e-newsletter?

The reason: The file pictures embedded are too large.

Solution: Resize your pictures first before pasting it to your Open Office Writer or Microsoft Word.

There are several ways in resizing photos, but in this post we will be using GIMP. What is GIMP by the way? GIMP is GNU Image Manipulation Program, a very good alternative of Photoshop. Photoshop will cost you something, but GIMP will cost you nothing, it is totally FREE. All you have to do is to download it through www.gimp.org.

Let us say that you already have downloaded the GIMP and already have installed it. Here's the intruction on how are you going to resize your pictures:

First, open the picture that you want to resize using GIMP.

Go to “Image” > Scale Image.

A new window will appear. If you are not sure on what pixel should you resize your picture, simply click the botton of the “Pixel” and change it to inches or millimeters, or whatever you prefer.

A good picture size for your newsletter should not be more than 100x100 pixel.

Click “Scale”.

Now you can cut and paste your pictures in your Open Office Writer or Microsoft Word without eating too much of space. That should do the trick concerning your pictures in your newsletter.

If you have anymore questions, please post it as a comment. Thanks!!!

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How To Extract A Photo Using A Photoshop

Extracting a selected image from a photo is pretty easy to do by following these simple instructions.

1.Create first a backup file for the picture. Better if you'll create another folder for your original images.
2.After backing up your original image files, open the image that you want to extract. Click Filter > Extract. It will open a new window with your image.
3.Use the Highlight tool in it. For example you want to extract a picture of a lady from a picture of group of ladies, using the extract tool, trace the portion that you want to extract. you can use the Zoom options to carefully draw the bondaries of the image (or rather to carefully highlight the image) that you want to extract. The hand tool will also be very useful in going to places in the image.
4.Be sure that when you choose the image that you want to extract, the highlighted portion of the image is enclosed. Which means that your point of start will also be the end. In short, just highlight the image that you want to extract.
5.Then activate the Fill tool, by pressing G. Be sure that the bucket icon is placed inside the image that you highlighted. Click it, then the image that you want to extract will turn blue which means that you have chosen the highlighted portion. Click Preview.
6.In the Preview, you will see that the image was not finely extracted. So you will have to use several tools; Edge Highlight, Eraser, Edge Touchup and Cleanup. The Edge Touchup restores the subject edges, while Cleanup removes the background elements.
7.If you are already satisfied with the cleanness of the image, press OK. And there you have it, an extracted image. You can copy it and paste it to another group of pictures or set another picture as its new background.

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