Wednesday, June 29, 2011

How to CROP Digital Images Tutorial !

How to CROP Digital Images Tutorial !

If you are somewhat new to the world of digital stamps as I am you may find this extremely handy.  I know I've wasted a lot of paper, card and ink on sheet images trying to get them to print at the size I want and I have printed many of the extra unwanted images on the sheet as I did not know how to ‘remove’ them from the printing selection.  So I thought I would share with you a handy little ‘know how’ that my brother so kindly showed me how to do. 

1. Open a new blank document in your Office Word program (I am using Microsoft Office Word 2007).
2. Left mouse ‘click’ on the ‘INSERT TAB’ along the top toolbar. (Red circle highlighted in Picture 1)
3. Then left mouse ‘click’ on the ‘PICTURE’ tab in the toolbar. (Red circle highlighted in Picture 1)) This will open a dialog box that you can select your picture from. 
 4. Select the digital image or sheet you wish to use and left mouse click on ‘INSERT’ (red circle highlighted in Picture 1).  For this tutorial I am going to use The Crafty Pad Designs - Butterfly and Verse set.

5. Once your picture is imported it should automatically bring up the ‘FORMAT PICTURE’ tool bar in your menu bar along the top of the screen. (If this doesn’t happen, left mouse ‘click’ on the image so the blue box appears around the image and then you will be in the correct editing TAB).
6. To crop your image you need to left mouse ‘click’ on the ‘CROP’ tab in the toolbar. (Red circle highlighted in Picture 2).  This will bring up the BOLD BLACK alignment marks around your image sheet as I have highlighted with green circles in picture 2.    
7. The butterfly in the bottom right corner that I have circle highlighted in picture 2 is the image we are going to ‘single out’ of the sheet and use.
8. Place your mouse over one of the BOLD MARKS, left mouse ‘click’ on it and hold the mouse button in and move your mouse.  This should be cropping the image in or out depending on the direction you are moving the mouse. In picture 3 I have started to move the bottom left bold mark in and you can notice the left side of the original image has disappeared.  Do this with all the marks until you have cropped the image to your need.  You may move and crop with all the bold marks; you are not limited to only using the corner marks. 
9. Picture 4 shows the finished single cropped image. Now ready for me to re-size or use as it is. 

You can also use this technique on single digital images if they have a lot of white wasted space around them in their original image.  I often use this now when I am working with my small die cuts and want to get as big a image as I can.  
 

I hope you find this as handy and waste saving as I have.

***EDIT** I meant to post this last week but being sick and all totally forgot :$ 
I have got the next in this series ready to go for tonight though :))

2 Treasured comments:

Sandra H said...

Another great Tutorial It's always helpful.....:) Sandra H

Juliet A said...

I think it is wonderful that you are teaching people how to do this with Word. I have a graphics program, but I wondered how people who didn't could manage to do tasks like this.

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