Pictures

Adding a picture

You can place your own photos, drawings, logos or other images. Just click on an outlined 'image' box on the page design and select your picture file and options. Some page layouts have space for one image, others have space for two or more.

The program will import three kinds of images...

Windows BMP files (.BMP)
Drawings, diagrams or other images in the standard Windows bitamp file format. These may be 16 or 256 colour or 16-bit or 24-bit images. Compressed files (RLE) are not supported. Almost all programs can make a BMP image so this is a very general format.
JPEG images (.JPG)
These are compressed image files often used for photos and scans and similar. They have the advantage of being small in size and of showing realistic colours but sometimes the quality is not as good as an uncompressed BMP original.
Windows Meta files (.WMF, .EMF)
These are compact, scalable drawings suitable for diagrams, charts, logos, maps and illustrations such as cartoon-style drawings. Many applications can save files in this format and there are many clip-art libraries that use it.

After selecting a picture, the current page is redisplayed with the picture in place. You can use the options in the image dialog to control how the image is displayed.

Image display options

Transparent background

This check box tries to remove the background colour from the image so that the page design shows through underneath it. This is sometimes called a 'cut out' or 'masked' image and allows a logo or other image to look more part of the page rather than a separate image placed upon it.

This transparent feature works with BMP and Windows meta files and is best for drawings, logos, diagrams or charts that have been made on a flat, plain coloured background and ideally one that is a similar colour to the page background on which it will be used. Setting transparent background for a photograph may not produce useful results.

Resize to fit

This option shrinks or enlarges an image to fit in the available space so that you do not have to crop or resize it in an image editing program first.

Alignment

These six buttons allow you to position an image within the area reserved for it... you can have it in the centre or to the left or right of the area or to the top or bottom. These buttons only work if the image is either smaller than the image area on the page or if the Resize to fit button has been used and the resized image does not fill the complete image area.

Managing images

When you place an image on a page in your project, a copy of the image is made and stored with your project. You do not need to keep the original image file available (perhaps it is on a CD) or include it if you send the project to someone else.

Once an image is stored on a page, you can click on it to alter its settings or change the image.

To remove or delete the image, click the 'Remove' button. To change it for another, just click 'Choose...' and pick another file.

If you have changed the image which you placed you can press 'Update'. This tries to find the original file you placed and then re-reads it, updating the image on your project. This feature is useful if want to make changes to the image in your project; you can quickly load them into the project without having to browse for the file again. The 'Update' button can only work if the original image file is still present in the same folder and drive as when it was first placed.

Preparing pictures

You can do as much or as little preparation with your image files for a project as you want. Most images can be added to a page straight off and the resize, align and transparent options used to produce an acceptable display. However, if you want the best results possible, you may wish to prepare images especially for the program using image editing, painting or drawing software.

Image size

The exact size of an image on a page is shown next to the label 'image' marking its area. For example, "image (340 x 210)" indicates a space 340 pixels (columns) wide by 210 pixels (rows) high. You can resize an image in another program (perhaps the 'resize', 'scale' or 'resample' menu option) to be nearer to, or to exactly fit, the size shown. This may help to save space and improve speed on your presentation... putting in a very large file, perhaps one intended to be printed or shown full-screen, takes up unnecessary space and slows down loading. It may also improve quality... using a good image editing program to resize and then perhaps sharpen an image before adding it to your project may produce a better looking page than the built-in resize to fit option. Finally, an image editing program will let you crop and size a picture to get just the part of it you want.

Another thing to look out for is images that have been prepared for use on a website. These may have been made into small files so that they download quickly, by compressing the image data, shrinking the image or removing colours, with the result that the image is bitty or of poor quality. Your project will be running from a CD or hard disk and doesn't need such small files so you may want to try and find original, larger versions of such images.

Cut out images (transparent background)

To get a logo, diagram or even a picture of product 'cut out' onto the page background, you need to make a BMP or Windows meta file. If you can, look at the overall colour of the page background in your project and make your new image on a plain, flat version of that colour. For example, you might use a light blue or nearly white background for many of the styles that come with this program. Doing this can help to make the pixels at the edge of the image into shades part way between the image and the background. When you use 'transparent background' to cut out the image in your project, these shades help to avoid a 'fringe' effect around the cut out object.

Which format to use

JPG files are generally best for photos and scans. BMP files or Meta files are generally better for logos, diagrams, charts, illustrations and other 'synthetic' images or if you want to use the 'transparent background; option.

Other image formats

Image editing, drawing and conversion programs are available that will convert files from formats such as TIFF, PCX, PICT, Targa and similar to JPG or BMP for use in CDR Presenter.

Windows Meta File notes

Some Windows meta files of the WMF type do not include size and shape information and will be shown filling the available image space. This may make the image look stretched or squashed. Others do have size information (so-called 'placeable WMF' files) and are automatically scaled to fit in the available image space without any distortion.

Some meta files do not include all the information they need to draw properly, or have extra program-specific information in them, and may not show up correctly in this program.