Chapter 9

You Ought to Be in Pictures

In This Chapter

Creating and working with picture frames

Getting pictures in and out of Publisher

Finding and using artwork and images

Using the Design Gallery and BorderArt to enhance your publications

Working with scanned images inside Publisher

At the risk of repeating an old cliché, singing an old song, or seeing an old saw, a picture really can be worth a thousand words. Why explain in dozens of paragraphs what an Aurora X-100 looks like when you can just show your readers a picture of one?

Although Publisher really isn’t the place to draw complex pictures, it’s mighty flexible when you’re importing pictures created elsewhere. Some desktop publishers rely heavily on collections of electronic clip art and libraries of photographs, whereas others are daring enough to create their own pictures by using specialized graphics programs. Whether you’re working from a clip art collection or creating your own pictures, this chapter shows you how to get pictures into and out of your publications and how to work with pictures after they’re in Publisher.

This chapter also shows you how to use some tools that come with Publisher and Windows. You find out how to use Microsoft Paint to create your own drawings, use the Design Gallery to obtain publication elements, apply border art, and even use your own scanner from within Publisher to bring images directly into the program.

Understanding More about Picture Frames

Publisher uses picture frames to display graphics on a layout; a picture frame can contain either drawings or images. The differences between drawings and images are described later in this chapter.

You don’t create graphics inside a picture frame; they must be created elsewhere. The graphic contained in a picture frame can be either a data file or an OLE object that’s managed by another program.

You can create picture frames in two ways: Draw them yourself or have the program create them for you when you insert or import a graphic. Which method is best depends on your purpose:

When you need to place a picture frame of a specific size at a specific position in your layout: Draw the frame with the Picture Frame tool (in the toolbox) and fill the frame with a picture manually.

When the content and size of the graphic determine the size of the frame: Have Publisher create the frame for you as you import the picture. You can always adjust the frame’s size and position later on.

Getting Yours

Publisher provides four ways to insert or import pictures:

Copy a graphic from another Windows program to the Windows Clipboard and then paste the graphic into a picture frame.

Choose Insert⇒Picture⇒Clip Art to open the Clip Art task pane, which provides easy access to these types of clip art:

• Thousands of pieces included with Publisher

• Clip art collections on the Internet

Choose Insert⇒Picture⇒From File to import any picture that’s saved in a format Publisher can recognize.

Choose Insert⇒Picture⇒From Scanner or Camera to scan a hard copy of an image or to capture an image from a digital camera.

If you don’t want to make a trip to the Insert menu to choose one of the commands in the preceding three bullets, you can just right-click a picture frame to display the context-sensitive menu shown in Figure 9-1. Point the mouse cursor to the Change Picture option to see your choices. The context-sensitive menu also offers the Windows Clipboard commands: Cut, Copy, and Paste.

I assume that you know how to use the Windows Clipboard (refer to the first bullet in the preceding list), although you may want to know more about which kinds of graphic formats the Clipboard supports. The other three methods of importing pictures into a picture frame are discussed in the sections that follow.

Figure 9-1: A picture frame’s context-sensitive menu.

No matter how you put a graphic into a picture frame, you can use any of the methods just described to replace that picture.

Using the Clip Art task pane

You can use the Clip Art task pane to search for clip art on your local hard drive, your local-area network, or on the Internet. Rather than choose the Insert⇒Picture⇒From File command to insert a clip art file, which requires you to remember the name and location of the picture file (files are stored in the Clip Art folder), you simply click a miniature version of the picture in the Clip Art task pane.

The clip art contained in the collection that Microsoft gives you are formatted as either .gif, .jpg, or .wmf (Windows metafile). A metafile format lets you save both drawn and painted images in the same file; .jpg and .gif are painted (or rasterized) formats. For more information about picture formats, see the section “Working with Different Picture Types,” later in this chapter.

To insert a picture by using the Clip Art task pane:

1. If you want to import the picture into a specific picture frame, select that frame.

Note: You can create a blank picture frame by choosing Insert⇒Picture⇒Empty Picture Frame.

Otherwise, make sure that no frame is selected. Publisher creates a frame for you in this case.

2. Choose Insert ⇒Picture ⇒Clip Art or click the Insert Picture tool on the Objects toolbar and choose Clip Art from the pop-up menu that appears.

The Clip Art task pane, shown in Figure 9-2, leaps to the screen.

Figure 9-2: The Clip Art task pane.

3. In the Search For text box, type a word or phrase that describes the clip art you’re looking for.

If your search doesn’t include searching online, the search returns fewer results.

4. Choose a collection from the Search In drop-down list.

If you aren’t sure which collection to choose, pick Everywhere. It results in the largest number of results.

5. In the Results Should Be drop-down list, choose the media file type or types that you want to search.

Your choices are Clip Art, Photographs, Movies, and Sounds.

6. Scroll as necessary through the thumbnails in the main pane of the Clip Art task pane and then click to select the picture you want.

This step inserts the Clip Art image into your publication.

7. Click the down arrow next to the clip art image to see more options for working with clip art.

These options are covered later in this chapter, in the section “Using the Clip Organizer.”

8. If you want to recover some desktop real estate, click the Close button in the Clip Art task pane to close it.

If you draw a picture frame before you import a picture from the Clip Art task pane, Publisher automatically resizes the frame to keep the inserted image in proper proportion. After the image has been inserted into the frame, you can resize it to your heart’s content.

You can very easily replace the picture from the clip art collection with another picture: Just double-click the existing picture to reopen the Clip Art task pane. Click to select a different picture and then choose Insert from the clip’s drop-down menu. You also can replace an existing picture by using the context-sensitive menu to open the Clip Art task pane: Right-click the picture you want to replace and then choose Change Picture⇒Clip Art from the menu that appears. (I find that double-clicking the picture is much faster.)

If you have other Microsoft programs on your computer, such as PowerPoint or other Office 2007 components, they share the Clip Art task pane that you use in Publisher. (In fact, you can access clip art from almost any modern Windows program, if you know how.) So, you might find more than just Publisher pictures there; you might also find pictures installed by Word or Excel or other programs.

Using the Clip Organizer

The Microsoft Clip Organizer tool is installed along with Publisher. The Clip Organizer helps you, er, classify (you thought I was going to say organize!) your clip art into collections. Two collections are created by default:

My Collections: Stores any clip art collections you create

Office Collections: Contains clip art and other media files included in Office 2007

In addition, you might encounter two other collections in Clip Organizer:

Shared Collections: Created by a network administrator and can be shared by any user on the network. You see this category only if your network administrator has set it up for you.

Web Collections: Contains, as its name implies, the collections located on the World Wide Web. Initially, the only collection in this category is the Microsoft Office Online collection, which contains about 150,000 clip art and other media files, free for you to use. Using the Web Collections category requires that you have a connection to the Internet.

You can do a couple of cool things in the Clip Art task pane and with the Microsoft Clip Organizer that many people never check out. One is to search for pictures by description, collection, or media type. Click the Collection List down arrow in the Clip Organizer and select Search. Now you can enter a keyword or description, tell Clip Organizer which collections to search, and specify the type of media you’re looking for (Clip Art, Photographs, Movies, or Sounds, for example). You can even choose a file format for each of the media types to search.

Here’s how to add pictures to the Microsoft Clip Organizer:

1. Select the image you want to add and copy it to the Clipboard.

You can choose Edit⇒Copy from the menu, press Ctrl+C, or right-click the image and choose Copy from the context menu that appears.

2. Click the Organize Clips link, at the bottom of the Clip Art task pane. (Refer to Figure 9-2.)

The Microsoft Clip Organizer, shown in Figure 9-3, appears.

3. In the Collection List task pane, navigate to the collection that you want to add the image to and click to select the collection.

If you don’t want the image to reside in any existing collection, create a new one. Right-click any collection in the collection list and choose New Collection from the context menu. Type a name for the new collection and click OK.

4. Paste the image into the selected collection by using your favorite paste method.

You can choose Edit⇒Paste from the menu, press Ctrl+V, or right-click the collection and choose Paste Clip from the context menu that appears.

Make sure that the collection is selected (highlighted) in the collection list of the Clip Organizer before pasting the image.

Note: You aren’t limited to specific image formats; you can select files in TIF, BMP, JPG, GIF, and other formats that Publisher understands.

The Clip Organizer adds your picture to the selected collection.

5. Using the Collection List task pane, navigate to the folder containing the newly added piece of clip art and locate the piece.

6. Click the down arrow next to the newly pasted clip art and select Preview/Properties to open the Preview/Properties dialog box, as shown in Figure 9-4.

7. If you don’t like the caption and keywords you see in the Preview/Properties dialog box, click the Edit Keywords button and make any changes you want. Click OK when you’re finished.

8. Click Close to close the Preview/Properties dialog box.

You return to the Microsoft Clip Organizer window with your newly imported image selected.

9. Click the Close button to dismiss the Clip Organizer.

It may seem like whimsy or technobabble to walk you through the process of adding pictures to the Microsoft Clip Organizer. If you manage large numbers of images, however, you’ll find this process valuable.

Figure 9-3: The Microsoft Clip Organizer.

Figure 9-4: The Preview/Properties dialog box.

One other aspect of using the Clip Art task pane deserves mention: If the clip art and images supplied on the Publisher 2007 CD aren’t enough for you, check out the Microsoft Web site for even more. Click the Clip Art on Office Online link, at the bottom of the Publisher Clip Art task pane. There, you find additional clip art images, sounds, videos, and photos — more than 150,000 items! Any clips you select from this Web site can be added to the Microsoft Clip Organizer. (Need I mention that you must have an Internet connection to use this feature?)

By default, Clip Organizer and the Publisher Clip Art task pane offer only those pictures that are installed with Publisher and other Microsoft programs. Thus, if you create a picture yourself or obtain it from some non-Microsoft source, you don’t find the picture in Clip Organizer (unless you place your picture in the Clip Organizer).

Inserting picture files

The Insert⇒Picture⇒From File command imports a picture stored on your hard drive into your publication. The Insert Picture dialog box, shown in Figure 9-5, shows the pictures in the selected folder. Use the Views button (in the upper-right corner of the window) to decide how the pictures should be displayed in the dialog box. Your options are Thumbnails, Tiles, Icons, List, Details, Properties, Preview, or WebView.

You might occasionally run across an image format that Publisher can’t insert, but it’s unlikely because Publisher supports many image formats.

To insert a picture by using the Insert⇒Picture⇒From File command, follow these steps:

1. If you want to import the picture into a specific picture frame, select that frame.

Otherwise, make sure that no frame is selected — Publisher creates the frame as needed.

2. Choose Insert ⇒Picture ⇒From File.

The Insert Picture dialog box appears. (Refer to Figure 9-5.)

Figure 9-5: The Insert Picture dialog box in Preview mode.

3. With the help of the Look In drop-down list, navigate to (and select) the file you want to insert, and then click Insert.

The picture is inserted into your publication. If you select a picture frame before importing a picture from a file, Publisher changes the frame to maintain the picture’s correct proportions. You can always resize the frame later, either manually or by using the Scale controls in the Format Picture dialog box, described later in this chapter.

If you import a picture and later decide that you want a different one, just double-click the existing picture. The Insert Picture dialog box reopens. Select a different filename and then click Insert.

If Publisher doesn’t understand the format of the picture you’re trying to import, it whines: Cannot convert this picture. If you have access to the program that created that picture, try saving the picture in a different format. Or, if you can open the picture in any other Windows program, try copying the picture to the Windows Clipboard and pasting it into your picture frame.

If you import a picture by using the Clipboard and later want to change internal components of that picture, try double-clicking it in your publication. Depending on how your computer is set up, your double-click action may load the program that created the picture. Make your changes in that program and then close it. Your changes are displayed in Publisher.

Scanning pictures

Another way of importing a picture into Publisher is to scan the image into your computer or capture the image with a digital camera. Of course, you need a scanner or digital camera and some software to run it. Don’t have one of these items? You can pick up a color flatbed scanner for around $50. Not that long ago, a scanner with those specs would have cost hundreds of dollars. (When I was a kid, I had to walk five miles through the snow, uphill both ways, to get to school. . . .)

Where was I? Oh, yes — scanning pictures into your computer. Choose Insert⇒Picture⇒From Scanner. Select the device (scanner or digital camera) that you want to use in the Insert Picture from Scanner or Camera dialog box. If you selected a scanner, click Insert to scan the image into your publication. If you selected a digital camera, click Custom Insert. You can resize the scanned picture just as you would resize any other picture in your publication. (For more about scanning, see the appropriately named “More on Scanning” section, later in the chapter.)

Double-clicking an image that you scanned into your publication opens the Insert Picture dialog box. To replace the image with a new scanned image, click the picture frame and choose Insert⇒Picture⇒From Scanner or Camera. (I discuss scanned images in depth later in this chapter.)

Modifying pictures

After you import a picture, you can adjust it in Publisher in several ways: Resize it, crop it (chop off parts), and add some space between the picture and its frame to create a border.

If you want to edit the internal components of a picture (for example, to change a zebra’s black-and-white stripes to purple and green or to add extra hair to a digital photograph of yourself — not that I have ever done this!), forget Publisher. You need to use a specialized graphics program instead. If you used the Clipboard to import the picture, you might be able to load the appropriate program just by double-clicking the picture. If that doesn’t work, try using the Clipboard to export the picture to the graphics program, make your changes there, and then import the picture again.

Try using Microsoft Paint or, better yet, Adobe Photoshop Elements to edit your image. One of these two programs should enable you to open and modify most images. If you know the picture’s file type, consult the section “Reviewing File Formats,” the last one in this chapter, to find out which kind of image it is.

Resizing a picture

To resize a picture, you resize its frame. By default, both the picture and its frame are the same size and have the same proportions. You can resize a picture frame much as you would resize any other frame: by dragging any of its selection handles.

To maintain the proportions of a picture and its frame, hold down the Shift key as you drag a corner selection handle.

If Publisher distorted your picture when you imported it, holding down the Shift key as you drag a corner selection handle simply maintains that distortion. To “undistort” a picture, try using one of the Scale controls described next. (Scaling in Publisher is just another term for resizing. Scaling in snakes and pipes is another thing entirely.) The Format⇒Picture dialog box is also a way to resize a picture without using the mouse.

Here’s how to resize a picture by using the Format Picture dialog box:

1. Select the picture you want to resize or restore (or both).

2. Choose Format ⇒Picture from the main menu.

3. Click the Size tab.

The Size tab of the Format Picture dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 9-6.

You can use the same procedure to scale a WordArt object. Choose Format⇒WordArt from the menu and click the Size tab. The Format WordArt dialog box appears; it works the same as the Format Picture dialog box does.

4. Enter Height and Width values in the Scale section to set the percentages to which you want to resize your picture.

These percentages vary according to the picture’s original file size. Use the same percentages in the Height and Width boxes to retain the figure’s proportions.

If you want your picture to scale proportionately while resizing, select the Lock Aspect Ratio check box. Your pictures then scale proportionally while resizing diagonally. Holding down the Shift key while dragging a corner selection handle does the same thing as turning on this option. If you resize horizontally or vertically, though, the picture doesn’t scale proportionately.

To see the picture at its original file size, click the Reset button in the Original Size section of the Size tab.

5. Click OK.

Both the picture and its frame are resized accordingly.

Figure 9-6: Scaling a picture by using the Size tab of the Format Picture dialog box.

Don’t forget that resizing a bitmap graphic lowers the quality of the image. You can, however, resize vector graphics (drawings) to your heart’s content without doing any damage.

Cropping a picture

Publishing professionals who still assemble publications without using a computer often remove unwanted edges of a picture by lopping off those edges with a pair of scissors. In the publishing world, editing a picture in this way is called cropping. Why bother with scissors, though? You can use Publisher to crop a picture electronically.

To crop a selected picture, follow these steps:

1. Click the Crop button on the Picture toolbar.

The Picture toolbar automatically pops up whenever you’ve inserted a picture into a publication, but if for some reason the Picture toolbar isn’t displayed, choose View⇒Toolbars⇒Picture.

2. Aim the mouse pointer at one of the picture frame’s selection handles.

The mouse pointer changes to a cropper pointer, showing the same Crop icon as the Crop button on the Picture toolbar.

3. Drag inward until you exclude the part of the picture that you don’t want, and then release the mouse button.

Cropping a picture doesn’t permanently remove any picture parts; it only hides them from view. To restore a picture part that you cropped, repeat the preceding steps but drag outward. Regardless of whether you cropped, you can drag outward on any picture to reverse crop, thus adding space between the picture and its frame. You can also use the Picture tab of the Format Picture dialog box to crop images. Just specify the amount (in inches, by default) that you want to crop in the Left, Right, Top, and Bottom controls. If you want to add space between the picture frame and the picture, specify a negative number in the Crop From controls!

Here are a few more cropping tips to keep in mind:

To crop or reverse crop the same amount at each edge (thus keeping the picture in the center of its frame): Hold down the Ctrl key as you drag a corner selection handle.

To crop in a more customizable, irregular manner: Click the Text Wrapping button on the Picture toolbar and then choose the Edit Wrap Points menu option to create or modify the adjustment handles. (By default, Publisher enables you to crop in only a rectangular fashion.)

To resize a picture immediately after cropping: Click the Cropping tool again to turn off the cropping option. You can also turn it off by deselecting and then reselecting the picture.

To remove all cropping and reverse cropping from a selected picture with the least amount of effort: Click the Reset button on the Picture tab of the Format Picture dialog box and then click OK.

Working with captions

Sometimes, pictures aren’t enough. They require an explanation. You can create captions for your pictures and have the captions move with their respective pictures across your layout. Unlike high-priced layout programs, Publisher doesn’t automate the process of creating and renumbering captions for you. But you already possess the skills required to create a caption and attach it to a picture.

To create a caption, follow these steps:

1. Draw a text box and enter the text of your caption into it.

2. Move the text box next to the picture and select both the picture and the text box.

You can select multiple objects by clicking and dragging the mouse pointer to draw a box around them. Or, hold down the Ctrl key while you click multiple objects to select them.

3. Choose Arrange ⇒Group or press Ctrl+Shift+G to lock together your picture and its caption to create a group.

Figure 9-7 shows you an example of a figure with a caption.

Figure 9-7: A picture with a caption.

Hey, that’s it! What do you think this is — rocket science? You can apply another trick to make a caption even better. Select your text box and then choose Format⇒Text Box from the main menu. On the Text Box tab of the Format Text Box dialog box, set all margins to 0. Then your captions can get up close and personal with your graphics.

If you want a fancy caption, use a WordArt frame rather than a text box. (WordArt is described in Chapters 6 and 8.)

Applying borders and BorderArt

You can give your picture frame a border by using the Lines and Colors tab of the Format Picture dialog box or the More Lines option on the pop-up menu that appears when you click the Line/Border Style button on the Picture toolbar. If the picture frame is a regular rectangle, you can also apply BorderArt to it. (You can’t apply this feature to irregular picture frames.) You can also apply BorderArt to text boxes, table frames, and even WordArt frames.

Follow these steps to apply BorderArt to a selected text box or frame (or frames):

1. Choose Format ⇒Picture.

The Format Picture dialog box appears.

2. In the Format Picture dialog box, click the Colors and Lines tab.

The Colors and Lines tab appears, as shown in Figure 9-8.

3. Click the BorderArt button, located in the Line section of the Colors and Lines tab.

The BorderArt dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 9-9.

The BorderArt dialog box is one of those simple features that’s so well implemented that using it is a breeze. Simply use the arrow keys to move through the list of available borders in the dialog box. The up- and left-arrow keys scroll up; the right- and down-arrow keys scroll down. As you scroll through the list, the Preview section displays the borders. This dialog box offers tons of fun borders for you to try, and you’ll definitely enjoy playing with it.

4. Make your selection from the Available Borders list box and then click OK.

You return to the Colors and Lines tab of the Format Picture dialog box.

5. Adjust the thickness of the BorderArt border by changing the Weight setting on the Colors and Lines tab of the Format Picture dialog box, and then click OK to return to your publication.

Working with Different Picture Types

Computers use two types of graphics: drawn graphics and painted graphics. The type of graphic you’re using determines many of the characteristics of a graphical image displayed on your screen and the quality of its printed output. The two types use different file formats and require different types of programs for creating and editing graphics. But Publisher can work with both types of graphics, even in the same publication.

Figure 9-8: The Colors and Lines tab of the Format Picture dialog box.

Figure 9-9: The BorderArt dialog box.

Painted versus drawn graphics

Painted graphics are also referred to as images or as bitmapped, or raster, graphics. In painted graphics, the image is composed of a set of tiny dots (pixels, or pels) that forms a mosaic. The image is two-dimensional, although the manner in which the image is painted can give the effect of three dimensions.

A painted image is similar to a mosaic of tiles that you might see in a Roman temple. The smaller the tiles, the more realistic the image looks. The size of the tile — or in the case of a computer image, the size of the pixel — is the resolution of the image. This value is often given in dots per inch, or dpi. Because a bitmap is designed for a specific resolution, it looks good at that resolution. It can also look good at larger or coarser resolutions (smaller dpi) because you have more data than you need. Painted graphics don’t scale up well, however. For example, a 72-dpi image that’s displayed perfectly on-screen doesn’t print well on your laser printer at 300 dpi.

Programs that create painted images are either paint programs, such as Microsoft Paint, or image-editing programs, such as Adobe Photoshop. I take a look at Paint in a moment — because it comes bundled with Windows, it’s there for you to use, gratis. At the highest end of the spectrum, images can be photorealistic and can be rendered to show textures, reflections, and shadings. The file size of a bitmap image is directly related to the size of the image, its number of colors stored, and its resolution.

Drawn graphics are referred to as vector or object-oriented art. With a drawing, the lines, arcs, and other elements that make up a graphic are stored as mathematical equations. Because drawings are created in this way, they’re resolution independent. They’re calculated to display or print at the best capability of the output device — which is why they’re referred to as device independent. This feature makes using drawings generally (but not always) preferable to using paintings in desktop publishing applications.

Here’s an important point, though: Regardless of how a drawing is stored, it must be converted to a bitmap when it’s printed or displayed on-screen. This process, referred to as raster image processing (RIP), displays graphics to any output device. When you “RIP” a bitmap image, the only conversion required is the resampling of the bitmap to either throw away or interpolate data from the bitmap.

When you RIP a drawing, the processing can be simple (for lines and simple drawing primitives) to very complex (for sophisticated descriptions of fill patterns). Thus, a complex PostScript drawing with many, many features and complex fills and strokes may take a while to calculate and process. These types of drawings may also require large file sizes — thus defeating their advantage over painted images. The crossover point is reached when you attempt to create a natural image as a drawing. This type of graphic is better stored as a bitmap.

Paint with Microsoft Paint

You can buy very expensive paint and image-editing programs as a supplement to Publisher. Still, if your needs are reasonable, you can create attractive bitmapped images (or edit the ones you have) in Microsoft Paint. Paint is one of the Accessories programs installed with Windows XP and Windows Vista.

To create a Paint OLE object in Publisher, follow these steps:

1. Choose the Insert ⇒Object command from the menu.

The Insert Object dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 9-10.

2. Click the Create New radio button, select Bitmap Image or Paintbrush Picture from the Object Type list box, and then click OK.

The Paint OLE engine opens on your screen, as shown in Figure 9-11.

Figure 9-10: The Insert Object dialog box.

Figure 9-11: The Paint program as an OLE object in Publisher.

3. Create your painting by using the paint tools in the toolbox on the left side of your screen and the color palette at the bottom.

4. When you’re done, click outside the frame to return to Publisher.

The connection of your painted object to Microsoft Paint is an intimate one. To edit the image in place again, simply double-click it. Because the image is part of the Publisher file, however, it doesn’t have an outside, or independent, existence. That is, you can’t open the image as a file from within Paint.

You often can use Paint to edit images from other sources. To do this, create a Paint frame on your layout, by following Steps 1 and 2 in the preceding step list. Then switch to the picture frame that contains your bitmapped image. Copy that image and paste it into the Paint frame. When you double-click the Paint frame now, it opens with your image in it.

Although Paint has many features and tools that I don’t have room to tell you about in this book, you should know that it’s useful for adjusting image colors. You might want to consult its online Help system for instructions.

Paint is based on an earlier version of ZSoft’s Paintbrush, which was one of my favorite paint programs a number of years ago. If you open the Paint OLE engine inside Publisher, you need never worry about file formats. If you take the non-Publisher route to launch Paint, by choosing Start⇒Programs⇒Accessories⇒Paint, you’re limited to working with five (admittedly important and common) bitmapped file formats: BMP (the Windows native format), JPEG, GIF, TIFF, and PNG.

That makes Paint a good program to use to edit and print these kinds of images.

Draw with Publisher 2007

I have almost no drawing talent whatsoever, so I avoid drawing programs like the plague. I am, therefore, fond of clip art and choose collections such as the one that comes with Publisher. If you, however, can draw a horse that looks more like a horse than a cat, you might want to create your own pictures from scratch. Although you certainly can go out and buy a full-blown professional graphics program, Publisher has some helpful drawing features built in.

You use the Objects toolbar to create lines, arrows, ovals, and rectangles with ease, by first selecting the corresponding tool and then clicking and dragging in your publication. If that’s not enough firepower for you, turn to AutoShapes, which are shapes that are ready for you to place in your publication. All you have to do is click the AutoShapes icon on the Objects toolbar, choose an AutoShape from the contextual menu that appears (see Figure 9-12), and then click and drag in your publication to create the selected shape. You can then resize it, color it, or fill it to your heart’s content.

Figure 9-12: The Objects toolbar’s AutoShapes menu.

The AutoShapes you can choose from are

Lines

Connectors

Basic shapes

Block arrows

Flowcharts

Stars and banners

Callouts

If the list of predefined AutoShapes doesn’t have what you’re looking for, you can click choose the More AutoShapes option from the menu and browse the Microsoft collection of ClipArt AutoShapes. If you still can’t find the exact shape you want, draw your own. Use the Freeform AutoShape tool in the Lines category to draw lines that have both curved and straight segments. Use the Scribble AutoShape tool to create a shape that looks like it was drawn with a pen.

Say OLE!

This book has presented three examples of using OLE servers in Publisher: WordArt (in Chapter 8), Clip Organizer (earlier in this chapter), and Paint. If you’re reading the chapters in this book in order, you probably qualify as an OLE meister. But these examples just scratch the surface of the programs that are out there at your service. Many more OLE server programs get installed when you install Windows or other programs.

Before you know it, you have sound servers, video servers, coffee servers, and more. (More is the operative word here.) To see what you have installed in your system at the moment, choose the Insert⇒Object command from the menu to access the Insert Object dialog box. The servers are listed in the Object Type list box. You can then either create a new data object that will be part of your Publisher publication or you can insert an object contained in a data file. Typically, if you want other programs to access the data object, you should use the second option: the Create from File option. If you want to manage the object inside your Publisher publication, click the Create New radio button.

If you select the Display As Icon check box, as shown in Figure 9-13, you’re telling Publisher to display the object as an icon instead of displaying the object itself. If you insert a Microsoft Office Excel Chart object and select the Display As Icon check box, for example, all you see in the publication is a small box with the word Chart in it. If you insert a an Office Excel Chart object and don’t select the Display As Icon check box, the Office Excel Chart is displayed in your publication in all its glory.

Figure 9-13: The Insert Object dialog box with the Display As Icon option selected.

Microsoft Office Excel Chart is one of the OLE servers that you may find most useful. It can take Excel spreadsheet data and create charts and graphs from it.

If you insert a Clip Organizer object in your publication, then insert a Paintbrush Picture object, you notice that they behave differently. Whereas the Clip Organizer opens in its own, separate window, the Paintbrush Picture takes over the entire Microsoft Publisher window. The term open editing describes how clip art gallery loads: Each program displays in its own window. The term editing-in-place describes how Paintbrush loads: The object remains in place while the original program’s window adjusts accordingly. In-place editing is one of OLE’s newer features, so you see it more and more as you begin to use newer programs on your computer.

We are at the beginning of the era of compound documents or rich data type documents. Here, small programs manage your data within a file. Your publications will be all-singing, all-dancing wonders.

Using the Design Gallery

One feature you should definitely visit in your page layout work is the Design Gallery. The Design Gallery isn’t a graphics creator per se, although it does rely on graphics in many instances. The Design Gallery is a browser that displays a collection of page layout parts you can use inside your document to create even more compelling publications. The original categories of parts you can use include Accent Box, Accessory Bar, Advertisements, Attention Getters, Barbells, Borders, Boxes, Calendars, Checkerboards, Coupons, Dots, Linear Accents, Logos, Marquee, Mastheads, Phone Tear-Off, Picture Captions, Pull Quotes, Punctuation, Reply Forms, Sidebars, and Tables of Contents. Then depending on the category you select, Design Gallery offers you many different styles, including Arcs, Kid Stuff, Marble, Nature, and Waves.

Follow these steps to insert a Design Gallery object into your layout:

1. Click the Design Gallery Object button on the Objects toolbar.

The Design Gallery window appears, as shown in Figure 9-14.

2. Click a category in the left-most pane of the window.

Design Gallery objects from that category are displayed in the center pane of the window.

3. From the center pane, click to select an object that you want to insert.

Depending on the category you selected, you may have options available to you, as displayed in the far-right pane of the Design Gallery window.

4. With your object selected, click the Insert Object button or double-click to have the object appear on your layout in a new frame.

Figure 9-14: The Design Gallery displays logo designs.

Figure 9-15 shows you a sample pull quote from the Design Gallery placed on a layout.

Using the Content Gallery

If you create something in your work or see something created by someone else that you want to save and reuse, that’s easy to do. Just follow these steps to add the item to what Publisher calls your Content Library:

1. Select the object or group of objects.

2. Choose Insert ⇒Add to Content Library.

The Add Item to Content Library dialog box, shown in Figure 9-16, appears.

3. Type a name for your new item in the Title box.

4. Select the relevant category check boxes (Business, Personal, or Favorites) and then click the OK button.

The object is added to the Content Library. Items stored in the Content Library are available to insert into any publication.

Figure 9-15: A pull quote from the Design Gallery.

Figure 9-16: The Add Item to Content Library dialog box.

After you have added objects to the Content Library, using them in the current (or any other) publication is simple:

1. Click the Item from Content Library button on the Objects toolbar, choose Insert ⇒Item from Content Library, or press Ctrl+Shift+E.

The Content Library task pane, shown in Figure 9-17 appears.

2. Select the item you want to insert into your publication.

You may have to scroll to find it.

3. Double-click the item, choose Insert from the item’s drop-down list or click and drag the item onto your publication.

You can store as many items as you want in the Content Library (or as many as the storage space on your computer allows). If you have more than 20 or 30 items in the Content Library, you may want to use the Search features in the Content Library task pane to help you find the items you want.

The Search options offered in the Content Library task pane are shown in this list:

• Category (the category the object is filed under): You can edit the Category list by clicking the Edit Category List button in the Add Item to Content Library dialog box and then add, delete, and rename categories. The categories are None, Business, Personal, Favorites, and any category you created.

Figure 9-17: The Content Library task pane.

• Type (the type of item that’s stored): Select a type — All, Group, Pictures, Shapes, Text, Text Boxes, Table, or Word Art.

• Additional Sort By options (with cool search parameters): Choose from Most Recently Used, Date Created, Title, Type, Size (Increasing), and Size (Decreasing).

4. Click the Close button to close the Content Library task pane.

Between the Clip Art task pane, the Design Gallery and the Content Library, Publisher gives you three very powerful methods for managing a collection of graphics and page layout parts to speed your work.

Tracking Down Other Picture Sources

With Publisher, you have just scratched the surface of available picture sources for your work. If you look on the Internet you discover an almost unlimited number of images you can use. Many of these images are freely distributed and of high quality. Most user group bulletin boards, for example, have graphics sections with images you can download. Many images that aren’t free are very reasonably priced — or are free if you use them for noncommercial work.

Make sure that you check any downloaded files with virus detection software. Most services do a good job of checking files, but the Internet is wide open to viruses.

You can also find many commercial sources for images. I am inundated with e-mail from companies that want to sell me commercial clip art. Chances are that if a company is in the business of creating the images, the images that they sell are of high quality. If a company is in the business of harvesting images from other sources, as you often find in low-priced CD-ROMs, you can be less sure of quality.

Getty Images (www.gettyimages.com) has a tremendous collection of royalty free images. The Dover Publications image books (www.doverpublications.com) are also excellent sources of images that you can scan into your publications.

Try to buy your drawn graphics in WMF formats, as they are the easiest to work with. If you need very high-quality drawn images, then use EPS graphics. (See the “Reviewing File Formats” section, later in this chapter, for more on these — and other — file formats.)

The New York Public Library Digital Gallery (http://digitalgallery.nypl.org) offers more than 500,000 images, many of which are in the public domain. For stock photographs, try FotoSearch (www.fotosearch.com) or ShutterStock Photos (www.shutterstock.com).

Inserting PowerPoint Slides into Publisher

You created a killer slide presentation in Microsoft PowerPoint and now you want to use some of the slides in Publisher. No sweat — follow these steps:

1. In PowerPoint, open the presentation file that contains the slide you want to use in your publication.

2. Click the Slide Sorter button on the View Ribbon and then click the slide you want to use in your Publisher publication.

3. Choose Edit ⇒Copy, press Ctrl+C, or click the Copy button on the Clipboard section of the Home Ribbon.

4. Switch to the Publisher window by clicking its button on the Windows taskbar.

If the Windows taskbar isn’t visible, you can switch applications by pressing Alt+Tab. Hold down the Alt key and press Tab until the Microsoft Publisher 2007 icon is highlighted in the Cool Switch box that appears. Release both keys.

5. In the Publisher window, choose Edit ⇒Paste, press Ctrl+V, or click the Paste button on the Standard toolbar.

Your PowerPoint slide appears in your publication.

The slide you inserted can be moved and resized just like a picture frame. If you want to edit the contents of the slide, just double-click it. PowerPoint opens inside Publisher, complete with that new-fangled Ribbon interface! Make any changes you want; then click outside the slide to close PowerPoint.

More on Scanning

If you can see it on paper, you can get it into Publisher. The ultimate way to bring images into Publisher is by using a scanner. A scanner is a machine that digitizes images into bitmapped files. You can buy scanners that can read film or slides; you can also find related equipment for video digitization.

The most popular devices for desktop publishers probably are flatbed desktop scanners. You can get a medium-quality, full-color desktop scanner, such as a Canon CanoScan LiDE70 flatbed scanner, for about $80. This type of scanner creates files in 48-bit (full) color at 2400 x 4800 dpi. Images of this type are adequate for medium-quality magazine work.

You can also rent scanners at print services or have the service scan your images for you. In the latter case, the equipment that’s used may be high quality, so expect the cost to be higher.

Scanners can create digital images in these four modes:

Black-and-white: Creates images with only black or white pixels. This mode is suitable for images that are predominantly white or black and don’t have much detail, but not for art with patterns or textures you want to preserve. This mode creates very small file sizes.

Line art: Used for finely detailed artwork in black and white. Turn up the brightness level when you scan line art.

Grayscale: Preserves any shades of gray in a black-and-white photograph or converts color values in a color image to shades of gray. This mode gives results of photographic quality and preserves patterns and textures. File sizes can be large but are still only a third of the size of color scan files.

Color: Used to create images with pictures in full color. File sizes can be extremely large. Pay particular attention to minimizing the file size when creating these images and to making sure that the color fidelity is correct.

Many printed materials are printed as halftone images, in which black-and-white images are created with spots, dots, lines, or other repeating patterns. Because these images don’t offer true black-and-white, they scan poorly. Scanner software often has special facilities to handle halftones in order to get adequate scans. Chances are that scanned halftones will result in images with moiré patterns (when two or more repeating patterns overlap each other and produce a distorted effect), which are quite unattractive. Often, you can avoid moiré patterns by reducing image size, positioning the picture in your scanner at an angle, and applying filtering to the image in an image-editing program. Then, if you’re lucky, moiré patterns don’t print. Your best bet is to avoid scanning halftone images, if you can.

Because large scanned images can take a long time to display on your layout and can make scrolling painful, Publisher has a feature that reduces the level of detail in your pictures or hides from view the pictures on a layout. You can also display pictures in a reduced form, which results in a slight improvement in performance.

To hide pictures on a layout, choose View⇒Pictures. The Picture Display dialog box (shown in Figure 9-18) opens, where you can click the Hide Pictures radio button.

When you select the Hide Pictures option, your picture frames have an X through them, to indicate that they contain a picture. Frames without content appear without an X.

Scanners can be used to import not only pictures but also digitized images of any object: paper, marble, or cloth, for example. You can produce attractive and creative graphics by using scanned images in your work.

Figure 9-18: The Picture Display dialog box.

Scanning is a complex topic that requires specialized knowledge to get professional-quality scans. I recommend one outstanding book on the topic of scanners and digital imaging technology: Real World Scanning & Halftones, 3rd Edition, by David Blatner, Conrad Chavez, Glenn Fleishman, and Steve Roth (Peachpit Press). This well-written book is technically excellent and was written with a sense of humor.

The most important concept you can remember about the scanning process is that you should scan images with the purpose of the image in mind. If you’re scanning an image for screen display, a resolution of 72 dpi is sufficient. For a laser printer, you don’t want to scan at more than 300 dpi; a higher resolution is wasted and can’t be used. Similarly, although you can scan any image size to great color depth and your image can be reduced, doing so is a waste of resources. Use a color and an image size that are appropriate to your work. For example, an 81⁄2-x-11-inch, 24-bit color image at 300 dpi (150 lines per inch, or medium-quality magazine printing at full color) consumes about 25MB of disk space! It pays to save.

For example, if you’re printing only in black and white, scan in black and white. Or, better still, scan in shades of gray. You can create attractive results from 256 shades of gray, and create good results from 64 shades of gray, with enormous file size reductions. You just have to know the intended use of the graphics.

Publisher lets you directly incorporate scans by using software that supports the TWAIN standard. (TWAIN is scanner driver software that’s installed on the Publisher Insert menu as a set of menu commands when the scanner is installed.) If your scanner doesn’t support this standard, the From Scanner or Camera command on the Insert⇒Picture menu is grayed out. Even if the command is grayed out, all is not lost. Many scanner manufacturers upgrade their software, and you can check with your scanner manufacturer to see whether an upgrade is available. Also, third-party software that supports your scanner might be available. For example, the highly regarded VueScan software supports many common scanners and offers advanced features.

Reviewing File Formats

Graphical image file formats are a rat’s nest of acronyms — a veritable alphabet soup. Unfortunately, you have to know something about each format in order to decide which one you want to import a file from. File formats come in three basic types: paint (or bitmapped image) files, drawing (or vector image) files, and metafiles, which let you store either type of picture. A file’s extension tells you the format of the file. This section briefly describes the file formats that Publisher can import.

The following list describes some of the bitmapped or painted-image file formats supported by Publisher:

JPEG: Files in the JPEG format take the JPG file extension. These high-quality color files offer advanced file compression techniques for reducing their image file sizes. Because JPEG is one of the best choices for full-color images, most image-editing programs save to JPEG format. You also find JPEG images in scientific work, and it’s used as a standard file format on the Internet because the format is cross-platform.

Tagged Image File Format 5.0: This format, also known as TIFF, is an industry standard file format that creates files that use the TIF extension. This format, created by Microsoft and Aldus, is openly published and supported. TIFF files are very high-quality images. All paint and image-editing programs open in and save to TIFF format. TIFF is probably the most commonly used bitmapped file format for printing from desktop publishing applications.

Several variations of TIFF exist, so you can have problems opening TIFF files.

Many programs, such as Photoshop, read one flavor of TIFF and save to another. If you’re having trouble with a TIFF file, try converting it in a program such as Photoshop or a file-conversion program.

Windows Bitmaps: These files, which are painted images in the Paint format, can be either black-and-white or color. You can open and edit these files, which take the .bmp file extension, in Paint. BMP files are simple files that don’t use compression, so the file size on a high-quality image can be huge. They work well for lower-quality paint images but aren’t commonly used for images.

TIFF, JPEG, and PNG files are the most commonly used high-quality image file formats.

You can import these two formats for drawn or vector images:

Encapsulated PostScript: EPS files are written in the PostScript language, using plain text to indicate graphics and text with formatting. EPS files, which end with the EPS file extension, can be displayed but can be altered only by the creator application. You need a PostScript printer in order to print EPS files correctly.

Although EPS files are sometimes saved without a preview file when they’re created, and therefore appear as a black or gray box in a picture frame, they print correctly. EPS is a very high-quality format that many print services favor. You often find high-quality clip art stored in this file format. When you send an EPS file to a print service, it’s complete — that is, it contains all the font information it needs and doesn’t require the print service to set up its computer to print your EPS file.

WordPerfect Graphic: This proprietary format is used for drawings inside the WordPerfect word processor and related products from WordPerfect (now owned by Corel). Otherwise, the WPG file format is infrequently used.

Publisher can import these three types of metafiles:

Computer Graphics: This standard, which produces images with the CGM file extension, is widely used for drawn images and almost never contains bitmaps. CGM is used by many IBM PC clip art collections (and is never used on a Macintosh).

Windows: This native file format for the Windows Clipboard creates files with the WMF file extension. Because WMF is specified by a single vendor (Microsoft), you encounter few difficulties with it. WMF files are nearly always drawings; rarely do you find a file of this type with a bitmap image in it. Many PC clip art collections now use the WMF format because it produces good results.

Macintosh PICT: The PICT format is the native file format of the Macintosh Clipboard. In earlier days, the Macintosh was the source of many illustrations used on the PC. PICT files often contain either bitmaps or drawn images or both. Images are of moderate quality, and PICT isn’t a commonly used high-quality format. The files take the PCT file extension.

Phew! I told you that the world of file formats was a rat’s nest. Still, Publisher is blessed with a large and varied collection of file format import filters. All the popular ones are included, so you should have little trouble working with images from outside sources.

Image ethics

Pay particular attention to the source of any image you intend to use in your work. Someone created the image, and someone owns it, and the two “someones” aren’t always the same person. Whoever the owner is controls the use of the image and can let you freely use it, let you use it for noncommercial use, or charge you a fee.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that just because an image is a picture of something well known in the public domain (for example, a picture of the Statue of Liberty), it doesn’t belong to the person who took the photograph. It does.

The Microsoft Publisher 2007 license allows you to freely use its clip art in your publications for your personal use. You cannot sell the clip art electronically as software, either individually or in a collection. Other companies let you freely use low-resolution images but charge you for the use of high-resolution images. You must check out the license that comes with the image. The problem, though, is that many images don’t come with a license. In that case, err on the side of caution and use an image whose source and conditions of use are known.

Just to muddy the waters, an aspect of copyright law allows for the “fair use” of text and images in some instances. If you’re using a piece of a document or an image for journalistic criticism, you’re free to use the work of others. The restriction is that the piece you use must be a small part of the work and not something central to the use of the work. For example, you could use a still-frame image (but not hundreds of them) from a movie or a short video clip but not a long one. The fair use doctrine hasn’t yet undergone long scrutiny of the law (something that could be said of much of current copyright laws). Each country also has its own copyright laws.