Quick Image Editing
FrontPage Editor provides some built-in tools for doing very basic manipulation of your graphics. If you click on an image, you will notice that another toolbar appears on your screen, usually along the bottom of the editor. This is the Image Toolbar.
Also notice that when you click once on a graphic, black dots appear at the corners and sides of the image. These are called "handles".
Following are descriptions of the most useful functions on this toolbar.
Remember -- at any time you can hit Ctrl-Z to UNDO.
Add text to an image
The button with an A
lets you add text to an image. This is especially useful for adding text to blank buttons,
such as those available in the UO/E Graphic
Sets. You can customize a plain image to say whatever you want.
To add text to an image:
- Use the Insert Image procedure to place the image on your page.
- Click once on the image so that "handles" (small black squares) appear at the corners of the image. The Image Toolbar should be visible now.
- On the Image Toolbar, click the A button.
- Type the text you want on the image. It will not let you exceed the size of the original image
- To change the font, size or color of the text, highlight the text then use functions on the Formatting Toolbar.
- When done, click somewhere else in the page to finish editing the graphic.
Plain Button: 
Button with Text: 
If you hit Enter, it may ask you to enter a hyperlink address. This will just link the text spot to an address. Do not use this unless you are creating an Imagemap.
Tips: use high contrast colors and a clean font (a san serif font such as Arial or Comic Sans is usually best) to make your buttons readable.
When you save your page, the image will be saved again with the text on it. This alters the original image, so be sure you have a backup copy in case you don't like it.
Transparency
This tool
will make one color in an image transparent so that the background color of the page shows
through. This is useful for making a background around an icon disappear.
However, only .GIF format files can have transparent colors. If you make a color transparent, the image will be re-saved as .GIF format.
To make an image transparent:
- Click once on the image to select it (so the handles appear)
- Click the transparency tool on the Image Toolbar
- Click the pointer on the color in the image that you want to turn transparent. You will see the result right away.
Please do not use this feature on the UO/E logos. J
Because of the way images make curves smooth, some images with transparent elements will appear "fuzzy" around the edges. This is because the color transition from one color to another was graduated -- i.e. not just black and white, but black to gray to white. Transparency only effects one single color, not an area of mixed color. If the original image was a .JPEG file with lots of subtle color, you probably will not like the result of adding transparency to it.
If your original file was a .GIF, this will overwrite it, so be sure to have a backup copy.
Nothing is transparent |
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Background is turned |
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