Microsoft Photo Editor
Photo Editor is a member of the Microsoft Office suite, and, as such, is found on many computers. It is used for manipulating existing images, not for creating images through drawing or capture. However, it does have several useful features for preparing images for Web pages.
Cropping an image
Click on File and then Click on Open. You will get the usual Windows dialog box for locating a file. Open the image file you want to change. Now, on the Photo Editor Toolbar, click on the selection box (a rectangle with dashed lines as the borders). Select the region of the picture you want by pressing down on the left mouse button on the upper left corner and dragging then releasing the mouse button at the lower right corner. Click on Edit on the toolbar for the pull down menu and click on Copy. Then click on Paste as New Image. This will produce the cropped picture. Save this image under a new name.
Combining images or parts of images
You can have more than one image open at a time in Photo Editor. Do this using File and then Open. Use the Window command to switch among the open images. Use the selection tool and then Edit and Copy or Cut to acquire an image from one image. Then switch to another image and use Edit and Paste. The selected image will appear, probably in the upper left corner. You can move it wherever you want within the image. To set it in place, move the mouse off the pasted image and click.
Changing file types
You can change the file type (for example, .bmp to .gif) by opening the file (Click on File and then Open, and choose the file) and then saving as the new type (Click on File, then Save as… and change the type.
Establishing a color as a transparent color
If you want the image to blend into the background of the Web page, you can establish one (and only one) of the colors as what is termed the transparent color and save the file as a .gif. You pick the transparent color using what looks like a blue wand on the toolbar. Click on this icon and then click in the image on the color you want designated as transparent. The background will show through all the pixels with this color. Determining pixel coordinates within an image To make an image map (make certain regions of the image clickable to different links), you need to specify the coordinates in pixels of the regions. Photo Editor provides this information. Simply move the mouse over the image and look at the lower left-hand corner. It will display Cursor (45, 35), for example, indicating that the mouse is at that position. You can also click on File and then on Properties to find the dimensions in pixels and inches and the total size in bytes of the image.