but don't make them get bored waiting for the page to load
BEFORE
Choose a good photo
decide how you are going to use it; ie the whole of it or one section
what size is it going to be ? i. FULL SIZE (a whole screen) ii PART of a webpage ii. BOTH
The Scan
Put the photo on the scanner
Switch the scanner on
Start your graphics program (Adobe Photoshop or Corel Photopaint, or Ulead Photo Express or Paintshop Pro etc)
click file aquire image : and your scanner program should start
click preview
was the photo the right way up you may want to move it and preview again, but you will also find that you can rotate the image later in the graphics program.
use the mouse to select the area of the photo you want,. If in doubt select the whole photo, since you can crop it later.
Select the kind of image you want Usually colour at the maximum quality. Experience tells me that even if you are working with black and white photos it's best to select the colour option.
Set the resolution dpi(dots per inch) : 150 normally or 300 if you will only be using part of the photo and you will be enlarging this bit. The higher the number the slower the scan.
set the image quality : usually "magazine image"
the program may ask what to save the image as - if it does save as name.bmp .bmp type are large files , but have 100% quality
Now click scan
After 2 minutes the scan should be finished and the image will appear on your screen in the graphics program.
TOUCHING UP : USING THE GRAPHICS PROGRAM
The image on the screen can be made to appear better than your original photo. In Ulead Photo Express there is a button marked "auto enhance" this seems to work very well. In other graphics programs you have to play around with the brightness and contrast. You will usually find the command along the top command bar in something like IMAGE - properties. Play around and see what you get. I find that normally it's best to increase the brightness quite a bit and the contrast just a little.
Remember that if you don't like what you have done ctrl-z will take you back a step.
the next thing is to select the area you want to keep. use the tool usually shown as a cross hair in the toolbar
now find the command "crop to selection" ,use it
next you need to set the image size and resolution. Find the command along the top bar you will see something like image properties size or attributes. If you want a full size and part screen image do the big image first. 75 dpi is about the maximum size you can discern on a monitor so set the resolution to this.
for FULL screen size try 500 (pixel) width or 300 height. Now click file - save as and select type jpg and at about 70% quality e.g.namebig.jpg
PART screen try 230 width or 150 height and save as above e.g. namesmall.jpg
NOTE if your images has a limited number of colours e.g. a logo it's best not to select jpg but use the gif format ...which also allows you to save with a transparent background
PUTTING IN THE WEBPAGE
First put your image in the same directory as your webpages . In fact I prefer to use a seperate subdirectory to keep everything tidy e.eg. webpaages/photos
Open your webpage editng program (Frontpage, Word etc)
click in the place you want to insert the image
find the insert image command and select the image file
note if you edit the source code you will see the form like this
( img SRC="photo.jpg" alt="my photo" width=500 height=200 )
you maybe able to select the image and drag the side to change the size if you want.. though this is not the best technique
NOTE : the best way to align many images together is to first put a table on the webpage and insert the image in a cell ie if you want to have 3 photos side by side . First create a table 3 columns wide and insert one image in each cell
often I use the hyperlink command so that people can click on the small image and see the large image