Modifying a Graphic

Modules >>
Word Processing II >>
Modifying a Graphic

In the Word I module, you inserted an image into your word processing document. In this lesson, you will learn how to modify an image for part of your assignment. Descriptions of the revisions will be described below. Before we begin, let's quickly go over some points about graphics.

There are two types of graphics: bitmaps, which cannot be ungrouped, and pictures such as metafiles that can be ungrouped. Most clip art is in metafile format. In Word, you will need to access the toolbar for drawing, to do this,

go to the View menu
Select "Toolbar" then make sure "Drawing" is selected
The following toolbar will appear:

Move your pointer slowly over each of the above buttons to view the pop-up label describing what each button does.

Modifying Elements of an Image

For part of your assignment, you are asked to modify a clip art image as described below:

Open a new word document and save it with the name "XXXdraw" - you will use this document to save your work from all seven lessons in the Drawing Tools section of the module.
Insert the same clip art image twice.
You will modify the second image as described below. The first image will be left intact for comparison purposes.
Ungroup the clip art by going to the "Draw" menu. The Draw menu is the drop-down menu found at the far left of the Drawing toolbar shown above. It looks like:

.

A shortcut for ungrouping is to right-click on top of the image to get a pop-up menu. If your "ungroup" option is grey-ed out, then find a different clip art image to insert - one that can be ungrouped.

You may notice dozens of image "handles," which are found at the corners of each image that makes up the clip art. Click away from the clip art to unselect all of these images.
Next, select a few of these images by clicking on them
Change the colour of these selected images to yellow by clicking on "Fill Colour" drop-down menu (found on the toolbar) and selecting the colour yellow (if it isn't already set to that colour). The Fill Colour button looks like the following:

Regroup the image once these changes are made. To do this, click on the pointer on the toolbar. This button looks like the following:

It is used to select objects. Use click and drag to draw a square large enough to engulf all of the images that make up the clip art. Release the mouse button to see all the images selected (you should see all the image handles again). Return to the Draw menu in the toolbar and select "Regroup."

Cropping an Image

The next part of your assignment requires you to insert an image and modify it using the Picture toolbar as described below:

Save the "CIE" image (shown below) to your computer. You learned how to do this in the Internet I module.

Next insert this image twice into your "XXXdraw" word processing document. Place these two images at the bottom of the Drawing document (below the two clip art images).
When you click on the first image to select it, you should see the "Picture" toolbar, which looks like the following:

From left to right, the buttons are:
- Insert Picture
- Image Control: select from Automatic, Grayscale, Black & White, or Watermark.
- More Contrast
- Less Contrast
- More Brightness
- Less Brightness
- Crop
- Line Style
- Text Wrapping
- Format Picture
- Set Transparent Colour
- Reset Picture
Change the image control of the CIE picture to "Grayscale" so your image will look like the following:

You will follow the instructions below to crop an image, but first you need to learn what the difference is between altering the size of an image and cropping it. You may notice that the cropping button is one that toggles On (pressed down) and Off (released). The crop button is found on the Picture toolbar and looks like the following:

Keep the crop button in the Off position. Next, click on the second CIE image to select it so that the handles are displayed. Click and drag the middle right handle (shown circled below) and reduce the width of the image by dragging the handle to the left. As you can see, the image width gets narrower, but the image gets squished.

Reset the image to its original appearance by clicking on the Reset Picture button, found at the left of the Picture toolbar. This button looks like the following:

Now, click on the "Crop" button so it looks pressed in. This is turning on the crop feature. Now, grab the same handle as you did when you resized this image and drag it left until only the letter "C" in "CIE" is showing. Release your mouse button. What you will see is only half of your CIE image as follows:

Nothing is squished. It is like someone pulled a white curtain across half of it. This is what you call cropping an image. Leave the image with this appearance for your module submission. Save your changes.

Please continue to the next lesson on Text Boxes.