basic computer part-4

File Extensions

 In the next section, we discuss how to work with images. Before we get to that, it's a good idea to check to make sure you have files extensions switched on.

A file extension is the dot and letters at the end of a file name. For example, a picture you take on your camera phone will probably end in .JPG or .JPEG. The letters stand for Joint Photographic Experts Group, and tell Windows and other programmes that it is an image file. Other file extensions for images are GIF, PNG, and TIFF. If you have file extensions switched off you won't be able to tell what sort of image you have. Not only that, somebody could send you an attachment to an email that looks like this:

picture_file.jpg

If you just saw the JPG ending, you might open the file, thinking it was an image. However, the real file ending could be this:

picture_file.jpg.exe

But you won't see the .exe at the end if you have file extensions switched off. The exe means it's an executable programme that will be installed onto your computer. If you opened the file, the programme would install automatically. And it certainly won't have your best interests at heart!
In the image below, we have four files showing, but no file extensions, so we could be vunerable to this sort of attack:

To switch on file extensions, start Windows Explorer by clicking its icon just to the right of the start button:

The default for Windows Explorer is to hide the menu bars. To view them, press the left ALT key on your keyboard (the one to the left of the space bar). You should see this at the top of Windows Explorer:

If you still can't see the menu bars click Organize > Layout > Menu Bar:

Now that you have a menu bar, click the Tools item. From the Tools menu, select Folder Options:

You should see the following dialogue box appear:

Click on the View tab at the top to see the following:

Have a look at the list of options and locate "Hide extensions for known file types":

As, you can see there is a check mark in the box next to this entry. If yours is the same, click the box to remove the check mark. Then click the Apply button at the bottom. Click OK to get rid of the dialogue box. You should now be able to see the extensions on the end of file names:

Our four images are now showing the JPG file extension.

Copy and Paste Pictures to a New Folder

In this tutorial, you will learn how to copy and paste pictures to a new folder. Once you've done that, you will learn how to add information to each image, so that they can be located and referenced more easily. Let's start by creating a new folder.

Start the Windows 7 Explorer by clicking its icon to the right of the Start button:

When Windows Explorer starts, click on Pictures in the Libraries section of the Navigation pane (If you can't see the Navigation pane, click the Organize button at the top. Then select Layout > Navigation pane):

On the right, you'll see folders that are in this library. Windows 7 has some Sample Pictures in this library. But you can add your own, and create folders for them.

Create a folder by clicking the New Folder button at the top:

The new folder appears, with blue highlighted text:

The blue highlight means that you can go ahead and type a new name for that folder. In the image below, we've changed the name to York:

If you've clicked away from the new folder, click back on to it once with your left mouse button. Pause for a second or two and then click again with your left mouse button. It should turn blue again. If it doesn't, right click the new folder and select "Rename" from the menu that appears.

Now that you have a new folder, you need to add some images to it.

Use the Navigation pane on the left to navigate to a location on your computer where you have some image. In the image below, we've found some images on our Network drive. (If you have a images on a USB stick or data card, insert it and then click Computer. Your USB stick or data card should show up there as a drive.)

If you're not sure where you have any images, look inside of your Downloads folder, or your Documents folder:

Once you've found some images, select the ones you want to add to your new folder. To select one image, simply click it with your left mouse button. To select more than one image, hold down the left CTRL key on your keyboard. With the CTRL key held down, click each file you want to add. If you've made a mistake, click the file again to deselect it.

Once you have selected your images, right click on any of them. From the menu that appears select Copy:

Now navigate back to the new folder you've just created in the Pictures library. Double click the new folder to move inside of it. You should see a message on the right saying "this folder is empty". Right click anywhere inside of the big white area, and right-click again. From the menu, select Paste:

The images will be copied and pasted over to the new folder:

If your pictures are not showing as thumbnails like ours, click the icon and arrow circled in red below:

From the menu, select Tiles. (But click each one in turn to see what they do):

Now that you have some images in the folder, you can add some information to them. We'll do that in the next section.

Adding Information to an Image 

Windows 7 lets you add lots of information to an image. In this section, you'll learn how to do this. (If you haven't yet created a new folder and moved some images to it, then we did this in the last section.)

To add information to an image, you need to be able to see the Details panel at the bottom:

(If you can't see this, click the Organise button at the top. From the menu, select Layout > Details pane.)

With the details pane showing, select an image in your folder. You should then see the details for that picture, as in the image above.

The information about the selected image is shown on the pane. However, this information can be retried by others, if you give them a copy of the picture. If you want to remove image information, right click on the Details pane to see the following menu:

The Size is how many items can fit onto the Details pane. The values are Small, Medium, and Large. Click each one in turn and see what they do. But click the Remove properties option to see the following dialogue box:

Scroll down to see what properties are recorded about the image. There's an awful lot! If you don't what to share this information with others, tick a box. Once you're happy with your choices, click OK. If you don't want to change anything, just click Cancel.

Rating your Images

Give the picture a Rating out of 5 by moving your mouse pointer over the stars. Click the score you think your picture deserves. We've given our first image a Rating of 1 out of 5:

Once you click on the stars, you should see Save and Cancel buttons appear. Click Save if you're happy with the rating. (You can change it.)

Add a Title to your Images

To give your picture a Title, move your mouse just to the right of the word "Title". You should see a black rectangle appear:

Click once with you left mouse button to see a text box appear, along with the Save and Cancel buttons again:

Click inside the text box and type a title. Then click the Save button

You can add comments and the Author's (photographer) name in the same way:

Adding Tags to Images

The Tag section is used for searching. You can add as many Tags as you like. Click inside the Tag area and type a word or two that describes the image:

Notice the semi-colon at the end of our "York minster" tag. The semi-colon is used to separate each tag. When you add a second tag, Windows will insert a new semi-colon at the end:

Click the Save button when you've finished typing your tags. Add information to the other images in the folder.

Sorting Images in Windows 7 

In the previous section, you learned how to add information to an image. In this section, you'll se what you can do with all this information. This comes under the topic of Sorting.

First, though, change your View slider from Tiles to Details:

When you arrange the window to Details view, your screen should look like this one:

We now have a list of images with the Name, Date, Tags, Size and Ratings showing. These headings can all be used to sort your images. Click on the Ratings, for example, and you'll see a dropdown box:

You can choose to display only images with 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 stars. All you need to do is to check each box. The ones not checked will then be hidden:

Here, we're choosing to display only 1 and 2 star images, perhaps with a view to deleting them. (To delete an image, right-click. From the menu that appears, select Delete. Or choose Rename to change the name of the image.) To view all your images again, uncheck the boxes.

Try clicking some of the other headings. Try a sort by Tags to see what happens.

If you want more choices right-click anywhere on the headings to see the following menu:

The ones we have displayed have a check mark next to them. Click an item on the list to either select or deselect it. In the image below, we have deselected the Size and Date and added the Dimensions instead:

And here's the result:

To see other sort options, select the More option from the menu. You should then see this dialogue box:

Scroll down to see a huge list of options you can choose from.

Arrange By options

Another way to sort you images is via the "Arrange by" dropdown list. Click the arrow to see the following:

In the image below, we've chosen to arrange our images by Month:

Play around with the various options on the menu and see what they do. Change it back to folders, if you want the Windows 7 default view.

Searching for Images

One good reason to add Tags to all your images is that it helps in a Windows search. In the example below, we've typed "York minster" into the search box on the Start menu:

Notice that Windows has found all the images from our folder, even though none of the pictures was called "York minster": it found them because of the tags.

And that's it for images in Windows 7. We'll move on. In the next part, you'll learn how to take a screenshot and then manipulate it in Windows 7 Paint.

How to Take Screenshots 

In this lesson you'll learn how to take a screenshot, and how to crop that image down to size. For example, suppose you were getting an error message on screen and wanted to send it to us to see if we could help. Instead of typing the error message, or trying to explain it, you could take a screenshot, crop to reduce the file size, and then insert the image into your email. Here's how.

First, you need to locate the Prt Scrn button on your keyboard. This stands for Print Screen, and is usually located on the right hand side of a standard keyboard, just above the Insert, Home and Page Up keys. However, if you have a laptop, the Prt Scrn button can be hard to locate. Look in the very top right of your keypad. Not only that, you may have to hold down your laptop's function key first, which is usually found in the bottom left of the keypad.

Press the Print Screen button once on a PC, or use the Function Key > Print Screen combination on a laptop. This will copy whatever you see on your screen to the computer's memory. Once the screen is in the computer's memory it can be pasted into an image editor for manipulation.

The image editor we'll use is Paint. This has been much improved with Windows 7 and can be found by clicking your Start button. From the Start menu click All Programs at the bottom:

Now click on Accessories, and Paint:

When Paint starts up, click the Paste button at the top:

The image you captured on the desktop should now appear in the main viewing area. If it doesn't, it means you haven't captured the image. So try pressing your "Prt Scrn" button again.

You now need isolate just that part of the image you're interested in. After all, there's no sense in sending anyone the whole of the screen when you only want to capture the error message.

To isolate just part of the screen, click the Select button on the Paint toolbar:

Now move your mouse back on to your image. The cursor should have changed shape. Hold down your left mouse button on the top left of whatever it is you're trying to capture. Keep your left mouse button held down and drag to the bottom right. In the image below, we're trying to isolate some code and the error message:

Unfortunately, Paint is not very good when it comes to resizing a selected area. You might think the white squares are sizing handles. But if you hold your mouse over one and try to drag to a new position it will cut and move the image instead. It's better if you press the Select button again. This will deselect your chosen area, and you can have another go.

If you accidentally move your selected area, click the Undo icon at the very top left of Paint:

Once you have a selection, right-click this area and you'll see a menu appear. Select Crop, and the image will shrink to your selected area:

Paint is also not very good at refining the cropped area, either. If you want better screenshots then you would need a decent image editor like the free Gimp (which is quite hard to use). Photoshop Elements is also a very good image editor, and is well worth paying money for. The best professional image editor is Photoshop, (Elements is a stripped down version of this), but it's quite expensive.

For quick screenshots and basic cropping, however, Paint should be fine.

Once you have cropped your image down to size, you can save it by clicking the dropdown menu at the top:

From the menu, select Save As to see the following options:

As you can see, there is a bewildering array of options! If you want to keep the file size down to a minimum, use GIF or PNG. (GIF is the more common of the two.) For better quality images, but large file sizes, use JPEG. If you're sending somebody a screenshot in an email, GIF is the better option.