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Obviously, different graphic file types are used with different scenarios. For
example, graphics for Web use don’t require the same quality settings as those
used in professional printing. With everyone sharing picture files these days,
though, either directly or over the Internet, file size and quality is an issue
regardless of the scenario. Picture files are notoriously large in size because of all
the colors and details needed to make them. Because of this, data compression
techniques are employed to help keep picture file sizes down. Lossy compression
and lossless compression are two such methods. Lossy compression reduces the
file size by eliminating certain data, such as redundant information; but when
uncompressed, some of the original data is gone. With lossless compression,
everything in the file can be recovered when the file is uncompressed. Image
file formats, like those described in the following list, apply these types of data
compression methods to reduce the overall file size.
The most common picture formats you’ll encounter today are
• JPEG or JPG Stands for Joint Photographics Expert Group. JPG is commonly
used on photos and similar types of illustration files. Its flexible compres-
sion levels let you control the file size. JPG is a good choice when you want
a smaller file size for an image, but that means the quality is lower due to its
lossy compression method. However, the quality loss might not be noticeable.
• TIFF or TIF Stands for Tagged Image File Format. TIFF is great for high-
color, high-depth digital images, and its lossless compression format retains
image quality no matter how many times you open and resave the file. TIF is
the highest quality for commercial work.
• PNG Stands for Portable Network Graphics. PNG is a bitmap file format
designed specifically for use with web pages. It was originally designed to
replace the GIF format to save color information more efficiently. Although not
as popular as JPEG and TIFF, it’s a good choice for lossless quality images.
• GIF Stands for Graphics Interchange Format. GIF is an older file format com-
monly used with simple graphics, such as logos, shapes, and icons. It also
supports animation. It’s a bit limiting for today’s digital technology (it only
supports 8-bit, 256 color at the maximum), but it still has its place on the Web
for simple graphics.
• BMP Stands for Windows Bitmap. This file format is commonly used with
Windows graphics. Also called raster or paint format, it’s not compressed,
which results in a larger file size. BMP files aren’t very popular as web graphics.
• RAW This is uncompressed digital image data straight from your camera.
It’s not been fiddled with or compressed in any way. You must convert RAW
files to another file format in order to open them in a photo-viewing program.
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If you hand someone a RAW file, chances are they can’t read it; it has to be
converted first. With Windows 7 and later, the Camera Codec Pack helps with
reading RAW file types.
• DNG Stands for Digital Negative. DNG is a new open standard RAW format
developed by Adobe, and just about every digital photo program can read
DNG file types.
Hey, don’t think I didn’t notice your eyes glazing over after reading about all
those file types. Just remember to flip back to the list if you ever need to identify
one as you encounter different graphic files on your computer journey.
NOTE
A picture’s file format can tell you a lot about the
compression, which in turn can tell you about the picture’s
quality. Other file formats can tell you about the program
from which it originates. You will run into other formats, such
as Windows Metafile Format (WMF) for things such as clip art
illustrations, but don’t let the formats throw you off. Lots of
programs, like Adobe Illustrator, save artwork in a native file
format (AI for Adobe Illustrator), so you’ll run across all kinds of
different formats as you work with different graphic elements.
Inserting Images from the Internet
In the prehistoric days of early computing, digital artwork was quite rudimentary,
jaggedy-edged and limited in color scope. It often looked like a caveman drew
it rather than a highly qualified computer programmer. As time progressed,
predrawn clip art began to proliferate among software manufacturers as clip
art collections, allowing users to easily illustrate their files with cartoony-like
graphics. The collections themselves used to install with software programs,
such as Microsoft Word, and included a small variety of themes related to
business, desktop publishing, and computer technologies. Eventually, full-blown
photographic images—also called stock photography—made their way into clip
art collections, too.
NOTE
Clip art got its name from the practice of clipping
the artwork from existing printed art. Long before computers,
printing people clipped artwork from other printed material
and pasted it onto new publications. Now most publications are
produced through desktop publishing software.
Today, most of the image collections offered with software programs are available
online. Rather than clog up your computer’s hard drive with lots of images you
might not ever use, you can access pictures on the Web instead and find just the
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right ones you want. With an Internet connection, you can peruse vast libraries of
pictures, from drawings and illustrations to photographs and video clips.
You need an online connection and a Microsoft account to tap into the Office.
com site and search for artwork. The Insert Pictures feature, shown in Figure
15.2, lets you search for pictures in the following sources:
• Office.com Search through Microsoft’s own collection of royalty-free pictures.
• Bing Image Search Use this option to search for pictures on the Web using
Microsoft’s Bing search engine.
• SkyDrive If you store pictures on your cloud account, you can use this
option to look for picture files among your SkyDrive content.
That’s not all: If you use a Flickr photo sharing account, you can add it to the mix
and search for digital pictures from it as well.
FIGURE 15.2
The new Insert Pictures box lets you search for online pictures from several sources.
Thumbnails are miniatures of images. Rather than take up a lot of space with full-
size images, most photo displays used in galleries, photo viewers, and search
engines show smaller versions of the images. The term thumbnail also applies
to files you view using Windows Explorer. For example, you can choose to view
folder contents as thumbnails. This sort of gives you a glance at what the files
contain without the inconvenience of a full-on screen-hogging view.
NOTE
Pictures offered through the Office.com site are
royalty-free, which means you can use them for free. That’s
not always the case with other web content. Be careful about
randomly copying artwork from other sources or you might be in
copyright violation.
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TIP
You can always use the good old Copy and Paste
commands to copy pictures into your documents from
other sources.
Using Pictures from Office.com
To insert a picture from Microsoft’s online collection, follow these steps:
1. Click the Insert tab.
2. Click Online Pictures to open the Insert Pictures tool (see Figure 15.2).
3. Click in the Office.com Clip Art search field and type in a keyword or words
for the type of picture you’re looking for.
4. Press Enter or click the Search icon.
5. A search results page lists any matches, similar to Figure 15.3. Use the scrollbar
to look through the thumbnails.
Click the picture you want
Click here when you’re ready to download the image
FIGURE 15.3
Look through the search results to find the picture you want to use.
6. When you find one you want, click it. If you find more than one, press and hold
the Ctrl key while clicking each image.
7. To download the picture, click Insert.
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When the download is complete, Word inserts the picture into your document,
much like what you see in Figure 15.4, and displays a new Format tab for working
with the image. You might need to resize the picture right away to make it fit.
More often than not, you’ll find yourself having to do this with any artwork you
bring into Word. Drag a picture’s corner selection handle to resize the image. To
move the picture around in the document, click and drag it.
Format tab
Selection handles
FIGURE 15.4
Word downloads the picture and inserts it for you. In this example, I inserted a clip art
illustration.
If your initial search doesn’t result in any good matches on Office.com, try typing
in another keyword or phrase in the Search box. Finding the right picture for an
occasion might take a few tries. If you give up on searching, click the Back to
Sites link in the upper-left corner to return to the main Insert Pictures screen and
try another source.
TIP
In Chapter 16, “Fine-Tuning Your Graphics,” you can learn
how to apply some formatting techniques to your pictures, such
as how to add shadows, 3-D effects, borders, and more.
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LEISURELY PICTURE SHOPPING
The new Insert Pictures tool forces you to type in keywords and then perform a
search to look for images on the Office.com website. You might prefer a more
leisurely approach to looking for just the right picture. You can use your browser
window to navigate to the Microsoft Office website and peruse to your heart’s
content. Open the main page (www.office.com) and click the Images link at the
top. This takes you to the Clip art, photos, and animations page. You can scroll
around and click different categories and look through the selections, and if you see
something you want, you can download it or copy it. Just hover the mouse pointer
over the picture and click either Copy or Download.
If you click Copy, you can return to your Word document and activate the Paste
command to immediately add the picture to your document.
If you click Download, you can save the picture file to a designated folder or drive
on your computer. By default, downloaded pictures are automatically saved to the
Windows Downloads folder, unless you specify somewhere else. Here’s a tip: To
make the picture easier to find later, you might want to give it a name you’ll recog-
nize. The Office.com pictures typically have cryptic names that never really signify
what the image is.
Searching for Pictures Using Bing
Now let’s try searching for pictures using the Bing Image Search feature. As you
might or might not know, the Bing search engine is part of Microsoft’s world
domination plan, so all the Microsoft Office programs point you toward Bing any
time you want to conduct a web search from within the programs.
To search the Web for pictures using Bing, follow these steps:
1. Click the Insert tab.
2. Click Online Pictures.
3. Click in the Bing Image Search field and type in a keyword or words for the
type of picture you’re looking for, as shown in Figure 15.5.
4. Press Enter or click the Search icon.
5. A search results page lists any matches, similar to what you see in Figure 15.6.
Use the scrollbar to look through the thumbnails. Notice this time there’s a big
warning in the box about copyright material. Unlike the Office.com site, the
items you search for using Bing are not necessarily royalty-free.
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Type your search keyword(s) here
FIGURE 15.5
This time, let’s search with Bing.
FIGURE 15.6
The results are images gathered from all over the Web that match your search criteria.
6. When you find a picture, click it to view its details, as well as a link to its web
address you can use to learn more about the image.
7. Click Insert.
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NOTE
You can click a picture in your Bing search results
to view a link to the source’s website. Look in the bottom-left
corner to view the link. Click it and you can learn more about
where the picture comes from and how to contact the owner to
ask for permission to use it. It never hurts to contact the source
and ask. If you notice you are not able to copy, download, or
use the PrintScreen capture to nab an image, then it’s probably
not supposed to be used by anyone else; stay away from
protected images.
Searching for Pictures on SkyDrive
SkyDrive is Microsoft’s file-hosting service, and if you store your photos on your
cloud account with Microsoft, you can insert pictures from SkyDrive and place
them in your documents.
To search your SkyDrive account for pictures, follow these steps:
1. Click the Insert tab.
2. Click Online Pictures.
3. Click the Browse link under the SkyDrive option (see Figure 15.7).
4. Open the folder containing your pictures and click the picture you want to
insert (see Figure 15.8).
5. Click Insert.
As soon as you click the Insert button, Word downloads the picture and inserts it
into your document. You will probably need to resize the picture to fit; just drag a
corner selection handle, pointed out in Figure 15.9, to resize the image.
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FIGURE 15.7
Now let’s try searching your SkyDrive storage for pictures.
Click here to search your SkyDrive folders
FIGURE 15.8
I’m looking for a frog picture, and I think this is the one.
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FIGURE 15.9
It’s a tree frog resting on a zinnia flower leaf, if you must know.
NOTE
Are you new to SkyDrive? If so, you might be
wondering how to store pictures on the cloud. It’s easy. First use
your favorite web browser to navigate to www.skydrive.com
and log on to your account. Next, look for an Upload link at the
top of the page and follow the onscreen directions to upload
pictures from your computer to the cloud storage site. If you’ve
activated the Windows SkyDrive folder on your computer (look
for it listed under Favorites in the Explorer window), you can also
drag files to it to store them in the cloud without having to open
the browser.
If you have a Flickr account, click the Flickr icon at the bottom of the Insert
Pictures window and follow the instructions to connect your account. If you don’t
have a Flickr account, you can use the link to make one.
Inserting Your Own Pictures
You can access any image stored on your computer and insert it into a Word file.
If you have a digital camera, you might end up being the only illustrator your
documents need. Digital cameras make adding your own visual content easier
You can resize a picture using a selection handle
Documents you may be interested
Documents you may be interested
