Section 126. Insert a Graphic Image into a Drawing


126. Insert a Graphic Image into a Drawing

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

111 Draw from Scratch

117 About Manipulating Objects


SEE ALSO

127 Scan a Picture into Draw


Draw supports virtually every kind of graphics file in use today, and you can easily insert these graphic images into your drawings. For example, you might insert a piece of royalty-free clipart to spice up a sign you're making. After an images is inserted into a drawing, you can resize, move, copy, duplicate, and perform similar tasks .

NOTE

You can insert an image into your drawing or link to an image. Either way, the image appears in your drawing. However, if you link instead of insert the image, your drawing will update if the original image ever changes.


1.
Click from File

Choose Insert, Picture, From File from the menu or click the From File button on the Drawing toolbar to display the Insert Picture dialog box, where you can locate the image you want to insert into your drawing.

2.
Insert the Image

Browse to the location where your image is located, select it, and click Open . The image is inserted into the drawing. You can resize the image by clicking it and dragging one of its handles inward or outward. Move the image by clicking and dragging it to a new location.

NOTE

Click the Link option if you want Draw to link to the image instead of inserting it into your drawing. You can convert a linked image to a copy by selecting Edit, Links from the menu and selecting Break Link from the dialog box that appears.

3.
Edit the Image

Select the image, and the Picture toolbar automatically appears at the top of the screen, providing you with the following options:

126. Insert a Graphic Image into a Drawing


  • Filter Apply any number of graphic filters to the image to create marvelous effects, such as inverting the colors ( Invert ), reducing the number of colors to create large patches ( Posterize ), making the image look old ( Aging ) and simulating artistic looks ( Solarization, Pop Art, Charcoal Sketch, Relief, and Mosaic ). In addition, you can improve the quality of the image by lowering ( Smooth ) or increasing the contrast ( Sharpen ), reducing noise and imperfections ( Remove Noise ).

  • Graphics mode Select a graphics mode such as black and white or Watermark , which places a pale and very light version of your image on the drawing's background.

  • Color Displays the Color toolbar, which allows you to change the amount of the three primary colors in your imagered, green, and blue. Here, 100% indicates a complete lack of the color, and 100% indicates the heaviest use of the color possible. You can also adjust the Brightness from 100% (complete darkness ) to 100% (completely lit), the Contrast from 100% (no contrast) to 100% (full contrast), and the Gamma ( gamma value ) from 0 ( lowest gamma) to 10 (highest possible gamma value).

KEY TERM

Gamma value The brightness of an image's midtones (middle values).

  • Transparency Specifies how much transparency, from 0% to 100%, that the image has, which affects whether underlying objects show through it.

  • Line Adjust the style, color, and thickness of the line (border) around the perimeter of a graphic.

  • Area Fill transparent parts of a graphic with your selection.

  • Shadow Add a shadow beneath the graphic. See 111 Draw from Scratch .

  • Crop Displays a dialog box where you can crop the image. See the next step for details.

KEY TERM

Crop The cutting off of parts of an image or, in the case of Draw images, the scaled shrinking of an image to a smaller size from within the Crop dialog box.

4.
Crop if Needed

With the image selected, click the Picture toolbar's Crop button to open the Crop dialog box. Enable the Keep scale option to retain the ratio between the height and width of the original image. If you want to remove portions of the image but maintain its size in the drawing, enable the Keep image size option instead.

If you choose Keep scale, enter values in the Left, Right, Top , and Bottom boxes to tell Draw how much to trim off that side of the image. If you chose Keep image size, the values you enter tell Draw how much to increase or decrease the vertical or horizontal scale of the image. The preview shows you how your entries will affect the final imagethe cropping rectangle displays the portion of the image that will be kept if you crop.

Using the Width and Height boxes in the Scale area, you can adjust the scale of the image by the percentage you enter. For example, you can stretch the image horizontally and make it twice as wide as it was by entering 150% in the Width box only. With the Width and Height boxes in the Image size area, you can keep the image proportions, but change its relative size. To restore the image to its original size and proportions if you overcrop, you can click the Original Size button. Click OK to apply your cropping instructions.

NOTE

Playing with the scale of an image using the Crop dialog box distorts the image but can create some interesting effects.




OpenOffice.org 2, Firefox, and Thunderbird for Windows All in One
Sams Teach Yourself OpenOffice.org 2, Firefox and Thunderbird for Windows All in One
ISBN: 0672328089
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 232
Authors: Greg Perry

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