Help
From SATA-Peru-2007
We have consolidated "Help" in the Instructional Technology Team wiki, in the sidebar.
The best way to use it is to open a separate browser window, just for help, and use the other window for your own wiki.
Any help specific to this wiki follows:
Image resizing help
Images from a digital camera are usually at least 3000 x 2000 pixels in dimension (width x height), and 2-3 megabytes in size. Pixels are little individual color "tiles" that make up the image. This large size makes it difficult to upload them to a wiki. If possible, try to make a smaller copy. A good size for a wiki is no more than 800 pixels in each dimension, at the most. An image this size will be about 100-200 kilobytes, less than one tenth of the original image. This is when saved as a jpg, the usual default format. The image is usually reduced further when inserted in a wiki page, by using wikitalk.
Larger images WILL work, the wiki software will automatically resize them, but it will take much longer to upload the large image, which will not be used. You do not want to discard this larger image on your own computer, as it is better for future printing, zooming in, etc. later on.
There are many ways to make images smaller. The easiest, on the PC, is to download the free program Picasa. This program will automatically download images from your digital camera to your computer, if you have Windows XP. After doing this, you can export and resize the images with the following directions:
Resizing Photos with Picasa or
Set the "Resize to" slider to 800 pixels. For Quality, set Custom Quality, and set it to 90%. Or JPEG quality 90%. The exported files are those that should be uploaded to the wiki, they should not be more than 200 or so kilobytes in size. Save the file where you can find it later, and make sure it has the .jpg extension.
If you have a Mac, the free included application iPhoto can be used. This automatically opens when a digital camera is connected, and you can then import the images. After importing, select one or more images, and go to File>Export. For horizontal images, scale image no larger than 800 pixels wide. For vertical images, scale them no larger than 800 pixels high.
There are many photo editing applications, such as Photoshop, that can also resize images. If you have a choice, resize to 72 dpi (this is not an option in Picasa or iPhoto). This is not absolutely necessary.
If you have some great images, and don't have time to resize them, you can still upload and use them, they will just take longer to upload. We can resize them later.
To insert images in your wiki page, please follow the wikitalk directions in Images Help. Do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions. (Frank Fulchiero, fful@conncoll.edu)
