Digital Photographs
Spartan provides a range of services for digital photographers. Some, like rotation and red eye removal are common to most photographic software while others are unique to Spartan. For Example...
Most photographic programs use a very small thumbnail to allow you to select pictures to view. Spartan on the other hand creates a sensibly sized thumbnail to show in the preview window. Compare the difference:.
Standard thumbnail
Spartan preview
With most software, if you want to email your pictures to someone, your only choice is to send them as attachments. If you have a high definition camera, the pictures will also be far to large so you would have to reduce them first. With Spartan you can paste your digital photographs directly (between your text) into outgoing Outlook Express or Windows Mail emails and you can have large pictures reduced automatically during the pasting process.
Importing your photos to Spartan
Click the import item on the Pictures menu to display the import dialog.
Just below the Select Folder button, you can see how many pictures can be imported to the current sheet. Click the Select Folder button and select the folder you want to import from. Spartan will count the pictures in the folder to make sure there is room on the current sheet. In the Name Root field, you can give an initial name for the imported pictures. Spartan will add 001,002,003 Etc. to the name you enter here. When ready, click the import button. Importing your pictures may take a few minutes as a new thumbnail has to be created for each picture.
Setting the size for pictures pasted into Outlook or Windows Mail
Click Graphic Options on the Pictures menu to display this dialog.
With the setting shown above, any picture you paste into Outlook, Windows mail or Word which is bigger than 8 inches wide will be reduced to 8 inches wide during the paste process. (The height is reduced proportionally)
Please note that MS Word has its own system for reducing pasted in pictures. The clipboard formats for that and for pasting into emails are not the same. You can only have one or the other at any given time.
Pasting to Outlook and Windows Mail is also dependant on settings in the email program itself. If, having chosen the option above, Spartan does not paste into Outlook, click here to see the mail settings required.
Browsing your pictures
You can open the picture browser from the Pictures menu in which case the browser will start with the first picture on the sheet or you can open it at any particular picture by right clicking on its name and selecting View in Picture Browser.
This is the browser control panel....
It can be hidden or shown by clicking anywhere on the screen. When hidden, you browse your pictures with the arrow keys.
If your pictures are smaller than the screen, you can choose either a white or black background (bottom left button) and if your pictures are bigger than the screen, the button directly under the picture name allows you three display choices:
1. Fit Screen... uses
the largest size which will fit in the screen
2. Fill Screen... uses the smallest size which will fill the screen cropping
any excess on the longest dimension.
3. Full Size... uses the full size picture and allows you to drag it to see
different parts.
Red Eye Removal
If you use the red eye removal tool, note that the mouse pointer does not have to be on the marker lines to move them. Anywhere between the line and the edge of the screen will do. If you need fine adjustment, position the mouse between the line you want to move and the edge of the screen and use the arrow keys. They move the lines one pixel at a time.
Passport Photos
Passport photos should be head and shoulders against a white or near white background so start by importing a suitable picture like this..
Find out the size required in your country. In most European countries it is 35mm wide by 45mm high and in the USA it is 2 inches square.
Right click and select "Edit". In the editor.....
1. Use the "Change Units" button to select Inches or cm whichever you need and the size buttons to shrink the picture.
On the "Add Items" panel...
click text.
On the Text control panel...
use the width and height buttons or shift +arrows to size the text box to passport size then check the Transparent option.
Now click on the photo and use the size buttons on that plus dragging to fit the head and shoulders inside the passport sized text box.
When you are happy that the picture is the right size, click on the text box and use the "Erase" button to get rid of it.
Now click the "Crop" button
and crop the head and shoulders to passport size.
Right click on the picture and click "Copy Graphic" . Then right click anywhere on the screen and click "Paste Graphic until you have as many copies as will fit on a printer page.
Exit the graphics editor, open in the picture browser and click "Print".