Intro to Computer Graphics
Scanner and Digital Cameras

This is FUN ! Its like being in art class without the mess.

Graphics and images are great ways to spice up a drab pages of just words.
Its also a great way to make a web page have much more IMPACT.

One of the first questions to ask is:
Are you making graphics for a printed page
OR
Are you making graphics for the computer screen and the web ?

If for the web (computer screen) then you want your images small in size. This does not mean that you need pictures that are miniture. It means that the file size needs to be small. You see the trick is to have the picture look big (high quality) but have the file size be small.

If for printing then you want the file size as large as possible. Small files tend to look jagged when printed. Try it print out a web page the photos will not look very good. But more on this later.

Making images for the Web...
Why small? Well surf the web yourself and see. Ever had to wait for pages to load?
The size of an image (its size on a computer hard drive) is measured in KB. And if you use a 56k (note the lower case 'k' here) modem then you can download 5.6 KB per second. So if your picture is 56KB that will take about 10 seconds ! 10 seconds is a pretty long wait in this modern age of rush rush rush ...

So the best way to make an image file size small is to crop it and to resize it. The size of a picture on the screen is measured in pixels (also known as dots). Computer screens are set to 800 pixels wide by 600 pixels tall.. So a image that is 800 pixels by 600 pixels will take up the whole screen.