Two Images In One Lounge Post

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Great post Al!
I never open Word documents to view images (one or several). If, for some reason, multiple small images can’t be added to one image, or one would like to post one bigger than 640 x 480 (which most of the time is quite large), then a zip file is very useful. But in my opinion a posted small image is much better. Or, for those who have the possibility, posting a link to the image. But it isn’t ready to be seen in the thread and the link may stop working, as we all know.

The last 1-2 years I have made all my images, combined or not, in my posts with Microsoft Paint, which is there on all Windows versions.

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I make this post in an attempt to say a little something more on this topic which was discussed in thread ( post 706,167 ) and keep from muddying the waters of that already long thread.

Sometimes a Lounger feels a need to post more than one graphic as an attachment to a post. Remember always that Lounge attachments must not exceed 100K in size. As has been pointed out in the above thread, multiple images can easily be placed in a Word document but that usually creates a rather large file. There is also nothing wrong with making two posts, one for each attachment. Multiple images can easily be combined in a zip file and attached. Finally, there is always the free IrfanView which has the capability of making a “panorama” image, side-by-side or top-to-bottom. On that point, please keep in mind The Lounge desire to have graphic attachments of reasonable ( 640 x 480 suggested ) dimension to avoid the need for reader scrolling.

My graphics editor of choice is Paint Shop Pro but I’d like to keep this post as much free of software commands as possible and focus on the “technique” I use for combining two images. It’s quite simple, really. First, I open the two graphics files and “crop” or “resize” each of them to that which is necessary to convey the picture I want the reader to get. Then I check the dimension of each resulting picture, in this case the images were 290 x 325 and 390 x 285 pixels respectively. I then opened a third (new) image window and set its dimension as 390 x 610 in order that the image be large enough to capture my two individual pictures.

Finally, I selected the entire image of each picture in turn and pasted it appropriately into my new, third image window. In this case I added a red line for clarity but that probably wasn’t necessary. All that remains is to save the third image as a new file name. If changes were made to the original two images, they may also be saved if appropriate.

Edited to add: It was pointed out to me that my example image was a bit “fuzzy” so I’ve created my screenshot again, this time saving it as a .PNG format which seems to be better for text shots. Many people feel that .JPG is better for photos and in this case, .PNG does seem to make the text of my example somewhat sharper.

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Thanks so much for this. I knew it had to be easy but could never quite get my head round doing it properley, I was trying to make things so complicated and confusing myself. So a very welcome post and hope others will take it onboard.

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Al,
A slight variation on your approach: After your two images are open and you know their size, select one and then click on Edit, Canvas size and change the canvas dimensions to accommodate the second photo in the orientation you want. Then select the second photo, do a Select All and using the move tool move it and position it on the first photo’s canvas. Save it and you are done. (you could alternatively have done a Copy, select the first photo, and then a Paste instead of the manual move). The terminology of the commands in Paint Shop Pro, which I do no have, may be slightly different than I used here, but the functions are very common ones and should work in most photo programs

Paul

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Yeah Paul, that’ll work, in a manner of speaking. But it’s why I was trying to keep the routine “free” of the nuances of individual graphics programs. In PSP when you increase the canvas size, the image that’s IN that canvas ends up in the middle of the window. Then you have to select and drag it to the top, prior to pasting in the image from the second shot. They both work, but the steps will be a little different, depending on your graphics app.

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Al,
Yes, I forgot to mention that placement issue. In a number of programs when you have the window to resize the canvas they present you with the option to place the photo in one of 9 places on the new canvas as shown below. You click to place the white square where you want it. This is what it looks like in the Adobe products.

Paul

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I wish I’d seen this post before one of my recent posts – I wanted to include shots of some html code AND how it appeared via IE. I considered using Word, but the file size limitation killed that idea. I finally (using Snag-It) took screenshots of both examples I wanted to use, popped them into Word, gave each a caption (although I may have skipped the caption step due to fatigue) , and then took a screenshot of the Word doc, posting that as my single attachment into the Lounge post.
I always use png format, now that it is widely accepted. It’s handy for documenting procedures, since you can keep the file size down and still include many more screen images than if you were using jpg format; and it’s especially handy for forums such as this, where smaller uploaded file sizes are crucial.

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