Graphics Capabilities

Example #1

Two people took pictures from about the same spot, as described above. Who did I add into which picture? (Can you tell?) Why did I choose that one? How did I do it?

See Adding to Image #1.

Example #2

A picture is taken at an event and someone couldn't attend. Who did I add into this picture? (Can you tell?) How did I do it?

See Adding to Image #2 or Sanders-Klump Wedding - Building a Family Photo (This link opens a new window. Simply close it to return here.)

NOTE: One thing I should have done was place Christopher and Matthew from these images side-by-side and made sure their heads were basically the same size before I used the "cutout". This would have helped and may have cut out at least one step in the process. Oh, well... Hindsight's 20/20.

Example #3

My parents bought a house and started going to Florida for the Winter in 2004, after my father retired. In this case, there were only the two of them there, and they both took pictures with the other by the sign. Dad then asked me to combine the pictures so they could put it on the Christmas letter.

The problem was that both of them were touching the sign, and both pictures were taken with them on the same end of the sign. Dad's hand was on the top edge, and my mother's hand was on the front corner. Because of the way their hands were on the sign, I decided to use that as the basis, and cut Mom out of the one with her by the sign, "flipped" her image around the vertical axis, and put her on the other side of the sign. I got the sizing and positioning right, and cleaned everything up. Then I realized that I had concentrated so hard on the process, I didn't realize that the sunlight and shadows were wrong on her. Dad liked it anyway (said no one would notice... HA!) and accepted it as it appears.

Example #4

Dad has lost a lot of weight (compare him in this one to Example #3), and he wanted his address card to show it. (They also used it for their Christmas Letter.) He looked for a picture of my mother he liked (because she's REALLY smiling in it), and asked me to put them together for the card. Using the same techniques, I cut them both out of the two pictures, tried a couple or three backgrounds, and Dad liked this one. Remember, the picture will be smaller (business-card-sized leaving room for name, address and phone number), so some of the errors seen here will not be as visible. (Wish I'd have "blurred" or "fuzzed" her hair for the larger versions! LOL)

Example #1

I had taken a couple of pictures of Barrington West Apartments. shortly after it was built, from across the highway. (See the roadway in the foreground?) I couldn't really get any further back, and the camera I was using at the time couldn't shoot the whole complex, so it had to be a shot of either end. I combined these two pictures to create the one above. When I built the Barrington website, I cropped it a little narrower. See Build Panorama Example #1

Example #2

At the end of January, 2003, there was a pretty big snowstorm in Indiana. My brother, visiting my parents, took a couple of pictures out the front door. Dad asked if I could put them together. I tried, but found some major pieces missing. I sent him the above left, and asked if he thought anyone would notice. (Click on it to see full-size picture._

So, when we visited a couple of weeks later, I took pictures of the same area, but made sure I had the whole set. When I got home, I put them together so Dad had something to send to friends and family in Florida, to show "what they were missing." See Build Panorama Example #2.

Example #3

On February 23, 2003, they predicted a heavy snow for that night. I took a set of four (4) pictures out MY front door that day, then took another set of four (4) the next day when there was a new 2-3" of snow on the ground. I combined the two into the final image. It's difficult to tell, but there really IS 2-3" of snow in the second set of pictures.

Example #4

Personally, I'm proud of our back deck. I designed it! LOL. And I believe that snow-covered bare trees are beautiful.

On February 23, 2003, with the predictions of a heavy snow in the offing, and already having had a lot of snow, I decided I wanted to try to make a multi-picture panoramic (my term) of the back deck. Problem was that once I took them and combined them, I realized I hadn't taken enough to "fill in" everything that was needed to keep the tree in the picture. That's why this one is simply put together without cropping or cleaning. I still think it's neat.

Example #5

In case you're wondering why you would want a panoramic shot, think of this... Let's say you have a place up on Lake Freeman near Monticello, Indiana, and you wish to sell or rent it or another building on the property. One "selling point" could be the beautiful view of the lake on a lazy afternoon. Single shots just won't do it very well. With a few well-shot and well combined pictures, you could have a panorama of the lake to show a client or potential lessee or buyer.

I took these pictures in 2000 from the top of a flat-roof boathouse that was designed as a patio. I believe there were six to seven pictures in it. I played around with arranging them, but could still see all the edges. (Back then, I didn't know what to do.) A friend, at work, knew how, and cleaned it up for me. Thanks Mike.

Example #1

My father had planted some flowers, and when we visited, I went out and tried the close-up and other modes of new my Kodak DC3400 Zoom Digital Camera. Not all of them came out right, but some did. When Mother's Day came around, I looked through these pictures, picked one, cropped it a little, and using the Text Tool of MSIC, added the words, "Happy Mother's Day".

Example #2

For this card, I used MSIC's Shape tool and created a rectangle. (Whew! That was hard!) Then, using the Text tool, added two (2) text boxes: "The pups say" and "Happy Birthday!" Then I inserted two pictures of a couple of our dogs. This was within their first year, so they were "Pups". I shrunk those pictures to the same size, and arranged them on the rectangle. Sounds hard, huh?

Example #3

In this one, I took four (4) images of our dogs, and using exact copies, added wording using MCIC's Word Art function. Then, using FrontPage and creating a "mini-site" on my computer, I created a simple HTML page for each of the eight (8) images, with a dissolve transition between each. I loaded the "site" into a zip file, being sure the paths to the files were included. (I could have saved worrying about the path if I'd have kept the images and the HTML in the same folder, but I didn't, in this case.) Then I used WinZip's self-extractor creator, telling it where I wanted it to go when unzipped, and sent it with the following instructions.

Here are smaller versions of the images used. Clicking on any of these images will take you to the Example Card in a new window. The note in the above instructions may be necessary.

If you'd prefer to download the Executable ZIP file, and run it as described above, click here. (NOTE: Remember, this is an EXE file.)

Example #4 - Images & HTML

My first experiment and experience in animated graphics and creating an HTML card was in late 1999. I created a "Christmas Card" and linked to it from my father's business site's Home Page. I used MSIC to create graphic versions of a poem and song lyrics I had written. Each title, verse, and copyright was its own image. I found "Christmas-y" graphics out there in Internet-land, and put them all together.

You MUST remember, that back then, most screens did not have the resolution of today's screen, and I think the "card" was much easier to read than now-a-days. Remember, also (if you look at the HTML), I was learning as I went! Only the title and link have been changed from the original.

I have not included any thumbnails, here. To see the Image and HTML card, just click here. (Opens a new window. Simply close it to return here.)

Example #5 - Birthday Card

One of the latest cards I made was for my niece's birthday. (SOMEONE told me the picture was Michelle, and I even brightened it up enough to verify, but didn't brighten it enough, I guess... Turns out this picture was her sister.)

Basically, I pulled the card into MSIC, picked a nice font, and added the two phrases. I used a 1px yellow Edge on the lettering, and then Drop-Shadow to create the yellow flair. I positioned everything and saved it.

For how I created the full card, see Building a Card - All Examples (Example 5)

And yes... Michelle liked the card, even if the picture was of her sister!

Example #1

To be honest, I've only done this once. In July, 2002, our female black lab had puppies. While we gave away a three of them, we kept two.

In mid-September, I was thinking (for some dumb reason) of "The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe, and suddenly I came up with the first verse of a poem about puppies, using the rhythm. It used a lot of alliteration, and I found this poem just "flowed" from there. I had a couple of verses where the last two lines could have been two or three different things, but after it was all said and done, I was (and AM) very proud of this poem.

So much so, that I entered it in Poetry.com's contest. (see Poetry.Com: Puppy Love - I'm listed as "Sanders, William (Bill) Daryl".) It was one of the ones selected for that season's book(!), and might even have gone on to with the $10,000 prize, but you had to purchase reservations for their convention, where the poems are read aloud. The price also included other stuff from Poetry.com, but, to me it sounded more like I was BUYING my prize, so I never went. I did purchase the book, though. Apparently, it's more of a "vanity publisher" than a "real" publisher. (Sorry... Got off track!)

As soon as I had the poem, I created this background image for my screen. It worked for quite a while - until I got too many icons on my desktop, and the program names under the icon started running into the poem.

I used the Text tool of MSIC to create an image of the poem. I should have done that at a much larger size than I did, because as I fit it into the screen, it made the poem much harder to read. It DOES read well at 800 pixels wide (or larger). As with Card Example #2, I created a rectangular black background, inserted two pictures of our puppies (at 5 and 6 weeks old) on the right side of the screen, inserted the image of the poem in about the center of the poem (leaving a "margin" to the left of the puppy pix), and there I had it. NOTE: Because my screen at the time was 800x600, I made the whole image at that size. Now that my screen is larger, it will still work, but as noted above, it's starting to blur. I SHOULD have made it more like 1600x1200 and shrunk it to fit.

The example image is 900 pixels wide, made 600 wide by HTML. (In other words, if you right-click and save it to your computer, it will actually be 900x666, but, as you will see, at 600x444 pixels wide, it's very difficult. (See Background Example #1.)