Showing landscape-oriented photos and still images in your digital story is straightforward. You just crop, constraining dimensions to 768 x 576 pixels, or whichever dimensions you use. But how do you crop and display portrait-oriented images in your story? If you want full control over the way your portrait-oriented photos are shown in your digital story, here are the steps I use when explaining cropping and showing them.
In Photoshop…
- change background colour to Black (usually)
- Select the Rectangular Marquee Tool. When you click and drag out, you’ll notice the ‘marching ants’ around your selection
- On the top Menu bar: Edit > Copy
- Menu: File > New > Background colour (black)
- Menu: Edit > Paste
- If you need to rotate your photo. Menu: Image > Rotate Canvas > Arbitrary
- Image > Image Size > Res=150 > Height=576 (Constrain proportions)
- Image > Canvas Size > 768×576
- Adjust levels and Sharpness
- Save as .tif.
I learned this back in 2001 from Joe Lambert, Nina Mullen and Daniel Meadows. By the way, while we’re on the subject of images, have a look at these ace photography tips by Carwyn Evans on the Capture Wales site.