Getting and Creating Images

Clip Art
Clip art is an inexpensive collection of ready-made images that you can buy with cartoons, drawings, photographs, fonts, and computer generated images. Many programs come with some clip art as part of the program or you can buy clip art separately.

Internet

There are many places on the Internet that have images but you must make sure they are free shareware or that you have permission to use any image you copy from the Internet.

Scanned Images
You can use a scanner to read images such as photographs into a computer. It works like a copy machine except the copy is made on the computer instead of paper. Again permission is required when you scan from a published document such as a book or magazine.

When scanning, use the following guidelines:

• Physically size the image to approximate the finished dimensions. If you plan on editing the program in PhotoShop or Paint Shop Pro you will want to size it larger, then reduce it in your editing program.
• Save scanned images in the TIFF file format as it was invented for scanners.

Digital Camera
A digital camera allows you to take pictures and later download them directly to a computer. With a digital camera there is no scanning of pictures or developing of film. Usually a digital camera will give you better resolution than trying to scan a photograph. Save the picture with the default extension that comes with the camera software, later you can edit the photograph in one of the paint programs.

Creating Images
There are many programs that allow you to create your own image or change existing images. With these programs you have more flexibility and control with your graphics. Examples of professional photo editing programs are Adobe PhotoShop, Corel Photo-Paint, Paintbrush, and Paint Shop Pro. Less expensive programs include Adobe PhotoDeluxe, ClarisWorks, and Microsoft Image Composer. Most of these programs allow you to save in different formats such as .jpeg, gif, etc.