Successful Blog

Sandy’s Great Graphic Tip: Re-sizing Graphics in an Editor

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What Happened to that Picture?

Sometimes you see photos on websites that look funny – too wide or narrow, tall or short. In other words, out of proportion. Some other terms used are scale, perspective and aspect ratio. One common way to re-size a graphic is using a WYSIWYG editor. WYSIWYG is pronounced wiz-e-wig and is short for what you see is what you get.

Hover over the corner of a graphic, click and drag. Depending on the program, it’s possible to lose perspective, so keep this little tip in mind.

Hold down the shift key while clicking and dragging. It will keep the picture looking square.

Another Option to Re-Size a Graphic

Another option is to right-click the graphic and choose format. In the window, you usually have a choice to re-size the graphic by pixel size or percentage of original. You will probably see a check box for preserve aspect ratio or uniform scale. Selecting the box means when you enter the horizontal or vertical size, the other dimension is automatically selected to keep the graphic in perspective.

Here’s a visual example of what I mean:

Re-size Graphic Sample

It’s also a good idea to re-size and edit graphics before uploading them. When you upload a large graphic and only want to display a small graphic, it can increase the file size and make the page load slowly. Let’s talk more about that another time.

Remember, a good-looking graphic makes your webpage look interesting and professional.

See you next time!

–Sandy, Purple Wren

Related articles:
Great Graphic Tips: Selecting File Types
Great Graphic Tips: Why Use Graphics?
Great Graphic Find: Pixel Ruler

Roving Sheila at SXSW 03-10-07

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South by Southwest, SXSW, is a yearly conference in Austin, TX.serving the film, music, and interactice industries. The photo shows the goodies they gave out this year.

sxsw goodie bags

Guest Reporter Sheila Scarborough

Hi Successful Bloggers,

Your Roving Tejas Reporter brings some impressions from Day Two of South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive here in Austin, Texas.

Everyone take a breath and say, “Y’all” and “Howdy” and “digital content service solutions” and “client and server-side XSLT,” just to get in the right frame of mind.

Believe me, there’s plenty of activity here for both Ye Olde Basic Blogger (me) and the most geeked-out programmer. I’ve been mostly going to panels that talk about online relationships and communities, and here are some quick highlights:

** From the panel “World Domination via Collaboration” this morning, I learned that the best way to get a response from your blog readers is to “ask, not tell.”

In terms of corporate blogging, Betsy Aoki of Microsoft talked about how blogging can change the DNA of a company from the grassroots upward, resulting in more of a “culture of transparency and a better connection with customers.” BlogHer’s Lisa Stone pointed out that “whether your company blogs or not, someone is blogging about you,” and Jenna Woodul of LiveWorld chimed in to agree that ” people are talking about your brand out there; you’d better listen and respond.”

Jenna also said that some companies need to have blogging’s ROI (Return on Investment) laid out clearly — “break it down as to what they’re leaving on the table” by not engaging with this online culture.

Lisa Stone reminded us of that old learned-it-in-kindergarten maxim, “Don’t Lie,” using the recent Wal-Mart paid RV blog PR disaster as an example of a “fundamental missed opportunity” to use online tools to build brand loyalty.

Jenna Woodul had great suggestions for growing an online community, including paying close attention to “how the newcomer is perceived and treated; building a culture of community as nurtured and demonstrated by how it welcomes.”

If you need a specific example, look no further than how Liz greet newbies and is always welcoming in her comments in posts and Open Mic Nite, to say nothing of her coveted SOB badges.
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Virtual Conference Special Promotion: Save $100!!

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We’re thrilled to announce a special SOBCon ’07 promotion sponsored by the Virtual Conference that is being held over at Successful-Blog on Monday.

A Virtual Conference

The Virtual Conference will have a series of 12 speakers all day long on Monday. There’ll be one speaker per hour presenting a topic for discussion which will take place in the comment section of that post.

Here’s how Liz describes it:

Virtual Speakers and Q&A All Day Long

Everyone is invited. Stop by for a while listen in and meet some new friends.

Think theater of the imagination meets speakers and attendees in the comment box for conversation.

SOBCon07

When: Monday, May 12th, 2007

Where: Successful Blog

What: New Post and Speaker Every Hour
9a.m.-8p.m. CST (GMT -5hrs)

Who:

8:00 – Robyn McMaster on Laughter and Mistakes
9:00 – Sandra Renshaw on Graphics
10:00 – Mark McGuinness on Creativity
11:00 – Joe Hauckes on Navigation
12:00 – Rodney Rumford on Videoblogging
1:00 – Chris Garrett on Blogger Blunders
2:00 – Ellen Weber on Sleep and Music
3:00 – Wendy Piersall on Blogging Beyond the Blogosphere,
4:00 – Mike Wagner on Branding
5:00 – Terry Starbucker on What to Look for
6:00 – Chris Cree on Business Blogging
7:00 – Phil Gerbyshak on Being a Relationship Geek
8:00 – David Armano on the 4 Cs of Blogging

Bring a link to leave that shares something you know about blogging.

We havin’t done something like this since last October!
— ME “Liz” Strauss

Special Savings for 2 Days Only

In conjunction with the virtual conference you can save $100 off the already low price for SOBCon ’07!

Get your conference registration for only $250!

SOBCon Special

If you have pre-registered, you must get your payment in by Monday 9 PM CDT to get this special rate.

If cost has been a concern for you there will never be a better time to register. It doesn’t get any better than this.

After the deadline the price goes back up.

It’s a Virtual Conference and Bring-a-Link Event

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Virtual Speakers and Q&A All Day Long

Everyone is invited. Stop by for a while listen in and meet some new friends.

Think theater of the imagination meets speakers and attendees in the comment box for conversation.

SOBCon07

Bring a link to leave that shares something you know about blogging.

Thank you for the Virtual Conference

SOBCon Special

Take advantage of our early bird special $100 off registration to SOBCon 07. Register now!.

We havin’t done something like this since last October!
— ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
The Secret’s Out: SOBCon 07 Is in Chicago May 11-12!

Thanks to Week 72 SOBs

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muddy teal strip A

Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

muddy teal strip A

Marketing Hipster

They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank every one of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her directly to me. This award comes with a full “Liz said so” guarantee. It is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

deep purple strip

Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame. Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Roving Sheila at SXSW 03 -09-07

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South by Southwest, SXSW, is a yearly conference in Austin, TX.serving the film, music, and interactice industries..

Guest Reporter Sheila Scarborough

Greetings Liz,

Thanks for the chance to blog for you, here’s my first email….

***************

Greetings, Successful Bloggers, let me see if I can whip this out before I go to the BlogHer meetup at 8 pm (BlogHer Technology and Web writer Virginia DeBolt already has a SXSW post up.)

Your Roving Reporter has decided to brave the wilds of SXSW Interactive, the “ground zero for the world’s most creative web developers, designers, bloggers, wireless innovators and new media entrepreneurs.”

Hey, I saw the word “blogger” somewhere in there and figured, close enough.

I’d already paid and registered online (even uploaded my own photo so I didn’t have to take a dorky one for my badge) but my organizational abilities still failed to get me on time to the first panel that interested me, “How to Rawk SXSW.”

(I think to rawk is good.)

Once I waded through Austin traffic, waded through the line to get my badge, waited to have them make my badge (I guess they want to make sure you “have it your way” or something) there were only 10 minutes of rawking left.

It was an interesting 10 minutes.

The panelists spent this last bit of session time telling the audience how to do “contact management,” which is apparently how to meet people.

There were lots of panelist comments to the audience like, “Have meaningful conversations versus many conversations” and “Actually engage in the panel discussions — close your laptop” and “Are you scared of introducing yourself? Buy the person a beer.”

Geek social guidance?
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