Screen captures (also known as screen shots) come in handy for many reasons. You can use them to show someone when your computer is doing something funky, preserve book reviews in an image file, capture blog comments for legal reasons, provide instructions to someone, create print-outs of web-based stuff for promotional materials, and many other purposes.
While some things put up on the Internet are “forever,” some things aren’t. So I try to grab an image of any press I get and put that on my website. I include the link at the top so people can see where the story originated, but if that link becomes void it’s now literally preserved forever on my site. Here’s an example of a story run in a Vancouver-area online newspaper. The great thing about that is that you can trim out all the other “briefs” and just focus on yours. This, of course, is just one usage. Continue reading “Tutorial: Screen Captures”
Do you use “Track Changes” in Microsoft Word? Okay, the system can look intimidating at first with all the comment boxes and stuff. But once you get going, it’s a lot easier and a lot more fun than, say, doing your own taxes or changing your oil. And it’s a very handy way to work with editors, proofreaders, and collaborators.
Why in the world could I possibly need to know how to resize a picture? you ask. Well, Skippy, it goes like this. A reporter or blogger or some other nice person who wants to feature your book asks you for a jpg image of your book cover – or a head shot – no larger than 500kb. But the only image you have of yourself looking all sexy and authory is 4 megabytes. So you send it anyway. BAD AUTHOR!!!! That’s a really good way to annoy someone who’s trying to help you. But…how do I make the image smaller? you say. Well, I’ll show you. Aren’t you glad you asked?