Position Absolutely, Bring Forward/Send Backward*

To position a graphic absolutely, select the image, click the Position Absolutely button on the toolbar and click and drag the image with your mouse to position it. To set positioned images in front or in back of other page content or each other, use the Bring Forward and Send Backward buttons.

* It must be pointed out that absolute positioning as applied using current versions of FrontPage is not cross browser compatible and is best avoided.

Rotate Left/Right, Flip Horizontal/Vertical

Use these icons to rotate an image 90 degrees counter-clockwise or clockwise. Images can also be mirrored (flipped right to left) and inverted (turns a graphic upside down by flipping it from top to bottom).

More/Less Contrast, More/Less Brightness

The brightness and contrast tools are particularly useful with continuous-tone images such as digital photos. By increasing contrast, light colors become lighter and dark colors become darker. The opposite happens when you decrease contrast. When you increase brightness, every color in an image becomes whiter. All colors became blacker when brightness is decreased.

Crop, Line Style, Format Picture, Set Transparent Image, Color, Bevel, Resample

Crop
All images, even those with a transparent background, are square or rectangular shaped. Use the crop tool to trim away unwanted areas. After selecting the image, click once on the crop button. A rectangular shape with handles appears and you simply select and drag one handle at a time to resize the shape. You can use your mouse cursor or the up, down, right and left keyboard arrows to position the crop box, also known as a bounding box, more precisely. When you positioned the crop box where you want, click on the crop tool again to remove the excess area of the image outside the crop lines

Line Style**
If you created a line in FrontPage using the Drawing Toolbar, select it and use this icon to change its point size and style.

Format picture**
A drawing created within FrontPage with tools on the Drawing Toolbar can be changed by selecting it, then enabling the Pictures Toolbar which in this case will not appear automatically when you select the drawing. When the image is selected the Format AutoShape dialog box will open. You can change such things as the color, fill, size and shapes of lines.

** Note: drawing objects and lines using FrontPage will generate code which may not render properly in all browsers. It is always preferable to create images in an image editing program.

Set transparent color

Transparency allows you to create non-rectangular looking images for web pages so the page, table or cell background color shows through the transparent area. You can use the Set Transparent Color Tool to make a single color in a GIF (or PNG) transparent. Since only one color in a GIF can be transparent, if you select a new transparent color when one has already been specified in an image, the original transparent color loses its transparency. This tool does not work well with all images, particularly those with gradients, drop shadows and continuous tone images such as photos.

To make a color transparent, select the image. Click the Set Transparent Color icon then, with the tip of the tool, click on the specific image color you wish to make transparent. If you select a color in a JPEG, the image will automatically convert to a GIF since JPEGs do not support transparency. When FrontPage converts a graphic to a GIF from a JPEG or other file format, the number of colors in the graphic may be reduced and the file size can increase. The visual quality may also change and not always for the best. So make sure you check the quality in Preview before you save the image.

Color

When you select an image and click on the Color icon, a drop down menu appears. You can convert a line art image, which has solid areas of color, to black and white. You can also grayscale an image. It will be converted to black, white and various shades of gray. When you grayscale and image you may also have to adjust its brightness and contrast.

Washing out an image reduces its opacity by decreasing its contrast and increasing its brightness. This feature is useful when you want to create a background image or watermark.

Bevel
To give a three-dimensional look to a graphic, select it then click on the Bevel icon. This feature is handy if you want to use the graphic as a button. The top and left edges are lightened and the bottom and right edges are darkened. If the image will be used as a hyperlink, the border will display the colors you've specified for hyperlinks.

The FrontPage Pictures Toolbar Part III >>

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