Add and adjust pictures

A picture sits inside a frame. You can crop the picture, and move or resize the frame.

Insert a picture from a file

1. Click Insert > Illustrations > Pictures.
2. In the Insert Picture window, choose a file. JeffPub opens PNG, JPEG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, WebP, SVG, WMF, EMF, ICO, and PDF files.
3. Pick Insert, Link to File, or Insert and Link in the Insert as box, which sits with the file list and can be reached with the Tab key. Insert is chosen each time the window opens. See "Link a picture to its file," below.
4. Click Open.

The picture lands in the middle of the page. You can also drag a picture file onto the page, which always uses Insert.

JeffPub reads picture files up to 256 MB. A bigger file is refused, and so is an empty file or anything that is not an ordinary file on disk, such as a device or a pipe. The message says JeffPub can't read it as a picture.

If you choose several pictures at once, they line up as thumbnails on the scratch area, the gray space beside the page. Drag the ones you want onto the page.

If a PDF has more than one page, the Insert PDF Page window shows each page. Pick one and click OK.

Link a picture to its file

Insert puts a copy of the picture inside the publication. That copy goes wherever the publication goes, but a publication with many large photos gets large too. A link keeps the photos in their own files instead.

• Insert copies the picture into the publication. This is the usual choice.
• Link to File keeps only the file's location and a small preview, no more than 512 pixels on its longest side. The picture on the page, and in a print, a PDF, or an e-book, comes from the file at full quality. If the file is moved or deleted, the page shows the small preview instead.
• Insert and Link does both. The publication keeps the whole picture and the link. When you open the publication and the file has changed, JeffPub reads it again and replaces its copy.

JeffPub remembers the file's full location, and also where it is compared with the publication, such as "the Photos folder beside it". If you move the publication and its pictures together, the second one wins, so the pictures are found again. Keep the folders as they were.

JeffPub opens a linked picture's file by itself only when the file is in the publication's folder or in a folder inside it. A picture linked to a file anywhere else shows its saved preview, blurry, and is marked Not updated, until you select it and click Update Link in the Graphics Manager. This keeps a publication someone sends you from reaching into your computer. To have pictures load on their own, keep them in the publication's folder.

The Graphics Manager shows whether each picture is Embedded, Linked, Missing, Modified, or Not updated, and has buttons to update a link, point it at another file, or turn it into a copy. See Graphics Manager.

When you save a publication as a .pub file, make a Pack and Go file, or send it by e-mail, JeffPub puts each linked picture into the file in full, so it does not depend on files that stay behind. If a linked file is missing then, or the picture is Not updated, its small preview goes in instead. A .pub file you open never has links: its pictures come in as copies.

Add a picture placeholder

A placeholder is an empty frame that saves a spot for a picture. Click Insert > Illustrations > Picture Placeholder, then double-click the frame and choose a file. The picture fills the frame, and the edges that stick out are hidden. An empty placeholder does not print.

Find free pictures online

Click Insert > Illustrations > Online Pictures. The Online Pictures pane searches two free libraries of openly licensed pictures: Openverse, which covers many collections, and Wikimedia Commons, the library of Wikipedia's pictures.

1. Choose a library, type what you're looking for, such as "red barn", and press Enter.
2. Click a picture to see who made it and its license. A license is the set of rules for using the picture. Most ask you to name the author.
3. Click Insert. JeffPub puts the picture on the page and uses its title as its alt text. With Add a credit under the picture checked, a line such as "Red barn" by Pat Lee, CC BY 2.0 goes under it.

Your search words go to the library you chose. Check that each picture's license fits how you'll use it.

A search shows up to 24 pictures. JeffPub uses only secure (https) web addresses from a library, and it leaves out a picture whose address is not one. From Wikimedia Commons, a picture wider than 1,920 pixels comes as a copy that wide, not the original upload. A download over 50 MB, or one that takes too long, is stopped, and the pane says that the picture couldn't be downloaded or loaded.

Crop a picture

Cropping hides the edges of a picture.

1. Click the picture, then click Picture Format > Crop > Crop.
2. Drag a handle to hide part of the picture. Drag the picture to slide it inside the frame.
3. Click Crop again, or press Esc.

Also in the Crop group: Fit shows the whole picture in its frame, Fill fills the frame, Crop to Shape trims to a shape such as an oval, and Clear Crop shows the whole picture again.

Change how a picture looks

On the Picture Format tab, use the Adjust group:

• Corrections: pick a brightness and contrast pair, from minus 40 to plus 40 percent. Format Object…, at the bottom of the menu, has sliders.
• Recolor: make the picture Grayscale, Sepia, Washout, Black and White, or an accent tint. Set Transparent Color makes the color in the picture's top-left corner see-through.
• Transparency…: fade the whole picture.
• Reset Picture: takes off every change on this list, and the picture's border, shape, and effects. The crop goes too, so the frame shows the whole picture. Click the arrow beside it for Reset Picture & Size, which also puts the picture back to the size it has in its file.
• Compress Pictures…: shrink the file by lowering detail to 300, 220, or 96 ppi (pixels per inch). By default it changes every picture and deletes cropped areas.
• Convert to Shapes: turns an SVG picture (a drawing made of lines and shapes) into shapes you can edit, cut where the drawing clips them. Text and pictures inside it are left out.

Picture styles, borders, and effects

Use the Picture Styles group on the Picture Format tab:

• The gallery shows about two dozen ready-made looks: frames, shadows, reflections, soft edges, rounded and oval shapes, a turn in space, a glow, and bevels. A bevel is a slanted edge that makes the picture look raised. Each tile shows your colors. Click one to give the picture that look. A style sets the shape, the border, and the effects together, and replaces the ones the picture had. The crop, the size, and the colors stay.
• Picture Border sets the color, the Weight (how thick the line is), and the Dashes (a solid, dotted, or dashed line). No Outline takes the border off.
• Picture Effects opens Shadow, Reflection, Glow, Soft Edges, Bevel, and 3-D Rotation. Each has ready-made choices. Pick one to add it. The other effects stay. Choose the first entry, such as No Shadow, to take one off. More Effects Options… opens Format Object.

Each is one step to undo.

Caption, alt text, and swapping

• Picture Format > Picture Styles > Caption adds a text box under the picture.
• Alt text is a short description for people who cannot see the picture, such as screen reader users. Right-click the picture, choose Format Object…, open the Alt Text tab, and type in Alternative text.
• Picture Format > Insert > Change Picture puts another file in the same frame. The frame keeps its size, its place, and its look: the border, the shape, the effects, and the color changes. If the new picture is the same shape as the old one, the crop stays too. If it is a different shape, it fills the frame.
• To trade two pictures, drag one onto the other. When the tip says Release to swap the pictures, let go: the pictures change frames, and the frame you dragged goes back where it was. Or hold Shift, click both, and click Swap. Hold Ctrl while you drag to copy a picture instead. A copy you let go over another picture stays where you put it, and nothing swaps.

See every picture

Click View > Show > Graphics Manager to list every picture in the Graphics Manager pane. Select one, then click Go to to jump to it, Save As… to save a copy, or Replace… to choose another file. For linked pictures it also has Update Link, Change Link…, and Embed Picture. See Graphics Manager.

Related

• Graphics Manager
• Draw shapes and lines
• Move, align, group, and layer objects
• The Picture Format tab