Computer Jargon
Account
Computer novices are wary of anything that asks them to set up an "account", because back in the real world accounts cost you money.
In cyberspace the majority of accounts are FREE, in fact the term usually just means "registering" a username and email address.
A lot of art websites let you set up a profile page with contact details, and let you upload your artwork in jpeg format.
Back Up
To "back up" is simply to make a safety copy of your work. Maybe you've deleted something by accident.
Or, maybe the dog chewed up your USB stick. Maybe you want to experiment with cropping pictures, well, it's nice to be able to go back to the original if you muff it up.
Insert your stick, open MyComputer, R'click the stick's icon, select Copy, select the icon for your computer's C: drive then R'click and select Paste.
That's all there is to it. No fancy programs required at all.
Drivers
A lot of computer hardware is "plug'n'play", ie. when you plug it in the computer automatically recognises it and knows exactly what to do with it. Some hardware such as printers
need you to install "drivers" which are little files which tell your computer the peculiarities of your particular model. Without the drivers the printer might work, basically, but
without its special features. When you open the box, look for the drivers CD and just follow the instructions.
If you get something secondhand this will probably be missing. If this is the case then just go on to Google and do a search on "Printer xxx, drivers, download" or somesuch.
Download the appropriate file and install it as above.
File
The mostly commonly used word in computing. Generally you refer to to anything created in a word processor as a
"Doc". Pictures are
normally refered to by their type, usually
"jpeg". But...,
"File" is a vague all-purpose umbrella word that covers
anything stored on a computer.
Not to be confused with
"Data" which literally just means (items of)information.
Filesize
Filesize refers to the amount of diskspace taken up by a picture or document etc.
The basic unit is a "Byte" (the space required to hold one digit), but most common objects are measured in
Kilobytes (1,000 bytes),
Megabytes (1,000 kilobytes), or
Gigabytes(1,000 megabytes).
To give an example, an un-edited picture straight from your camera might take up 3MB, the same picture resized to 6x4 inches might be 32 KB, and resized as a thumbnail it might be about 6KB. That's about a 500th of the original filesize.
Filesize is important when you want to send your pictures by email, or upload them to a website. A lot of sites put a limit of maybe 100 KB on uploads,
so it's important to know about re-sizing.
IT support
Most guys get into IT support because they genuinely like to help people get the most out of their computers. Don't be embarassed about lack of computer knowledge - the only thing that IT techies dont like is the "RTFM" situation.
You should be aware that sometimes a problem can be so tricky that it's not cost-effective to persevere with it, we all have to prioritise our time.
If all else fails, just format the computer and rebuild it.
JPEG
There several formats for pictures, but
jpg (pronounced "jay peg") is now the most widely accepted.
Scanners sometimes want to save in
.BMP format, and small pictures on the web are sometimes saved as
.GIF, but any art program will let you convert to jpeg.
Your camera will naturally save pictures in jpg format. This is the format that websites ask for so, unless you're a geek it's best to keep life simple and stick with this format.
OpenWith
Different art programs have different strengths so it's useful to be able to open the same picture file with a variety of programs. If you R'click a picture and select
OpenWith you get to select from all the art programs on your computer that could possibly
Open the file. This is great for flicking between programs.
You can set a program as the default by selecting "Choose Program" from the OpenWith menu, then ticking the "Always open with this program" tick box.
Right Click
From Windows XP onwards, the mouse's right button has been put to good use. You click with the left button to select something, or double click the left button
to set something running but if you click the
right button you get to do some useful things to the selected file.
A menu pops up to let you
Rename the file,
Copy, or
Delete it. If it's a "portrait" orientated picture you can
Rotate it the right way up, and
Properties gives you details such as Filesize, date created etc. And, of course, this is where you
find the mighty
OpenWith command.
RTFM
Sometimes even the most genial IT guy has to say "Read the effing manual". Honestly, some people! If you bought say, a new tumble drier you'd probably try reading the instructions before ringing
up the shop... Some programs, like Photoshop, require a LLLLOT of reading. If you're not prepared to read how to use a complicated program maybe you shouldn't buy it.
Save or SaveAs
It is VITAL that everyone using a computer realises the difference between File,Save and File,SaveAs.
When you
Save a file it overwrites the original - sometimes you may wish you'd left it as it was. But, when you use Save
As it saves all the changes
you've just done to a new file, and leaves the original unaltered.
With
Save, the program will save the file exactly where it found it, with Save
As you get to choose where the new version is saved to.
Also, you'll be prompted for new names for the new verions of the file. So, be sensible and create a series
eg. MonaLisa-2, MonaLisa-3 etc.
USB sticks
USB memory sticks are not just a new way of storing data, they have changed the way a lot of people work on computers.
2 years ago a standard stick held about 128MB. Now a standard "cheapo" stick will hold 2GB, and cost about £5 from Rymans or Smiths etc.
If you re-size your pictures you could store several hundred pictures on one stick, so you can take your entire collection anywhere, plug it
into anyone's laptop and access anything. Just remember to back up your stick regularly.
Slow Computers
There six main things that can make a computer run slowly.
1. Not enough memory
Click the Start button, then right-click the MyComputer icon. From the menu click Properties.
This will display a pop-up box telling you how much memory you have, and how fast it is.
It should say something like: Pentium4, 2.66 GHz, 1GB of Ram.
If it says anything like "Quad core", or "Dual Core" then you have a racehorse.
If the Ram is less than 1GB then it really needs more memory to be installed.
Cost ? If you already have 256 mb you will need to buy a 1GB stick of Ram - about £40.
If you already have 512mb then you only need to buy a 512mb stick of ram - about £20.
2. Your Anti-Virus software maybe too fierce.
Norton/Symantec/McAfee are the worst for slowing you down. They do give good protection,
but can make your laptop unusable.
If one of these is on your machine you should consider un-installing it, then install
an anti-virus program called AVG - this is totally FREE.
But, do make sure Norton etc is un-installed fully.
The worst thing in the world is to have 2 different anti-virus programs installed.
3. Your computer might be infected.
If your antivirus program is out of date your computer could actually be infected by a virus,
trojan, worm, spyware etc. Some people assume you only get infections from porn sites, but no,
many zits attach themselves to quite innocent things (I got infected once from a regular
gardening website).
Email is a big source of infection. There are a lot of tricksters out there, pretending
to be your bank, or a parcel delivery service etc. Have your email program set up to display a
preview pane, so you can see some of the content before you Open anything. Things to watch out
for are bad grammer/spelling, and requests to change your password or account details.
Some infections are un-noticeable but others can really slow you down, as well as doing all
sorts of unpleasantries to the nether-regions of your hard disk.
AVG prompts you regularly to download their updates. If you have ignored this, something easily
could have slithered through...
STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING, and download the updates NOW.
When installed, run a Full Scan on your hard disk, and also scan any USB memory sticks you
might use. This should be able to remove or quarrantine the evil one from your machine.
4. You might have Vista installed.
If you bought your computer in the last 2-3 years it might have an operating system called
Vista installed on it - this needs a very powerful machine to run normally.
If this is the case you could format the hard drive and install Windows XP instead.
Or, if you don't like the thought of going backwards, then you could install Windows Seven.
Nobody liked Vista, so Microsoft had to try to put things right with this new system.
For my money, I'd stick with the reliable old XP - "If it aint bust, dont fix it".
5. You might live too far from the telephone exchange.
Move.
Sorry, there is no serious solution to this one. I live half a mile form the Edgware
exchange, and so have always had a high speed internet connection. My friend, on a similar
broadband package gets half my speed, because he lives a full mile from the Northolt
exchange.
5. Your phone line might go into a DACS box
One summer a couple of years ago my connection speed was cut in half, shortly after some new
neighbours had got BT to drill holes in the wall and give them a 2nd line.
I spent months going in circles between BT and Tisacli with no information whatsoever.
Then, one day a nice chap in phone engineer overalls let slip that if you live in a block
of flats, the phone line could go into a cheap'n'nasty junction box, called a "DACS box" which
literally cuts your bandwidth in half.
Scour your walls for a brown plastic box. BT will first try to deny the existance of such a
thing, then they will say "it shouldn't affect your bandwidth" or somesuch bluff.
But, if you press them, they have to get rid of it and give you a dedicated line.
Other things to try
If your hard disk is less than 80GB you could replace it.
Uninstall any unneccessary programs - some people have all sorts of rubbish cluttering up their
computer. If you dont use it, remove it with Control Panel, Add or Remove Programs.
Check if your hard disk needs de-fragmenting. It's not that scarey...
- click MyComputer
- right-click the C: drive icon
- click Properties
- click the Tools tab
- click the [Defragment Now] button
- select the C: drive then click [Analyze]
It will take about 5 mins to analyse the drive. If it says you should defrag it then click
the [defrag] button then go for your lunch (this could take a good hour).
SUMMARY
For a reasonably fast machine you should have at least 1GB of Ram, at least an 80GB HDD,
running Windows XP and AVG, with all unneccessary programs removed from a defragged disk.
Got all that ?
Email
But I don't have a computer...
You dont need to own a computer to set up a web-based account. Most popular are Hotmail and Googlemail, but if you type "free email account" into Google you will find plenty more.
Then you can pick up your mail from anywhere - your office, the library, an internet cafe, or your daughter's bedsit.
The mail just sits on a server on the web, unless you set up Outlook
to download it to a specific computer.
Should I have several accounts ?
If you want to keep the different areas of your life seperate, then why not set up several email accounts, eg. one for friends & family, one for business/work, and maybe one for
the correspondance with the Harrow Art Society....
They are all FREE, and you can set up Outlook to collect the mail for several accounts.
How do I Save people's email addresses ?
Whenever you receive an email the senders' address appears in the "From" box in the email header.
Right click on this then click the option
"Save to Contacts". This will save the address to your Contacts (address book). Just add any other details you might want to remember such as full name, phone number, bithdays
of kids etc.
If someone gives you their email in a christmas card, then click on
Contacts, New Contact, then just type the details in the appropriate boxes.
How can I keep track of all these email addresses ?
There are two ways, use either or a combination of the two.
Folders - Click on
Contacts, New Folder several times then move your contacts to the appropriate folder eg. "Friends","Family", "Work", "Art Society" etc.
Mailing lists - Click on
Contacts, New Distribution List. Give a name to your list, then click
Select members and pick people from your Contacts folder(s).
Then, if you want to email a christmas greeting to all your family you just type "Family" in the "To" box and off it goes.
Caution... When you send the email it will just show "Family" in the "To" box, but when the email is opened it will display all the individual members of that mailing list. Also, because the lists aren't expanded,
it's easy to accidently click on the wrong list, eg. "Friends" instead of "Family".
How do I email my pictures to someone ?
The best way is to send them as .jpg attachments - use
Insert,File. If you are sending several pictures at once, make sure you re-size them (see above - Filesize) or it will take forever.
The worst way to send pictures is... pasting them into a Word document or Powerpoint slide. This involves a bit of work for the recipient to extract the pictures and save them in .jpg format.
Equally bad is using
Insert,Picture. This puts the image straight into the body of the text. This also has to be extracted and saved.
I've been sent an attachment that I cant open - DocX
Since the beginning of time MS WORD saved its files with a
.doc extension. Any wordprocessor, including Wordpad, can open this format. Then, with Office 2007 they changed the default format to
.docX..
This format can only be opened by other computers which have Word2007 installed. Well, that's progress for you.
What can you do ? Reply to the email and ask the sender to kindly SaveAs the document in standard .doc format, then re-send it.
What should you do if you have Word2007 and people keep asking you to re-send your attachments ? Simple, make sure you save your documents in .doc format, ie.
File,SaveAs, Type: (*.doc).
I saved an attached document, now I cant find it !
Every day at our college we get students and teachers saying they Saved a file which was attached to an email, and now they cant find it.
Why ? Because they dont know the difference between Save and SaveAs (see above).
When you open an attatchment then click File,Save your computer doesnt know where to save it to, and so creates a temporary folder with a totally ridiculous name. And, to make matters worse, it makes
this folder as HIDDEN. So, it wont show up even if you searched your entire computer.
And, even worse than that... if you're on a network that obscure hidden folder will be DELETED when you log off. Ain't life a bitch.
What can you do ? Re-open the email, open the document again, and do a File,SaveAs to a folder of your choice.
If the email containing the attachment has been deleted, you have one slim hope. Email yourself another Word document. Open this, then do a File,Save, THEN do a File,SaveAs. The resulting popup box will show you the
temporary folder that it saved this attachment to. If you havent logged off in the meantime, you may well find your original document in there.
As you can see from this example, when I Saved a "Painting.doc" it ended up in a temporary, hidden folder with the following path:
C:\Documents and Settings\Gordon\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\0LK1E
Fonts
But it looks different on my computer...
A common problem is when you email someone a page in WORD format, the recipient may actually see something quite different from what you intended....
How the recipient views your Word doc depends on which fonts are installed on the
recipient's computer.
So, if you have installed some exotic fonts on your computer such as "Vinerhand" or "Zanzibar" the page may look great on YOUR computer, but,
if the
receiving computer doesn't have these non-standard fonts installed, WINDOWS will have to make a guess - and it will usually display such exotica as TimesRoman or Arial, and make a nonsense of your carefully layed out page.
How did these fancy fonts get on my computer?
When you buy a printer or scanner it will probably come with a set of fancy fonts which show off the capabilities of your new machine.
Also, when you install some new software it will install new fonts. If you change from XP to Vista, or if you upgrade from Office 2003 to Office 2007 you will get more fonts.
Non-standard fonts are great if you want to embed them in a Photoshop jpeg, or just print a poster on your own printer. But, if you send them over the web in Word docs you really MUST consider whether the recipient has also has "Zanzibar" or whatever.
So, how can I know what fonts are on other people's computers?
The simple answer is
you can't. And that is why you shouldn't contruct fancy looking posters, invitations, fliers etc in a wordprocesser such as WORD.
This is what art programs are for. When you lay out your page in PhotoShop etc, it saves the exact layout pixel-by-pixel as an
image, which will be displayed regardless of which fonts are on the receiving computer.
Photographing your artwork
Should you use a digital camera or a traditional SLR (film) ?
With digital you can instantly review your pictures to check for bad reflections or keystone effect. Take several shots and choose the best.
Because digital cameras automatically save pictures in .jpg format you can immediately put them on a computer, crop them, tweak the
colours & brightness, then re-size them. Within 5 minutes of taking the shot you could be uploading it to an art website or attaching it to an email to a publisher etc.
With an SLR, you wont know how good your shots are until they come back from ProntaPrint, by which time it may be too late to do anything about it. Then, you have
to put your snaps into a scanner to Save them as jpegs. Between ProntaPrint and your scanner you are going to lose some picture quality.
Use digital, definately.
To Flash or Flash not
Simple, Never use flash. With sculpture it will flatten the image to almost 2-D. With paintings you'll get a myriad of little reflections in the texture of your brushstrokes.
Digital cameras will take reasonable pictures even in dim conditions - they automatically adjust the shutter speed, so,to get the best pictures, put your camera on
a tripod then use a timer instead of pressing the button yourself. If you've read your camera manual you'll see that you can overide the auto settings for more control.
With sculpture it helps if you can set up some extra lighting to create shadows to ehance the 3-D effect.
Framing
For all new paintings, make sure you photograph them BEFORE they go into a frame. Even if you like your choice of frame, it will not look right on a web page. Do a Google search on, say, "Mona Lisa" and you won't find it in a frame anywhere.
What looks good in the flesh doesn't always look good on the web.
Watercolours are virtually impossible to photograph once they're behind glass.
Tweaks
Have you ever had that moment of doubt with a painting where you wonder if the tonal balance could be better, or is the whole thing too dark, and what about that tree, wouldn't it be
better on the other side... That cottage is just too big, and that effing seagull just doesn't belong. Why did I ever think purple would work here ?
Picture editing programs let you rehearse all the possible changes before you commit yourself, and possibly ruin your canvas.
When you're at a moment of doubt, just load a jpeg of your painting-in-progress onto your computer then use a "lassoo" to shift that tree, shrink that cottage etc, tweak the colours, brightness and contrast until you find
your favourite version, then..., get your paints out again with total conviction.
If you remember to use
SaveAs after each tweak you can create several versions for comparison, while keeping your original intact.
Picture Editing Programs
There are a few programs that have a neat trick or two, but I haven't found one program that does it all. If you need to do some work on a jpeg be prepared to use OpenWith to flick
between programs. eg. use Paint's "lassoo" tool to remove a tree from your landscape, then PhotoShop to blend it in with the "smudge" tool, then finally open the picture with PhotoSuite
to tweak the colour balance and re-size the picture.
PhotoShop is regarded as the ultimate picture editing program, but, it's expensive, and complicated to use. You need to sit down and read a book to understand it. Huh.
Its best trick is that it lets you work in "layers", but the only real use for layers is in graphic design where you want to superimpose text onto an image.
Paint comes free with Windows XP. It doesnt do a lot, but what it does do, it does quickly and easily. This is the only program that's you choose whether to resize a picture in inches, centimeters or pixels.
Photosuite has been around so long that versions 3 and 4 are now free. This is by far the easiest and most intuitive art program on the planet. This is the only program that has a "Preview"
button to let you compare your tweaks with the original, so you can flick back and forth until you're happy with the degree of tweaking.
Picture Manager comes free with the MS Office suite, usually held in the Office Tools group. It doesnt do anything the other programs dont do.
On-line galleries
There are several websites which let you set up an account, then display your art for free.
To take an example, lets look at a site called
meseon.net
. You start by composing a profile with biography, contact details, and a link to your own website.
. You can advertise any exhibitions you may be taking part in.
. Then, you can upload as many of your paintings as you like, organised into galleries.
When your account is set up it can be referenced by its own URL.
eg. I set up an account for Polish artist Magdalena Maria Drwiega (took me about 15mins). This can now be referenced directly
by pasting the link
meseon.net/user/magdalenamaria
into FaceBook, FriendsReunited etc, and any email.
Member's pages on the HAS website only allow you to post 6 pictures at a time, but of course you could add a link to your Meseon site which displays everything you've ever painted....
There are so many sites, so maybe start with the obvious ones: FaceBook, Myspace, Bebo, Hi5, Flickr, Picasaweb, Photobucket, deviantART, Brushpad, VanArt, GoFigurative, Jitter and FreeIndex.
Some, like ArtistBank, let you do direct selling (for a commission of course)
Doesnt this take for ever? - Not at all. Once you've set up one account you just copy'n'paste the stuff into the other sites.
When will I see the results if I Google myself ? - It takes Google 2-3 weeks to find any new content.
