Can someone provide a straight forward explanation of how an image will be displayed in a header? I took Computer Graphics 201 twenty years ago and I am not a graphics person, but I'd like to put up a presentable personal site. I do all my image manipulation in Gimp. Can someone provide a lazy man's explanation of what i have to do to make an arbitrary slice of an image show well in an atahuapa header? A lazy old guy would be very grateful. OatFarmer

Hi Oatfarmer
I am an old enough geezer myself to remember the pre pocket calculator world......Whoever would have thought all this would happen?

As straightforward as i can..........

Crank up the Gimp, hit FILE then OPEN and locate your picture. Double click and it will open up.
Go to your toolbox and select the CROP TOOL.
Position the cursor icon on the image and drag to select the area you want to isolate.
Once selected you double click inside your selection to crop it.
If you dont like what you got, go up to EDIT in the top toolbar and hit UNDO CROP IMAGE and you can can make another pass at it.
When you are satisfied with what you have it will need resizing.
Go up to the top toolbar and hit IMAGE, scroll down and hit SCALE IMAGE and put in the dimension you want....try WIDTH 1200, then go to FILE in the top toolbar and hit SAVE AS.
Type in a new NAME and SAVE IN FOLDER which you can name HEADER IMAGES, then hit SAVE and you will get to the SAVE AS box where you can bring down the FILE SIZE so it will load faster.
If you get .....file size; unknown..... hit the...... Show preview in image window........and the file size will appear. Slide the quality down to about 35 and hit SAVE.
You now have a cropped and resized image in a folder named HEADER IMAGE.

The next step is to open your FTP program....FILEZILLA or whatever
In the LOCAL SITE browse for your HEADER IMAGES folder and open it.
In the REMOTE SITE browse for ..../public_html/wp/wpcontent/themes/atahualpa333/images/header
I am using Atahualpa 333 maybe you have another version.....
Now you can select and drag your image from the LOCAL SITE and drop it in the REMOTE SITE.
If you want only your image delete the default images.
Now it should show on your site and you will see if it fits. Maybe you will need to reopen it in gimp
for some tweaking.
Test the new tweaked image by dragging it into REMOTE SITE and delete the previous one
Further than that.....ATAHUALPA-THEME OPTIONS-HEADER IMAGES give you options to play with.

I hope that is clear and correct.....If you get stuck get back to me, i remember struggling with this one myself.
Good luck.....jim

one other thing to consider is the image itself. Most digital camerat take nice pictures, but when you decide to use an image as a header and you have a header that is only 200 px high but is 1440 px wide (those's are abaritary number - the ones I use),, you are now just using a slice from an image. Close ups - where an object fills the image, don't work well, but long shots work, because you can pick a piece that looks tood.

Think of it this way. Print an 8X10 photo - now you have to cut it so it is 2x10. What part of the photo do you want to display? If it was a close up head shot and all you want is the eyes, that would work, but if you want the whole face, it won't. If you used a long shot of the person, then you could get them in the 2x10 slice you cut out of the print.

just a way of thinking, hope it helps

Thats right you need a nice wide angle long shot, then you get more chance to compose a good crop
from a landscape.
If however you want a bug on a leaf you would want to start off with a somewhat closer shot as by the time you zoom in on it you will be in danger of losing quality.

By the way J.D I have just noticed that all my posts have a green arrow icon and other peoples posts dont, am i paranoid or what does it mean?

Thx! The sequence, crop then scale, and the 1200 pixel width were exactly the hints I needed. Regards, oatFarmer