In the previous Macintosh Graphics module, you used ClarisWorks
to create an image and saved it in PICT format. In this module, we
will take the PICT file, open it in GraphicConverter, make some changes
and save it in web-ready format.
Locate your Happy.PICT file and the GraphicsConverter program
icon. Adjust the windows so you can see both files at the same time.
1. Drag the Happy.PICT icon on top of the GraphicConverter icon,
so the GraphicConverter icon darkens. Release the mouse. (This
is called "Drag and Drop" and is a convenient way to "force" a program
to open a given file-if possible).
2. After the GraphicConverter "Welcome" screen is presented for 5 seconds, click the Try It button. You should see your artwork displayed in a GraphicConverter window (you are encouraged to pay the shareware fee as the program is well worth the charge).
3. We need to select the picture and then get rid of the white space around the picture.
Pull down the EDIT menu to Select Picture Content.
Pull down the EDIT menu to Trim Selection.
We are going to assume that your image is slightly too large for your purposes (if it is perfect in practice, you would skip these steps). This is how you can take a large image you may have scanned in and reduce it to how you will want it to look on the web.
4. In the bottom left corner of the screen, press and hold on
the triangle icon that indicates 100% size. 
You
will notice that you have a choice of given percentages, or here, we will
reduce the image to a percentage not listed.
Drag to the line 
and release.
5. Type in 90 for the percentage.
Important: If you were to save now, you would be saving the image full size, with your VIEW reduced to 90% of the original. This would not make the ACTUAL picture smaller. We need to make the VISIBLE image the FULL image.
We're need to do this because if you save or create a picture that is 10 inches by 12 inches and you reduce the visible picture to 10% and save it, you are simply saving a small view of a large graphic (120 sq.inches). Even though the images is at 10%, the file is still at 100%. This is not something we want to do, since the actual size needs to be much smaller and closer to what we will be using in the web page.
6. Here's how to make the visible picture the full size.
7. Pull down the PICTURE menu to Size and then over to Burn In
This makes the visible picture "full size" What you see now is
the "actual" size of the graphic. The closer you can make the picture
the size you want it to ultimately be, the better the result will be.
Now we need to save the image in one of the formats that Web pages can read. There are not many colors, accuracy is really not an issue, and the artwork is simple. We will save it as a GIF file, in the Pictures Folder.
8. Pull down the FILE menu to Save As.... (If you do a SAVE, you will still have a PICT file)
9. In this screen, change the pop-up window from PICT to GIF.
When you change the Format, notice what happens to the name of the file. You do want the file to end with .GIF and GraphicConverter does this automatically.
10. Be sure the SAVE location points to the Picture folder, and then SAVE the file.
11. Quit GraphicConverter (if asked to Save, click Don't
Save... the program is wanting you to save changes to the PICT file
that you opened, and you don't need to- you've saved out as a GIF).
You now have an image file, ready to be placed in a Web page (remember, the reference to the file is placed in the page, not the actual picture).
Now we will Repeat the process, just for practice, and this time the
result will be a JPEG file.
12. Drag and Drop your Happy.PICT file onto GraphicConverter. Select the picture content, trim the selection, Reduce size, Burn In and Save the file as a JPEG. Be sure the file has the " .JPEG" and is saved in your Picture folder. If you save it elsewhere, go to the Finder and drag it to the proper location.
(Note: Graphics can be saved with the name .JPG or
.JPEG attached to the end and either should be read correctly.
This is because some older web servers use only 3 letters at the end of
a file name)
Our next process will be to take your original picture and lighten it
so it could be used as a background. We'll use the Happy.PICT and
change it and then save it under a different name.
Note: you can also use other programs if you have them available to do these actions. Photoshop, PhotoDeluxe, and others may do the same actions and if you have them available, you can modify these instructons to accomplish the same tasks.
13. Drag the Happy.PICT file on top of the ClarisWorks icon. (Alternatively, you can open ClarisWorks and then go to FILE>Open>and locate the Happy.PICT file and open it.)
14. This will likely open the file in a ClarisWorks DRAWING file.
To lighten it, we need to get it to a painting, so:
Select the object and COPY it
Close the Drawing file- Don't save changes
Pull down FILE>New>Painting
PASTE the picture into a Painting window.
15. Now with the picture on the screen, pull down the TRANSFORM
menu to Lighter. Repeat this process until the picture is
rather light, but still has some color to it.
(If you get it TOO light, you can UNDO the action once. Unfortunately, the opposite of Lighten may reasonably seem to be Darken, but you can't Darken back to where you started. If you get "messed up" so bad you want to start over, close, don't save, and re-PASTE the picture into a new Painting file.)
16. When you get the file as you want it, do a Save As... and name it HappyBkgnd.PICT
17. Quit ClarisWorks and now as before, drag the file onto GraphicConverter,
Select, Trim, and SAVE it as a GIF file. The name should be
HappyBkgnd.GIF Once you've saved it, Quit GraphicConverter
and don't save changes (again, you'd be saving changes to Happy.PICT,
which we want to leave alone for now).