Replace Background GOOGLE

Browsing di dunia maya bukanlah hal langka bagi penghuni dunia nyata saat ini. Kedua alam ini seolah tanpa pembatas. Kita bisa berpindah dengan cepat. Bahkan tanpa sadar kita berada di kedua alam ini secara bersamaan. Banyak hal yang dapat menjadikan kita betah di dalamnya.

Kenyamanan dalam menjelajah Cyberspace dibutuhkan agar tidak hadir kejenuhan. Khususnya disaat penjelajahan benar-benar urgent. Maka dibutuhkan suasana yang mendukung dan lebih mengasyikkan. Salah satu hal itu, akan diuraikan pada postingan kali ini.

Replace alias mengganti Background Image pada halaman utama Google. Sebaiknya langsung ke barisan tutorialnya.
1. Pertama-tama tentunya kita harus mengunjungi Halaman Google.

2. Sebelum pengeditan dimulai, tampilan Halaman Google biasa-biasa saja. Tampak ditengah kata ajaib dunia maya yakni Google. Kemudian dibawahnya hadir kolom pencarian lengkap dengan tombol Search yang setia menemani disisinya. Sedangkan pada Background, warna putih yang mencerminkan kesucian Hasil sebelum Searching.

3. Perhatikan sebuah kalimat di sisi Kiri Bawah yang bertuliskan Ganti gambar latar/Change background image. Setelah mengekliknya, Netter akan diarahkan menuju Halaman Upload Image.

4. Upload Image bisa dari berbagai ruang yang disiapkan sebagai pilihan, yakni :
Dari Komputerku



Foto di Web Picasa



Galeri publik



Pilihan editor



5. Untuk pilihan Upload Image from Computer, Google mempersyaratkan Wide Image dengan ukuran minimal 800x600 pixels. Adapun format Image yang didukung yakni :

.jpeg
.tif
.tiff
.bmp
.gif
.psd (Photoshop)
.png
.tga
dan format Kamera

Format Kamera yang dikenal antara lain :

Adobe (.DNG)
Canon (.CRW, .CR2)
Casio (.RAW)
Fuji (.RAF)
Hasselblad (.3FR)
Kodak (.DCR, .KDC)
Leica (.DNG and .RAW)
Minolta (.MRW)
Nikon (.NEF, .NRW)
Olympus (.ORF)
Panasonic (.RAW, .RW2)
Pentax (.PEF)
Ricoh (.DNG)
Samsung (.DNG)
Sigma (.X3F)
Sony (.SRF,.SR2)

6. Upload Image from Picasa memberikan nuansa tersendiri karena dapat dengan mudah mengubah ukurannya sebelum diupload.

7. Bilamana Netter menginginkan Halaman Google tanpa Background Image, tinggal klik tulisan Hapus gambar latar/Remove background image.

Nach, gimana Netter...???
Asyik kan punya Halaman Google dengan Background pribadi yang nampang di belakangnya.

Yang perlu diperhatikan disini setidaknya ada 2 (dua) hal yakni :
1. Dimensi Image, minimal 800x600 px.
2. Browser yang mendukung layanan Google dalam mengubah Background Image. Pihak Google menyarankan untuk menggunakan browser :

Google Chrome (all series)
Internet Explorer 7.x
Internet Explorer 8.x
Firefox 3.x
Safari 3
Safari 4

Pada dimensi 800x600 px yang dijalankan pada Browser yang sama, Image terlihat seolah-olah ter-CROP


Olehnya itu, Ambae.exe pada tutorial kali ini mencobanya dengan Image berdimensi 1000x700 px yang dijalankan pada Browser Mozilla Firefox 3.6.6. Dan alhasil lumayan beda dari tampilan Google Homepage sebelumnya.


Pesan Error yang muncul dan Solusinya :

The background image is no longer available.
Choose a new image
Hal ini terjadi pada saat Netter Upload Image from Picasa. Gambar dimakdus telah dihapus Picasa, sehingga diisyaratkan untuk Upload Image yang lainnya pada Album Picasa.

The background image is temporarily unavailable.
Check back soon
Untuk sementara waktu gambar yang akan diupload tidak tersedia. Cek ulang pada kesempatan yang lain.

Picasa is unavailable right now so the background image can't be shown. It should be visible again shortly
Hal ini terjadi untuk sementara waktu karena Album Picasa mengalami masalah

Sorry, there seems to be a problem with the image picker.
Check back soon
Tool Upload mengalami masalah, sehingga Netter perlu mencobanya dikesempatan yang lain

Sorry, the image picker is unavailable. Check back soon
Upload tetap dapat dilakukan setelah beberapa waktu kemudian karena saat itu sedang Down

Unable to save the image. Trying again in X seconds...
Proses Save yang terganggu. Kemungkinan karena Pageload atau memang masalah pada jaringan Netter. Namun jangan khawatir, dicoba lagi sobat

No images matching ... Please try another search
Gambar yang dicari tidak ditemukan, sehingga Netter perlu mencari gambar lain yang tersedia

The image is smaller than 800x600 pixels.
Please choose a different one
Persyaratan Dimensi Image tidak dipenuhi yakni minimal 800x600 px. Olehnya, cari lagi gambar lainnya yang berdimensi minimal sesuai persyaratan mbah GOOGLE.

Animated with Picasion

Although web designers tend to dislike them, animated icons and buttons can really hit the spot when it comes to creating simple moving images. Some people also like to use them in email signatures. To achieve this effect you will need to use an animated GIF. This is a graphics file format that stores a sequence of photos that can be ‘chained’ together to form the electronic equivalent of a flipbook that mimics movement when played back. By choosing pictures carefully and then going to the Picasion website, it is possible to create smooth animated sequences that are both fun and effective. This Workshop explains how to choose suitable images and turn them into an animated GIF that can be used on a website, blog or as a forum icon.

We are going to start by creating a picture for an online-forum profile. This picture will appear next to any contribution we make on the forum and so other users can quickly identify our posts. Each forum has its own rules that determine the maximum file size and preferred dimensions for pictures like this, so check first to see what is allowed. We have four photographs of one of our writers showing his face as expressionless, starting to smile, smiling and, finally, grinning: we are going to use the Picasion website to combine them into a single animated GIF to create the impression of movement.

After checking the rules of the forum we are going to post on, we know the preferred picture size is 115x140 pixels, with a maximum file size of 51KB, so we need to make some changes to these four pictures. Using a photo editor (the one shown here is the excellent Photo Filtre, free from www.snipca.com/x253) we crop the photos into portraits and then reduce their size to the correct dimensions. Then we save them as either JPEG, GIF or PNG files, numbered in sequence order.

With the photos prepared, launch a web browser and go to www.picasion.com. When the site loads click the top Browse button and use Windows Explorer to navigate to the first of the photos that will be used to create the animated GIF sequence. Just select the picture and click the Open button, then add the next picture in the same way. If you need to add more than three just click the ‘Add one more picture link’ to open another empty picture box and keep adding more.

To ensure the pictures are the right dimensions, open the dropdown menu underneath Size, select Advanced and then type in the width specified in the forum where they are going to be used. Since this sequence of photos shows someone smiling, it will be better if we speed up the playback to make it look more natural. To do this, open the Speed dropdown menu and choose Faster. To upload the photos in Picasion and assemble them into a single animated GIF, click the Create animation button.

When the pictures have finished uploading, the animation will appear in the main Picasion window and start to play back immediately. To keep the animation safe, click the ‘Save this animation’ link at the bottom of the screen and choose a destination on your PC. When it has finished downloading, find the animated GIF and double-click it; here the GIF is playing back in the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer. To check the size, right-click on the picture file icon and choose Properties.

Although they share some of the same characteristics, every forum is slightly different. Here, we have visited a forum we use regularly, signed in and viewed our control panel (often called a profile or user account), and then clicked the Browse button to upload our newly created animated GIF. After locating the photo on the hard disk, we can then click the Upload Avatar button (this is a fancy name for the picture we are using to represent our profile). From now on, whenever we contribute to the forum, our animated picture will appear next to our posts.

The animated GIF can be used elsewhere thanks to the HTML code that Picasion generates to go alongside it. Flip back to the Picasion website, highlight everything that appears in the HTML code field, right-click on it and choose Copy. As an example, we signed into one of our blogs at www.blogger.com. We clicked on Layout, Add a Gadget and then chose HTML/Javascript. This displays an empty window into which we have pasted the code using right-click and then Paste.

As well as getting pictures from the hard disk, Picasion can also import photos directly from popular online photo libraries like Picasa (www.picasaweb.com) and Flickr (www.flickr.com). For example, return to the Picasion home page and then click the ‘Import images from Flickr’ link. Flickr organises photos by user name and tags so you will need to know both to find the pictures you want (find out more by visiting www.flickr.com and having a look round) ­ then just click ‘Get pictures’.

It’s important to make sure you have permission to use any photos grabbed from Flickr or Picasa. We are using ones from our own library of photos. When the pictures appear as a strip of thumbnails just select the ones you want to use as part of the animation by putting a tick in the empty box in the top left-hand corner of each one. Once that is done, choose a size and animation speed and click the Create animation button.

Once Picasion has created the animation, it can be saved to the hard disk, or the accompanying code copied to a blog, or any popular web-editing program. By choosing a slower speed for the animation to play back it is possible to create simple self-running slideshows that are really effective. The only downside of Picasion is that it puts little Google adverts above and below the finished animation, though they are pretty unobtrusive.

Watermark to Protect Photos

The popularity and simplicity of modern digital cameras mean that it’s never been easier to take great photos. Throw in plenty of free storage available on the internet and the result is that millions of people now proudly display their digital photographs online for others to enjoy. But not to rip off.

There are various ways to protect images stored on photo-sharing services such as Flickr. Sharing only small copies of each photo works well, but there’s also an excellent DIY option that allows pictures to be seen in all their high resolution glory watermarking.

This adds a faint copyright message across the photo that allows people to see the detail, but prevents them from ‘borrowing’ it for their own use. Here’s how to do it with the free Photofiltre image editing program.

Start by getting Photofiltre. Launch your web browser, click once in the Address or Location line and type www.snipurl.com/3hpua . Follow the instructions to download the program and install it. Next, find a photo, load it into Photofiltre and then click on the ‘T’ button in the button bar to open the Text dialogue box. From here we’ll be able to add and then format the text that will be placed over the picture as a watermark.

Click in the empty Text input box and type in the text for the watermark. There are plenty of options to change the look of the text, but for now, just use the size control to increase the size of the text to something that sounds reasonable; in this example we’ve increased it to 30. Click OK to add the text to the picture. Here it’s clear that the text is nowhere near big enough, so we’ll work on it some more. Double-click the text to open the dialogue box again.

Here we’ve made a couple of significant changes. First, we’ve increased the size from 30 to 250 - although this seems like an enormous jump, some trial and error experimentation with different sizes in between has shown us that it will work well. Next, we’ve opened the dropdown menu next to the colour command and chosen white. We could also change the font from Arial Black, but we like it. Clicking OK will make the changes. After that, double-click the text to open the dialogue box again.

Although the text is the right size, it’s far too imposing and makes it hard for anyone to get a really good look at the image itself. Let’s fix that. With the dialogue box still open click the Effects tab at the top. See the Opacity slider? Drag it to the left with the cursor until it’s set to about 30%. You might want to go lower or higher -­ find a setting that suits you. Put a tick in the Drop shadow box, leave all the other settings as they are and click OK.

We’d like to add a proper copyright symbol, but Photofiltre won’t let us. Instead, we’ve opened our word processor ­- Word -­ and created it using that. The quick way is to hold down the Ctrl and Alt keys and press ‘C’. Then just highlight the symbol, go to the Edit menu and choose Copy and switch back to Photofiltre. Make sure the Text dialogue is open, click the Text tab, click once in front of the existing text, then press Ctrl and V to paste the symbol into place like so.

Press the spacebar once to put a space between the copyright symbol and the rest of text. Then to finish off, change the angle of the text so that it runs from bottom left to top right. Click the lower arrow on the control next to Angle and change the ‘00’ setting there to ‘-30’. Click OK and the copyright message will run diagonally across the image, with the symbol in place. Save the picture with the copyright watermark in place and that’s that.