To save a GIF or JPEG image to your desktop computer simply right-click
on the image while viewing it in your Web browser, and from the popup
menu that appears choose "Save Image As..." or "Save Picture As..." or
something similar (the exact menu item name changes from
browser to browser).
This can usually only be done with GIF and JPEG images, however; as you
may recall from our 1st class these image formats are natively supported
by the browser -- the browser itself knows how to decode them and
display them on the screen, so when you right-click on them the
browser's own pop-up menu appear from which you can save them to your
desktop as describe above.
But what about PNG, TIFF, and other image formats that are NOT directly
supported by the browser? In such cases the browser hands the image over
to a plug-in, or helper application, that is responsible for rendering
it (drawing it) on the screen. Even when viewing such non-native formats
in your browser when you right-click on them the pop-up that appears (if
any!) isn't created by the browser; it's created by the plug-in or
helper application that's actually displaying the image for the browser.
As a result, you usually won't see a "Save..." option that allows you to
save the image to your desktop. Here's how to get around this problem:
1) DON'T open the image in the browser; don't try to view it in other
words. Instead, just look at the hyperlink (the link) for that image.
For example, each of the image names in our Sample Images area of our
Course Resources appears as a link. If you click on that link the
browser will display the image if it can. But DON'T click on the link as
usual -- instead, right-click on the link...
2) By right-clicking on a link your browser will display a pop-up
related to that link. From this link pop-up menu choose "Save Target
As..." or "Save Link Target As..." (or similar). This will cause the browser
to actually look at the link target, which is the image file, and let you
save it to your desktop computer.
In cases where you save the image to your desktop, but you still can't
view it, one of two things is going on:
a) You don't have software on your computer that understands how to view
that particular image format. This is a common problem -- the more
obscure or unique a format, the less likely the chances that you'll have
a software program capable of viewing it.
b) The image file extension was incorrectly set by the browser when you
saved it to your desktop. This happens often, and will prevent your
desktop computer from "recognizing" the format of the image which in
turn will prevent it from being able to open and view it even if you
have a program on your computer that should be able to open it. For
example, suppose the image that you save is supposed to be named
"Ball.tif" -- in some cases the browser might save this to your computer
as "Ball.tiff" which isn't correct; you'll have to rename "Ball.tiff"
back to "Ball.tif". Similarly, JPEG images are supposed to have the
".jpg" file extension but sometimes the browser will save them with the
".jpeg" or ".jpe" extension -- this causes a problem so you'll have to
rename them with the proper ".jpg file extension. This, however, implies
that your computer is set to SHOW FILE EXTENSIONS! Many Windows systems
hide file extensions by default, so here's what you must do to enable them:
To view file extensions you must FIRST disable the Windows option that
"hides" them. Following are the steps for Windows 98 and XP:
1) Using your mouse, open the folder containing your image files.
2) In Windows 98 choose "Folder Options" from the "View" menu (View > Folder Options).
In Windows XP "Folder Options" is under the Tools menu
(Tools > Folder Options)
3) Select the VIEW tab option from the dialog box that appears.
4) Remove the check box from the "Hide file extensions for known file types".
5) Click the "OK" button to close the Folder Options dialog box.
With the "Hide file extensions for known file types" option off, you'll
be able to see file extension from within the Windows Explorer. You can
then rename files so that they have the correct extension in cases where
the browser gave them an incorrect one when saving to your desktop.
Aaron
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Aaron E. Walsh http://www.gridinstitute.com/people/aew/
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