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Wednesday 27 April 2011

Creating a Header using Windows Live Photo Gallery

If your blogs theme allows you to use your own header, its nice to be able to use one of your favourite Vistas or scenes so that you can really make your blog really personal to you. Whether you use Wordpress or Blogger, here’s how to make a fantastic header using the panoramic feature available in Windows Live Photo Gallery. You don’t need an expensive camera either, so here’s the step by step way to make that favourite scene or spot feature as a header on your blog.

1. Download Windows Live Photo Gallery from  http://explore.live.com/windows-live-photo-gallery?os=other and install on your computer.

2. Now you need to go and take your pictures of your favourite vista or view. You will need to take your shots of the scene from either left or right, and slowly swing your camera horizontally along the entire scene from one side to the other taking your individual shots. Try to keep the camera on the same plane as you pan either left or right. Each shot should overlap each other so that Photo Gallery can ‘stitch’ them all together. See the separate shots below and how they overlap one another as I took them.

DSC02551DSC02552DSC02553

3. Next we need to make our Panorama inside Photo Gallery, so select all three (or however many shots you took of your chosen vista) and then click on the Create tab from the ribbon in Photo Gallery.

Making a panoramic photo

4. From the Create ribbon, choose the Panorama icon and Photo Gallery will then begin to ‘stitch’ the individual photo together into a panoramic shot.  Once completed it will ask you to give the panorama a name and then you can click on Save.

5. It’s highly likely that your newly created panoramic shot will need cropping, so click on the Crop icon in the ribbon and then crop out all of the black excess from the panoramic shot. When you are certain that all of the black has been cropped out, click on Crop once more to tidy up your shot.

Cropping out the excess black

6. Now that our panoramic shot is complete, we can use it on Wordpress or Blogger as our header. I’ll deal with Wordpress first. Go to your Wordpress Dashboard and click on Appearance and then Header from the left hand Menu list.

Choosing your header

7. Next you will need to upload your panoramic photo so click on Choose File and then navigate to your panoramic shot and select it, then click on Upload. As it will probably be a large file it may take some time to upload.

8. Once uploaded, you may have to do some more cropping of the panoramic shot depending on the width of the header that your theme uses, then once you are happy with your final crop, click on Crop and Publish.

Cropping your header on Wordpress

9. Now go to your blog by clicking on Visit your Site and admire  your new personal header!

New header in place!

10. Now let’s use our panoramic shot as a header on Blogger. Go to your Blogger Dashboard and select Design, then click on Edit in your current Header.

choosing header in Blogger

11. Next, from the window that opened click on From your computer and then Choose File.  If you want your blog Title to still be shown, then also select Behind Title and Description from the list. It’s also a good idea to tick Shrink to Fit so that the header fits into your chosen theme.

New header on Blogger

12. Once your new header has uploaded click on Save. Now you can go and view your newly created header on your blog!

TG

Tuesday 5 April 2011

Blogger- A blog with a view

Last year, the Blogger bods asked their users what features and updates they would like to see on Blogger. Now they are busy updating the interface and features, and if you currently use Blogger as your blogging platform, you can try out one of the new features for yourself!  It allows you and your readers to access and view  the posts in your blog in dynamic ways. You can read  more about it here at Blogger Buzz All you have to do to access the new dynamic views of your blog or someone else’s is to add to the URL address of the blog /view It’s that simple!  Not only that, but if you use Chrome as your browser, you can also add an extension to Chrome which will automatically allow you to see all of your friends blogs in the new dynamic views!