[Czilla9000]

Hey everybody,

I recently received an internship. One of my duties is prepare press clippings. One of the steps requires physically (using scissors) cuting out news stories from photocopied local newspapers and taping them onto cover sheets (which have the proper header). This is how my supervisors told me past interns have done it...

Now...an obvious question....is there a way to do this digitally? I know I can scan the photocopies into the computer in PDF format, but is there a way then to select the news columns, copy them, and then paste them into a Word document (which has the header)? I've assuming the PDF won't recognize the text or photos.

The computer I have at work runs XP and has standard office software.


Thank you!

 

[gorgak]

Ok, I do this at work all the time, except with topographic maps and figures and such.

Scan it, get it in a pdf form.

Open the document so that the part you need is as large as possible and fits in the window.

Then press [alt+Print Screen], or just [print screen] making sure the mouse cursor is out of the way of the text you need.

Then open MS Paint.

Once MS Paint is open, press [ctrl+V] or go to Edit-->Paste.

Once pasted into MS Paint, you can use the crop tool to cut out the part you need. Once you select the area to crop, press [ctrl+X] or go to Edit-->Cut.

Then go to File--->New, and past the part you just cropped onto a new MS Paint screen.

One thing to watch out for is to make sure that the print area, the white area around the area you want to make a .jpg out of in MS Paint, is sized the same as the part you want. Just find the lower right hand corner of it, and drag it so that it fits perfectly around the part you need.

Then its as simple as saving it as a .jpg

Insert into word document.

That's it. After you get the process down it only takes a few seconds. I guess scanning it would be the longest part.

The beauty is, my boss has no idea how to use this simple process and seems to be impressed with my ability of turning .pdf into .jpg to put into Word documents.

 

[Radioheadache]

I'm fairly certain that there is scanning software out there that will recognize printed text, but I can't think of any specific names off hand.

 

[craiglester]

omnipage?

 

[jonathanjong]

Can you take arbitrary screenshots in XP? In Mac OS X, you could scan the article (or find a digital copy), open the resultant file in a viewer, and take an arbitrarily-sized screenshot of the area you want. This is probably possible in XP, and bypasses the need for an image editor as such.

 

[vagarach]

Get IrfanView, it is FREE and can CROP. This is the key feature here, you want to crop an image. In preview at least you just hit CMD+K when you select an area, so a program like IrfanView will have a similar one-shortcut easy-as-pie crop feature. I have used it before to view obscure binary tree image formats, so this program really is fully featured!

You don't need PDF at all in this workflow. Scan image into program, crop the article, save the resulting image, and you are done. Import into word as needed.

I applaud your thinking smart, down with manual labour when a computer can do it!

 

[flashnolan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gorgak /img/forum/go_quote.gif Ok, I do this at work all the time, except with topographic maps and figures and such. Scan it, get it in a pdf form. Open the document so that the part you need is as large as possible and fits in the window. Then press [alt+Print Screen], or just [print screen] making sure the mouse cursor is out of the way of the text you need. Then open MS Paint. Once MS Paint is open, press [ctrl+V] or go to Edit-->Paste. Once pasted into MS Paint, you can use the crop tool to cut out the part you need. Once you select the area to crop, press [ctrl+X] or go to Edit-->Cut. Then go to File--->New, and past the part you just cropped onto a new MS Paint screen. One thing to watch out for is to make sure that the print area, the white area around the area you want to make a .jpg out of in MS Paint, is sized the same as the part you want. Just find the lower right hand corner of it, and drag it so that it fits perfectly around the part you need. Then its as simple as saving it as a .jpg Insert into word document. That's it. After you get the process down it only takes a few seconds. I guess scanning it would be the longest part. The beauty is, my boss has no idea how to use this simple process and seems to be impressed with my ability of turning .pdf into .jpg to put into Word documents.

Alt + Print Screen = Active Window Only
Shift + Print Screen = Entire Screen

 

[leftnose]

You can skip MS Paint, too. The newer versions of Word have basic image editing tooks like cropping. Do your screen shot, open your Word doc with the correct header and hit CTRL+V. Once you've got the image in place, click on it and the picture toolbar should pop up. It will include crop and resize tools.

 

[Sherwood]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jonathanjong /img/forum/go_quote.gif ... In Mac OS X, you could scan the article (or find a digital copy), open the resultant file in a viewer, and take an arbitrarily-sized screenshot of the area you want...

Just like the cult of mac to give mac-specific advice to someone using windows on a work computer.

 

[FrederikS|TPU]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sherwood /img/forum/go_quote.gif Just like the cult of mac to give mac-specific advice to someone using windows on a work computer.

This program does the same

TPUCapture - See, Capture, Upload

 

[gorgak]

Quote:

Originally Posted by leftnose /img/forum/go_quote.gif You can skip MS Paint, too. The newer versions of Word have basic image editing tooks like cropping. Do your screen shot, open your Word doc with the correct header and hit CTRL+V. Once you've got the image in place, click on it and the picture toolbar should pop up. It will include crop and resize tools.

Ooh, this'll save me tme! Thanks!

 

[digger945]

I use HP Clipsmart, it's free and very simple/fast to use.

 

[Hayduke]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gorgak /img/forum/go_quote.gif Ooh, this'll save me tme! Thanks!

Quote:

Originally Posted by leftnose /img/forum/go_quote.gif You can skip MS Paint, too. The newer versions of Word have basic image editing tooks like cropping. Do your screen shot, open your Word doc with the correct header and hit CTRL+V. Once you've got the image in place, click on it and the picture toolbar should pop up. It will include crop and resize tools.

Avoid this method as it will bloat your file size. MS Word will be embedding the images at bitmaps. You want to use jpgs. You need to use some sort if intermediary software to convert the bitmap version of the print screen into a jpeg. Irfanview, as suggested earlier, is a good one, but I would recommend you look into paint.net.

Paint.net is free and very very powerful. The main advantage of it is you can use layers. Do you have to use Word? If all they want is a printout with the proper header (I suspect this is the case since your predecessors were using paper and scissors), you can create a layer in paint.net that has the header, then keep adding each "clipping" into it's own layer. The advantage to this method will be that you can manipulate each article, such as moving or scaling, separately.

If you need the text to be in Word, then use the newspaper's website. Find the article you want, and use the mouse to select the text, then copy and paste it into Word. If you need the images as well, right click the picture and there will be an option to save the image.

Seriously though, use paint.net. MS Paint is great if you just want to quickly turn a screenshot into a jpeg, but if you're combining lots of pieces, step up to something better. You're using Word because it's better then Notepad, right? Paint.net is to MS Paint what Word is to Notepad.

Paint.net isn't too hard to use. You will need to learn the concept of layers though. Think of it as a bunch of transparencies (remember those things from grade school?) that are stacked. You will want to paste the screenshot onto a new layer, then crop out only the part you need. Paste the part you want into yet another layer, then delete the layer you don't need. Layers are a concept you will need to grasp, but once you "get it", you will find it is far more powerful form of graphics editing.

Feel free to ask questions here, I'll do my best to answer them.