FYS 103 - Geology in the Field

Instructions for preparing a Word document with illustrations

  1. Download Image(s). Find the photos you want on the Field web pages (or use your own photos). For downloading, place the cursor on the image and “right-click” or “control-click”. Choose “Download image to disk” or “Save image as” or similar, depending on your computer.
  2. Type your field report. Please save and name your report “Your_Name_2.doc”, where “Your_Name” is your name, “2” is the number of the field report, and “.doc” (or .docx) tells Moodle and my computer that this is a Word file.
  3. Insert image(s). Place the cursor where you want the image. Choose “Picture/From File” on the “Insert” pulldown menu and navigate to the folder that contains your downloaded image. Select the desired image.
  4. Adjust text flow. “Right-click” or “control-click” on the image and choose “Format Picture”. Click on the “Layout” tab and press the “Advanced” button. Select the “Text Wrapping” tab and choose “Square” or “Top and Bottom”. Choose appropriate (0.1”) “Distance from Text”. Important: Select the “Picture Position” tab and uncheck the “Move with text” option. This will help prevent unwanted picture and text movement.
  5. Size the image. If the image is not the size you want, click on it and drag the handle in the lower right corner to resize the image without distortion.
  6. Add a caption. Choose “Caption” or Text Box” from the “Insert” pulldown menu. If you choose “Caption”, Word will make a textbox the size of your image. If you choose “Text Box”, you will need to “drag open” a Text Box rectangle. Either way, you will want to “right-click” or “control-click” on the text box and adjust the text flow as described above for the image.
  7. Position the image and text box. Select both the image and caption text box (or move them separately). Drag them together to the desired location on the page.
  8. Labels. Lables and arrows are best added by using a photo editor before inserting the image in Word. If you add labels, etc., using the Word picture editor, the file size will be quite large.
  9. Image editing. Adobe Photoshop is available on the Mac computers in the Geology Computer Lab, SR-126. Text and arrows are easily added in layers. “Flatten” the layers to make a jpeg file for Word. Keep a Photoshop (“psd”) version in case you want to make changes later. You can’t easily edit a flattened image.
  10. Diagrams/Drawings. These are best made with Adobe Illustrator, which is also available on the computers in SR-126. Save these files in “eps” format if you want to insert them in Word.
  11. Dropbox transfer. Login to Moodle (using your Groupwise password and username. Choose “FYS 103. Geology in the Field.” Choose "Assignments" under "Activities" and follow the instructions to submit your field report.