Tuesday, March 11, 2014

I DOWNLOADED THIS IMAGE FROM FACEBOOK, YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT I DID NEXT*

In today's Technology Lesson, I'll show you how to download an image from Facebook and send it in an e-mail as an attachment. I'll also show you how to post the image to Tumblr, since that's what I did with the image. This lesson is highly specific, but it is also by request.

You see, my particularly adorable niece was spotted in her local meat market Saturday, hauling a five-pound bag of ground beef. The meat market posted her brilliant visage to its Facebook page, precipitating the need for this lesson. It seems unfair to violate her privacy on this blog, especially since there was a rather amusing image on my Facebook feed a few days later.

As for this the title of this blog, I am openly mocking blogs that run their entire economic scheme on clickbait. Upworthy is the biggest offender in my mind, as it often ends its posts with "YOU WON'T BELIEVE" or "YOU'LL FEEL [SOMETHING POSITIVE." (Upworthy also removes the dateline from its posts, which I think is unethical and disingenuous; this method helps make old stories go viral again and again.) This is probably a bad move for someone looking for gainful employment, but now I've squeezed a third lesson into one post!

Let's get started! Turn on your computer. Log in, if necessary. Connect to the Internet, if necessary. Open your browser. (A browser is a program or application you use to surf the web. Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Chrome are examples of browsers.)

Go to www.facebook.com. Log in to your account if necessary.

If you are looking for a specific photograph, search for it. For example, I typed the name of the meat market of the search bar when I was acquiring the photograph of my niece. When I sent my niece an old photo of myself with dyed hair in 2012, I went to my page and clicked on PHOTOS.


In the example I'm providing, I happened upon the image in my newsfeed.



Click the image so it opens in its own "window." Right click the image (using the right button on your mouse, or by holding CONTROL and clicking the image). Click "SAVE IMAGE AS..."


A dialogue box will appear. Before you save, you will need to choose where the image is saved. Your computer may send you to a Downloads folder. You may have previously set where downloads go. On my PC all files go to a TEMP folder unless I direct it otherwise. Find a place where you can find this file again. Then rename the file. I renamed this image "yogabear.jpg." Make sure to include the extension; without ".jpg" you can not send the image.

The first thing I did with this image was upload it to a Tumblr I keep for my niece. Yes, I have a Tumblr for a toddler.


I typed www.tumblr.com into the address bar of my browser, and hit ENTER. I was already logged in, so I went to the RIGHT COLUMN of the screen and picked the blog I wanted to upload the image to. I have an embarrassing number of accounts.

 
Look, there's a feed of my posts! I clicked PHOTO, as I want to upload an image. A white box dropped down, and I clicked "CHOOSE UP TO TEN PHOTOS" which was in the center of the box.

 
A box popped up. I went to DOWNLOADS since that's where I saved my image. I selected the image and clicked OPEN.


The image appeared in a Tumblr draft. I provided a rather clever caption, which you can read above. I clicked POST.


Satisfied with my blogging, I went to Gmail. I typed www.gmail.com in the address bar.


I was already signed in. I clicked COMPOSE, which you can see at the top left of the screen. A draft appeared at the bottom right of the screen. I typed a recipient (in this example, I sent the email to myself), and a subject line. Then I clicked on the paperclip at the bottom of the box. If you hover, it will say ATTACH FILES.


A box popped up. As before, it was already in Downloads. Go to the folder where you saved your image if you are not already there. Click on the file and click OPEN.

I then typed a message in the body of the message. If you send an attachment without a message, most email clients will ask if you're sure you want to send an empty message. Don't be rude. Send a message with your attachment!



Again, I think I am pretty clever.

You can see the attachment in the message at the bottom. This is what it looks like in Gmail. It may not look like this in every email client.

When you are satisfied, click SEND.

In review: right-click the image, choose "save image as...", save image, go to your email, open a new message, attach the file, select a recipient, type a subject, type a message, click send.

Now, wasn't that easy?