Depending on the source, the document containing the psalm may be in various forms. Some are pdf's, doc's or jpg's. Some sources may even have sound files (wav's, mp3's) to accompany the psalm documents.
Taking a Screen Capture from a Picture
My website source for the responsorial psalms scans the Sunday missalette and generates a pdf file out of the scanned missalette. In the past, I would download the entire pdf document file so I would have a copy. But I realized I didn't need the entire missalette and was only really interested in the Responsorial Psalm.
So to make it simpler, I just captured a screen shot of the Responsorial Psalm part.
- Use the slide button on the right scroll bar to position the psalm part in the center of the screen.
- Click on Acrobat Reader's (+) or (-) magnifying glass icon to zoom-in or zoom-out on the document. This will resize the psalm section to make it larger and more readable on your computer screen.
- Press on the Alt-PrintScreen key combination on your keyboard. This will make a screen capture of the entire screen's contents and will be placed in the copy buffer.
Saving the Snapshot into a File
- With the snapshot still in the copy buffer, open the MS-Paint program from Microsoft Office.
- Once opened, press on the Ctrl-V key combination of the keyboard. This will copy the contents (screen snapshot) of the copy buffer into the MS-Paint program.
- Click on the Select Tool of MS-Paint to define the area of the Responsorial Psalm. You may have to click on the slide button of the right scroll bar with this conjuction.
- Once the area of the Responsorial Psalm has been selected, click on the Cropping Tool. This will remove everything else on the document and just the selected area will remain.
- Click on Save-as to save the picture into a file. You could save either to a png, jpg or other image file formats.
Another option which I prefer is to save the entire screen image in MS-Paint into a jpg file. I then use Microsoft Office Picture Manager to rotate, crop and resize the edited portion of the image file. MS Office Picture Manager is easier to use for editing jpg files.
Editing the file and Printing the Psalm
With the psalm now in a image file, you can print it out as is or put some annotations. The text itself, however, cannot be edited because the file is an image. I like putting the image files in a powerpoint slide so I can resize the image files any way I want. You can put around four psalms in one powerpoint slide.
- Open the MS-Powerpoint program from Microsoft Office.
- Click on Insert-Picture to import the image file you just saved in the above procedure.
- Resize, position and arrange the image objects on the powerpoint slide.
- Annotate on the psalms as needed. I like putting the date on top of the psalms so I know which I will bring in my service.
- Because the image file has a dark background, I make the text stand out by increasing contrast. Click on the image objects. Press Format. For me, the +30% contrast removes the dark background adequately without the text looking washed out.
- Print the powerpoint slide.
The photo below how the psalm looks like in an actual missalette (left) and in its printed output (right).
The actual missalette is a borrowed copy from the parish, while the printout was copied (snapshot) from an internet source.
Differences between an Actual Missalette and the Printed Psalm
- Notice the dark background of the actual missalette no longer shows up in the edited powerpoint object. The +30% contrast removed that.
- By resizing the powerpoint object, the text is now bigger than in the actual missalette. This makes the psalm more readable in the printout.
- With annotation on the powerpoint slide, the date is printed on top of the psalm.
