Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Getting Images from Google News

I posted last night about my "breakthrough" finding an obituary on Google News Search Archive.

However, trying to get a print of it posed a challenge. I could "Print Screen" using File>Print. I got a half-page print of only what was showing on the screen. If I wanted the whole article on my screen, I had to Zoom down until it fit, which resulted in really small print. I didn't see any other way to Print the article, or save the entire news page, on the Google News web page.

So I went to full-screen (using F11), then hit my "Print Screen" button. Then I opened my Image processing program (I chose Microsoft Digital Image program) and opened a New file, and Pasted the screen image into the program, then did a File>Save and saved it as a JPG. The result is shown below (for another search done today):



The heading of the article in the St. Petersburg Times is shown, and the "blue mask" is the part of the page shown over in the right-hand pane that shows where you are on the full page. The names I was searching for are highlighted in yellow on that full-page thumbnail - I really like that feature! I wish Ancestry.com would do that!

In my "breakthrough" last night, I was lucky that the obituary was not on a subscription site - it was free to access, probably because the specific newspaper archive is free to access (just as the St. Petersburg Times page above is free to access).

If the article you find is on a subscription or pay-per-view site, or the free New York Times site, then you can use the Print options for the specific web site rather than have to print the screen in the Google News window.

3 comments:

Moultrie Creek said...

Randy, there's a lovely free program called Jing that will do custom screen captures for special situations like your newspaper article. I have an article in my archives discussing screen capture options you might find interesting.

Abba-Dad said...

Randy, I tried to send you an e-mail about two great tools: ScreenHunter and FireShot. Did you get it?

stokstad said...

Dear Randy

My boss found your site and asked me to get in touch with you regarding two possibilities:

First of all, we'd like to know if you would consider letting us republish some of your articles of historical perspective in the new content area in the left navigation of our site:

http://www.NewspaperARCHIVE.com

Since we typically have over 40k visitors a day and we would link to your site that may mean enhanced visibility for your work

Secondly we have an affiliate program

Here's the information on that:

http://www.NewspaperARCHIVE.com/Affiliates.aspx

Also if you'll send me an e-mail I'd like to get you a free pass to check out our site..

Thanks much,

Paul Stokstad
Senior Web Content Developer
Heritage Microfilm
NewspaperARCHIVE.com
4049 21st Avenue SW,
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52404
Phone: 319.390.9442 ex. 33
Fax: 319.396.4329