Thanks for the information. I may try to do some herb banners tomorrow. I'll also look through my pictures and make some for shade gardens week. My camera is a Sony Cyber-shot with 12.1 mega pixels. I confess to not understanding the possible settings and use the easy setting. My grand daughter got a nice camera for Christmas and I may give it a try.

Paul, your banners are always really wonderful and beautiful.

Thanks Rita.......it's fun to try to make things better.....

I have the last herb slot filled, thanks, and the shade garden banners are also filled. I will update my list of what I still need for 2014 plant weeks.

OK, I still need 3 banners for Sept. Agastache and Salvias week but I am not worried about that as we have all summer to get photos!
Every other plant week is covered, everyone has been so generous with their submissions, I have so many to choose from now! Thanks!!

I put in a few agastache banners but I guess they weren't good enough?

They are hard to photograph in focus so that was most likely the problem Toni, sorry.

@dave & @Calif_Sue could you guys possibly help me out? I have a Sony Cybershot DSC-W150 8.1 megapixels. These are the image size settings I have on it:
8M for prints up to A3 (11x17")
5M for prints up to A4 (8x10")
3M for prints up to 10x15 cm or 13x18cm
VGA which is "shoot at small size for email attachments
3:2 (7M) 3:2 aspect ratio
16:9 aspect ratio for viewing on HDTV's & printing up to 8x10

I have been shooting on the VGA setting. Now I know why nothing comes out sharp enough when I try to make a banner but can you help me figure out which setting I need to put it on? Thanks!

Definitely use the 8M. When in doubt, choose the very highest setting.

Thank you very much!!!

Now we'll see if I can't make something sharp & clear.

I shoot in the next to highest setting (next one is Raw) and then do my cropping, editing and resizing and save those separately from my originals so I have double of everything and that's a lot of pictures!

Thank you Sue.

Thanks to Sue I have found a new photo editing program. It has everything I used to use in Photoshop ( which costs hundreds of dollars), and its free.
I also have another free photo editing program
Fast Stone Image Viewer
http://www.fileparade.com/list...


but not as great as Sues PIXLR.
https://pixlr.com/editor/

That was the program that BookerC1/Angie found for us in the original first post of this thread and she has great instructions too!
One feature I use a lot is the flip function, I even have been flipping several banners in the queue and then having members resubmit. So often it's the right side that contains the best feature and focus and with the ATP banner pushing the left side over a bit, that right side gets cut off so it makes a better banner when flipped.

I have been playing with the crop function.It is possible to crop to the 1200 to 1400 horizontal and 150 versicle altho if I breath I cant get 150 exactly so I go to Windows and do it from there.
It helps to go back to the first post on this thread.I see its not necessary to have 150 exactly. Thats a lot of pressure off my shoulders.
PLUS the crop area can be moved around the image just as in Windows.
I have bookmarked the program as I couldnt find a download option.

I have tried several times to submit a banner that was not 150 pixels height exactly, and it rejects them.

You can get the 150 from Pixlr and shouldn't have to go to another program to adjust it! In step 5 in Angie's post she wrote:
5. If your height is not exactly 150, go back to Resize. Enter 150 in the height. It doesn't matter if the width isn't exactly 1500 (it can be any width, as long as it is wider than 1200), but the height MUST be exactly 150.

Not a downloadable program so yes, you need to bookmark it. I use the Pixlr Express by the way. http://pixlr.com/express/

I'll just throw out a tip for the gimp. It's a free graphics program available for Windows, Mac and Linux and it works great but is powerful and has a steep learning curve. It's a lot like photoshop and can do many of the things photoshop does. It's my graphics program that I go to when I need to do anything. http://www.gimp.org/