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Add an Image

Bloom encourages you to include pictures in your books by including a flower placeholder in many of the page templates.

When editing a page in a book, if you see the flower placeholder, this is where you can insert an image.

note

The placeholder image is never printed in the published form of a book. If you do not replace the placeholder flower with another image, the published book will have a blank space there.

Paste from Clipboard​

If you are familiar with using Windows Explorer, this is the easiest method.

First, copy the image onto the Windows clipboard:

  1. Open Windows Explorer and navigate to the folder where your images are located.
  2. Select an image from the folder.
  3. Click the Copy command icon (alternatively, type the keyboard shortcut CTRL C).

(Alternatively, you could copy the image from any other program, such as a photo editor.)

After copying the image, paste it into Bloom:

  1. Select the flower placeholder where you wish to paste your image.
  2. Click on the Paste Image button.

Using the Image Toolbox​

Suppose you are unfamiliar with using Windows Explorer. In that case, you can use Bloom's built-in file explorer to add images, or you can add pictures from an installed Image Gallery such as Art of Reading.

To access the Image Toolbox:

  1. Hover your mouse over the flower placeholder.

  2. Click the Change Image button that appears.

note

You can open the Image Toolbox by clicking the Change Image button even if you have already replaced the placeholder with an image.

The Image Toolbox gives you two methods for inserting images:

  1. Image Galleries are searchable collections of images in a special format that Bloom understands. You can install the free Art of Reading collection from SIL International, or you may have another image collection available to you.
  2. A file in your computer’s file system.

Add an Image From an Image Gallery​

In this section, we will show how to add an image from the free Art of Reading image gallery from SIL International. (If you do not have the Art of Reading installed, you can find instructions on how to install it in Install Art of Reading.)

  1. In the Image Toolbox, click on the Image Galleries tab.

  2. Type a keyword into the search box.

    note

    The Art of Reading images are searchable in English, Arabic, Bislama, Chinese, French, Hindi, Indonesian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, and Thai.

    Search terms can be in any of the languages listed above.

  1. To change the language you are using to search, click the drop-down arrow next to the name of the search language. For instance, if your search term is “cat”, the search term language should be “English”.
  2. Click the search icon 🔎 (or press the Enter key). Bloom will show you all the images that have been tagged with that keyword.
  3. Select an image from the results returned.
  4. Click OK to insert the image into your book.

Add an Image From a File​

You can use the Image Toolbox to browse to any location on your computer where an image is stored and insert it. Here are the steps to do this:

  1. Click File in the Image Toolbox. Bloom will open a standard file browsing window.

  2. Go to the folder where the picture is stored (for example: the Pictures folder).

  3. Click on an image to select it.

  4. Click Open. Bloom will show the image in the Image Toolbox.

  5. Click OK to add the image to your book.

note

If you need to crop an image, see Crop an Image.