Following an recent enquiry by a user of Writer about adding a caption to a photograph inside your blog I am now going to demonstrate the methods that a user can use. There are actually two ways of doing this, one is immediately available in the new version of Writer, and the other method involves adding a plug in.

Method 1    

1. Once you have written your post, place your cursor at the position where you would like your picture to be placed and then select PICTURE from the INSERT list.

2. Choose your picture from your picture files. The picture will then be inserted at the point where your cursor is.

3. Decide where you want your picture to be in relation to your text by choosing from the LAYOUT- TEXT WRAPPING drop down list, either to the left, centre, right or inline. (Default.)

4.  Click on the ADVANCED tab.

5. In the ACTIONS list you will see a choice of WATERMARK, so click on that choice.

6. You can now choose the text that you wish to add in the top WATERMARK TEXT area.  You can also choose which font you want your text to be from the FONT FAMILY list by clicking on the small black arrow at the right hand side of ARIEL (default) and you can select the size of your text and also its position inside the photograph.  The choices are top left, top right, centre, bottom left and bottom right.  Experiment with this until you are happy with the result.

 I have chosen Kristen ITC for my font and placed it in the bottom right of my picture. This watermarking feature is available inside the new Essentials version of WRITER.  Now we come to the other method that I use to add a caption to my pictures and this entails downloading a PLUG IN by clicking on ADD A PLUG-IN from the INSERT list on the right hand side of the compose window.

Method 2.

1.  Click on ADD A PLUG IN from the INSERT list.  The PLUG IN that  you require is the POLAROID PICTURE plug in, so download the plug in to WRITER.  You will be presented with warnings, but I have had no problems using this plug in.

2.  Now when inserting a picture into your text, click on POLAROID PICTURE which will now be available in the list under INSERT.

3  Choose your picture from your picture files. The picture will then be inserted where your cursor was placed inside your text.

If you click on the picture you will then see a set of new choices in the right hand side of the compose window for your POLOROID picture.

These choices should be familiar. They are as follows,

SIZE  where you can change the size of your picture,

CAPTION Here you can choose your caption, tick whether or not to enable a caption, and also choose which font to use for your caption.

TILT. This allows you to choose whether or not to tilt the picture to the left or the right and the degree of tilt to apply,

TEXT FLOW. This allows you to choose whether or not to allow your text to wrap around the picture, either to the left hand side or the right hand side of it, or to place the picture on the left with no text wrap around.

So let’s go ahead and add a caption to our picture.

4.  Firstly tick the box at the left hand side of the SHOW CAPTION choice.

5.  In the CAPTION box type in the CAPTION text for your picture. The picture area will then lengthen to make room for your CAPTION  and the Text will appear underneath your chosen picture.

6.  Now click on the FONT box and a FONT choice pop up box will appear. 

Choose a font for your caption.  You can also choose from this pop  up box which colour to have the text of your CAPTION and also whether or not to enable EFFECTS such as strike out or underline.

My advice here as always is to experiment until you are happy with the final result.  I am going to choose the Tempus Sans ITC font in bold and black so that it stands out inside my POLAROID PICTURE.

And that is how to add a CAPTION to your pictures from inside WRITER. 

TG