User support

Frequently asked questions

How can I use graphics in my services?

Visual Liturgy isn't primarily built to handle complex desktop publishing but you can still include graphics in your services, if you wish.

You may prefer to use a word processing or DTP software package to incorporate graphics. However, if you'd like to use Visual Liturgy, then follow these instructions:

1. Open the Service template that you wish to use.
2. Right click on the item that you wish to add an image to and choose View text details...
3. From the dialogue box that pops up, click on the Image icon (see illustration).
   
4. Locate the image that you wish to use and then click Open.
5. You should now find that your display has updated to insert the image next to the text.
6. You can resize the image and use drag and drop to move the image.
7. Click OK to close and return to your service.

It should be noted that the performance of images in Visual Liturgy will depend on the speed of your computer. Older machines may take a long time to insert the image and with large images, the machine may hang or appear to hang. We do not recommend storing images in Visual Liturgy except for occasional small files, but you may be able to do more depending on the size and speed of your computer.

A note on file formats

If you export an RTF file or use copy and paste to copy a service to the Windows clipboard, VL can only convert .BMP files into RTF. If images using formats such as JPG, GIF, PNG or others are used in Visual Liturgy, they will not be exported to RTF or the clipboard. However, if you export to HTML they will be included.

A workaround is to go into Edit - Preferences - Services and check the option Allow HTML in copied text. This means any application that understands HTML images will be able to handle the image. An even better workaround is to
convert images to BMP before using them in Visual Liturgy.

Further note: When you export HTML with an included image, the image is copied to an images directory at the same location where you export the HTML. For example, if you export an HTML file to My Documents, Visual Liturgy will copy any included images to My Documents\images. It's important to note:

1. If you subsequently move the HTML file but not the images subdirectory, the link to the image will be broken.
2. If you happened to have an images directory already present, with image files of the same name as those in Visual Liturgy, they will be overwritten.