How to Store Images in Scripture Notes

Let me start with a warning: Scripture Notes does not currently support large images being stored in collection notes as I’m about to demonstrate. If it’s a small file size, it works OK. However, it is not recommended to paste in an image. You can store the image online in Dropbox or somewhere and link to it just fine. In the future, we will have image storage and many other features.

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You’ve probably seen hundreds or thousands of images related to the scriptures over your lifetime, and thought it would be cool to always have access to those when you are reading certain verses in the scriptures.

Well, this past week I stumbled upon a cool resource full of charts and graphics related to the Book of Mormon. There was one graphic in particular that I wanted to save for reference, which was something an institute teacher has shared with a class I attended in college. The picture was a breakdown of the Egyptian Eye of Horus and how the parts had mathematical values which comprised their monetary system. The fascinating thing about it, is it’s relationship to the Nephite currency system.

First, here’s a link to the resource:

https://byustudies.byu.edu/further-study-sub-ca/the-book-of-mormon/

There’s 177 charts (Admittedly, some aren’t charts. They are quotes set in an image which doesn’t make them charts…). The page is broken down into many sections. Section 8 is on money in the Book of Mormon.

I’m going to share 3 of the charts shown there and then I’ll show you how to store images in Scripture Notes.

The first chart is Egyptian Hieroglyphs for Grain Measurement.

You can see each part of the Eye of Horus denotes a measurement which is then doubled and all together, adds to 63/64ths.

In the Book of Mormon, the monetary system is similar. Each measure of coinage has a certain equivalent to measures of grain. Without fiat money, I guess inflation never messed with the coins to grain ratio. :)

Now here’s something unexpected. If you compare the Nephite currency, to American currency, counting to 20 shows that on average, the Nephite currency uses less coins to denote a given amount. This makes sense because instead of a base 10 system, they are really working from more of a base 2 system with more denominations of currency to work with that are each a doubling of the previous value. The American currency requires more pennies to make up the individual amounts. Not crucial for your salvation :), but fun to see.

How to Save an Image to Your Notes

Well, lets say you want to store an image in your notes. What are the ways you can do that?

If you find an image online, it is stored on a server somewhere. Right-click the image and you’ll have some options. Each browser is a little different in the language used on these options. This is what Firefox shows:

1) Save a link to the image.

This option just lets you keep the link to the image in your notes. You would click on “Copy image location” and it would save the exact url to the image into your computer clipboard memory. For example, the first image above with the hieroglyphs is located at: https://byustudies.byu.edu/sites/default/files/images/Charts/BOM/113.jpg

You could copy/paste that url into your verse note for Alma 11:4 where it starts discussing the reckoning of the Nephite currency.

Pros: This is a fast way to save the link to the image to a verse and save space in your notes.

Cons: If this source changes, you will also lose the image.

2) Save Image As

Using this option will let you save the image to your local computer. Maybe you want to store images on your hard drive for save keeping. In that case, you could put it somewhere and then in your Alma 11:4 notes put:

See graphic in /Documents/BOM Charts/Egyptian Hieroglyphs and Nephite Currency.png”

Pros: You never lose the image unless your hard drive crashes. (But you back up your drive, right???)

Cons: You have to create a section of your computer to store all the images you want to save.

3) Store in a Collection Note

For this method, you can click “Copy image” and store the image itself into memory, or use a snipping tool (better) to clip a portion of it, or the entire picture. The reason it’s better is because images online are often not optimized for size so storing a picture could be very large and will slow down the server trying to save or load your image. Using a snipping tool will only capture the range you specify and the resolution you see so it will store and retrieve better.

Then go to Alma 11:4 and click the create a Collection Note button on the top right by the verse. In the master note, paste the image by right-clicking and selecting paste, or press ctrl/cmd-V. Then title your image and tag it if you want and save it.

Pros: You will always have the picture in your records tied directly to the verse(s) you want to retrieve it from.

Cons: Slower load time to retrieve the image.

 

Reducing Image Sizes

For those of you wanting to reduce an image size, there are a couple of great free tools I use online.

This one is a favorite. It’s extremely fast and gives you several options on resizing images to fixed sizes like the width must only be 1200 pixels or scale to a certain percentage. It also reduces the file size by expertly compressing the images so a same physical size file will be smaller.

https://bulkresizephotos.com/en

This site is my other favorite. If you have a small number of images you need compressed to use online, it doesn’t resize the physical dimensions, but does a great job reducing the file size through compression.

https://tinypng.com/

 

Closing

I have held off sharing this feature for a while because in the future (hopefully not too far), there will be a new image pane type that will have some awesome features. Storing images in the collection note area isn’t bad, but it does take up space in the main database meant for text. Also, when the image pane comes out there will be cooler features available to use with your images. However, for now, feel free to save images this way and you can always transition images to the new pane type later.

Now feel free to check out the other interesting charts at the link above or do a search on Pinterest for something interesting to save. You could even save the infographic from a couple weeks ago on “How to study the scriptures” and make that a permanent part of your record.