Tuesday, February 13th, 2007
When you’re working on a Publisher document, chances are you may not have all the final images in hand. If you’re waiting on graphics, you can add a placeholder for each image to your Publisher file so you can allocate the space for the images and so everything else can be finalized in the meantime.
To do this, click Picture Frame and choose Empty Picture Frame then drag a frame into your document. Size it to the size required. Later, when the image comes in, you can add it to your placeholder by right clicking the placeholder and choose Change Picture, From File and locate the file to use.
Helen Bradley
Labels: image, Microsoft Publisher, picture frame, placeholder
Categories:Uncategorized
posted by Helen Bradley @ 6:58 pmNo Comments links to this post
Monday, February 12th, 2007
Shiny white teeth look great but, let’s face it, not all of us have the benefit of expensive orthodontics. Luckily, armed with some graphics software you can give yourself or your best friend a professional whitening job in seconds.
To whiten teeth, in GIMP, click your favourite selection tool and make a selection around the teeth. Take care to select all the tooth area but avoid including any of the gum line or lips. You may find the “Select contiguous regions tool” is the best to use. Set a feather by choosing Select, Feather and set a feather value of 1 or 2 if the image is large.
Choose Tools, Color Tools, Hue-Saturation and click the option button for the Yellows so you’ll adjust only the yellow coloring in the selected area. Reduce the intensity of the yellow by dragging the Saturation slider a little to the left. Check the Green and Red channels to see if altering their saturation has an effect and repeat as needed. Click on the Master button and drag the Lightness slider to the right to lighten the entire selection.
Helen Bradley
Labels: gimp, Hue/Saturation, selection tool, whiten teeth
Categories:Uncategorized
posted by Helen Bradley @ 6:55 pmNo Comments links to this post
Sunday, February 11th, 2007
I love sticky notes but not stuck all over my computer monitor. My computer desktop, that’s another thing – Sticky notes there look so cute and they’re so useful because they’re right there where I can see them.
Outlook has a great sticky note feature. Simply type a quick reminder using an Outlook Note and you can ‘stick’ it on your desktop. Click the Notes icon in Outlook or choose File, New, Note and type the text for your note. Make the first line explanatory of the note’s contents as this becomes its name so it’s the first thing you see. When you’re done, click the Note’s Close button to finish.
Now drag and drop the Note onto your desktop – it will stay there and remain accessible even when Outlook isn’t open. To view the Note’s contents, simply double click it.
Helen Bradley
Labels: desktop, Outlook, Sticky note, windows
Categories:Uncategorized
posted by Helen Bradley @ 6:47 pmNo Comments links to this post
Sunday, February 11th, 2007
I wish! You wish! We wish.. but no go..
We’d all love to see one of these but, unfortunately Microsoft hasn’t deigned to give us one. There are, however some options you can use. If you can ask the person who created the PUB file to open and save it in a different format you can then view that – for example it can be saved as a Tiff format file.
If you have a PUB file but no access to Publisher, try one of the free online PDF file conversion tools that can handle Publisher files. I like PDFOnline, it handles PUB files up to 2Mb in size and all you need to do is to browse to upload the file to their server, type a name for the PDF file they’ll send you in return and type your email address. In minutes you’ll have a PDF version that you can read using Adobe’s free Acrobat Reader software.
If you’re wanting to share your Publisher files with others who don’t own publisher then try a program like the free PDF converter PrimoPDF which installs as a printer driver allowing you to create your own PDFs as easily as printing from Publisher.
Perhaps best of all is your option to download and install the trial version of Microsoft Publisher 2007. It works for a limited time to allow you to open, read and edit Publisher documents. After the trial period is over, you can only open, view and print existing Publisher documents – pretty much what a viewer program would do in my book!
Helen Bradley
Labels: conversion, Microsoft Publisher, PDF, PUB, viewer
Categories:Uncategorized
posted by Helen Bradley @ 2:07 amNo Comments links to this post
Saturday, February 10th, 2007
In the past few month’s I’ve written some cool articles for InformIT on Photoshop, here are a few of them:
Misunderstood Photoshop: Blend If
Here I explore Blend If, a smart Photoshop blending tool that can be used to knock out an object from its background or to blend two images. The article also includes a video tutorial so you can easily follow along.
Misunderstood Photoshop: The History Brush
Photoshop’s History Brush is great for fixing those little “oops” moments when you’ve messed up an image, but it also lets you use previous states of the image to create new effects. Helen Bradley shows why the History Brush should be a valued member of your Photoshop toolkit in this article and video tutorial.
Create Art: Make Your Own Photo Background
If the background of your picture is getting more attention than the subjects in the foreground, try Helen Bradley’s Photoshop trick for making the background more attractive and a lot less distracting.
Enjoy!
Helen Bradley
Labels: InformIT, Photoshop articles
Categories:Uncategorized
posted by Helen Bradley @ 9:36 pmNo Comments links to this post
Friday, February 9th, 2007
Sometimes it’s handy to show the path of an Excel workbook on the screen. Here’s a workaround using a toolbar to do this.
- Right click on the menu bar and choose Customize and then the Commands tab.
- From the Categories list choose Web and, from the Commands list drag the Address option onto a toolbar or into the menu bar.
- Click Close and voila! the file’s full path will appear in the box.
Helen Bradley
Labels: address bar, customize, Excel tip, file path, toolbar
Categories:Uncategorized
posted by Helen Bradley @ 9:42 pmNo Comments links to this post
Thursday, February 8th, 2007
Try this scenario: you’re working in Outlook and you want to add a note to your inbox – perhaps instead of emailing your work address someone emails your home email address and you want to keep your work emails up to date so you want to note the conversation in your inbox. Here’s how to do it, using a Post:
- Click the folder to post into so you have it open.
- Choose File, New, Post in this folder and type your note – in my scenario it would be details from the email but it could, conceivably, be anything.
- Click the Post button on the toolbar and the note will be saved into the folder – you’ll know it isn’t an email because it has a special icon but it behaves like one so you can open and view it.
I love Posts. They’re are a handy way of recording information in an email folder when it’s there that you’d expect to find it.
Helen Bradley
Labels: emails, folders, notes, Outlook, Post in this folder
Categories:Uncategorized
posted by Helen Bradley @ 9:38 pmNo Comments links to this post
Thursday, February 8th, 2007
It’s always been confusing to me and my readers why you have an unlimited number of colors to choose from in Word but only a handful of really ugly colors to use in Excel. It doesn’t make sense – do Word users have better design skills than Excel uses – do they think that those of us who create worksheets somehow won’t be blindsided by how ugly the color combinations we’re being served up are?
Well, if you’ve been hankering after a rich color palette for your worksheets, you need do so no more. Excel 2007 gives you access to a full range of 16 million colors from the colors dialog so that you can use these colors, for example, for formatting text, charts or drawn objects. You can also select a Theme which gives you instant access to colors that are selected from the same monochromatic group and guaranteed to look great together. The new and very colorful options in Excel 2007 are guaranteed to wow you!
Helen Bradley
Labels: 16 million, color, Excel 2007, Excel tip, theme
Categories:Uncategorized
posted by Helen Bradley @ 5:38 pmNo Comments links to this post
Wednesday, February 7th, 2007
It’s a common enough scenario – you want to know how old you are in months or days or the number of days left in the year. There appears to be no Excel function for calculating the difference between two dates. Not so! there is a function and it’s called Datedif.
The Excel Datedif function isn’t well known because it is largely undocumented in the Excel help files. Its purpose is to calculate the difference between two dates and it can do this by measure the distance using one of these attributes: “m” for months, “d” for days, “y” for years.
So this formula calculates the difference in months between FirstDate and SecondDate:
=Datedif(FirstDate,SecondDate,”m”)
Replace “m” with “y” to get the result in years etc..
Always ensure that the first date occurs earlier than the second or you’ll get an error.
Helen Bradley
Labels: date functions, Datedif, elapsed time, Excel tip
Categories:Uncategorized
posted by Helen Bradley @ 9:32 pmNo Comments links to this post
Tuesday, February 6th, 2007
I don’t know why, but there are heaps of colors available in Word for formatting text and lines but only a small subset of colors are available in Excel. Does Microsoft think we don’t like color in Excel?
Unfortunately we can’t specify additional colours for use in Excel workbooks either but we can change the colours that are displayed in the color palette to a mix of what we do like. So, if pink isn’t your thing, you can replace all the pinks with colors you do like and will use.
To do this, in Excel, choose Tools, Options, Color tab and select a color to change. Click Modify to choose a new color in its place. Repeat as desired.
Helen Bradley
Labels: color, Excel tip, options, tools, worksheet
Categories:Uncategorized
posted by Helen Bradley @ 9:28 pm3 Comments links to this post
