Wednesday, April 18th, 2012
Sometimes when you’re working in PowerPoint you’ll notice that an animation is not available and it is greyed out.
For example add an image to a slide and then try to select the drop animation from the Entrance Effects. It’s not available because what you’re trying to select is a tool that is used to animate text and you are using an image.
However you can use this animation on an image, you just need to know how to do so. To do this, place the image inside a shape. So, add a shape to the slide – a plain rectangle will do, and as the shape background add the picture by right-clicking the shape, choose Format Shape and then from the shape Fill options select Picture and fill it with a picture.
Right click the shape and choose Edit Text and press the spacebar a couple of times so that you add some text to the shape – spaces won’t show but they are text. It’s critical that you do this because without the text the shape will not be able to be animated using text animation tools.
Now when you select the Animate options and the Entrance Effects you’ll find that the effects that you couldn’t use before like Drop, Flip and Whip are now available because you’re working with PowerPoint deems to be a text object.
Helen Bradley
Labels: amimation pane, animate, animations, drop, entrance effects, flip, grayed out, greyed out, Helen Bradley, hidden animations, PowerPoint, PowerPoint 2010, timeline, whip
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posted by Helen Bradley @ 8:00 amNo Comments links to this post
Tuesday, April 17th, 2012
Download: Snapseed on the iPad – 4.99
Snapseed comes from the folks at Nik Software. It’s an interesting app but can leave you more confused than enlightened regarding what you did to your image.
When you open the image there are selectable options all down the left of the screen – big icons to click on. Then everything gets really small and not a little confusing.
Some features let you add a control point to the image that you use to adjust just that position on the image – in others you swipe across the image to apply a change.
In the brightness fix, for example, you will drag across the image to adjust the brightness.
In other cases you swipe down to reveal different options. In Tune Image this means that options for Brightness, Ambience, Contrast, Saturation and White balance are all hidden from view and you have to ‘discover’ them to use them.
All these features are hard to discover when you first start working with the program and eave you wondering just who designs iPad interfaces and why they think that hiding features is smart? There is plenty of room on the screen to put some sliders or options which would make this program much easier to use than it is.
The Grunge fix has thousands of Styles which all tend to morph into each other – they aren’t different enough to even care too much about. I’d settle for 20 really different effects to choose from than this range of thousands of similar ones. Worse still, if you choose Shuffle to apply an effect you can’t easily see what number it is so you can reuse it. When applying styles you can also apply textures but the preview shows nothing about what that texture will look like!
The program doesn’t really seem to be too clear as to whether it is a serious fixing tool or a fun one for applying effects – it tries to take a bet each way and misses a bit on both counts.
At first looks it appears to be serious and the sample image is very attractive and well shot so grunge and vintage aren’t the first things that come to mind when you open the app. The tools however, lend themselves more to the fun side with the Vintage, Grunge and Tilt shift features.
In the scheme of things, this isn’t an app I’d use much. It is a bit too messed up for me and doesn’t do anything well enough to be a tool of choice for general day to day work. Perhaps for the occasional photo it might offer something but this will be occasional only.
I don’t dislike Snapseed I just don’t really understand the point of it – it seems a bit haphazardly put together. I think if you used it a lot you could grow to like it, I just don’t want to put that much effort into something that isn’t feature rich.
Helen Bradley
Labels: App, Helen Bradley, ipad, iPhone, Nik Software, photo editing, Snapseed
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posted by Helen Bradley @ 8:00 amNo Comments links to this post
Monday, April 16th, 2012
In Windows 8 Metro you can name groups of tiles so they have headings on the Start screen and you can drag groups around. Pity that nothing on the screen makes it clear that this is something you can do.
To do this, first use the semantic zoom to shrink the start menu tiles so they are very small.
Then right click a tile in the group of tiles you want to name.
A dialog pops up where you can type the group name. This only appears when you are zoomed out making it hard to find.
When you’re done, zoom out and you’ll see the group named. You can now drag and drop tiles into the group to help keep things nicely organized on the Windows 8 Metro Start screen.
Helen Bradley
Labels: groups, Helen Bradley, how to, Metro, name a group, naming groups, semantic zoom, start menu, start screen, tip, trick, Tutorial, Windows 8
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posted by Helen Bradley @ 8:00 am2 Comments links to this post
Friday, April 13th, 2012
Download: Instagram on the iPad – Free
Instagram is more about a photo sharing community than fixing photos per se. It is also an iPhone app so it’s tiny and runs in portrait orientation on the iPad.
Instagram crops everything to a 1:1 crop and offers 13 filters with a range of removable borders.
There is a one click contrast enhancement and you can apply a soft focus effect or a faux tilt shift and that’s about the sum of it.
This app is ridiculously popular with iPhone users and probably better used on the iPhone where you’ll be able to share images online from there and where the tiny interface makes more sense.
Behind Instagram is a web site for sharing Instagram photos. You can share your images so others can view them and you can view other people’s photos too.
If you are into photo sharing this is a great app. If you love the Instagram look then this is the app that gives it to you.
If you want to be more creative with your images then look elsewhere – this app is free and it is good but it is far from great as a photo enhancing tool.
Helen Bradley
Labels: App, Helen Bradley, Instagram, ipad, iPad app, iPad photo editing, photo sharing, share
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posted by Helen Bradley @ 8:00 am1 Comment links to this post
Thursday, April 12th, 2012
The Quick Access Toolbar or QAT runs across the top left edge of the Word 2007 and 2010 window. It also appears in other ribbon compatible programs like Excel 2007 & 2010, PowerPoint 2007 & 2010.
The QAT is a handy place to put icons that you use all the time. It can be customized through this Quick Access Toolbar option.
Click this icon to show the QAT editing options. Click Show Below the Ribbon to place the Quick Access Toolbar below the ribbon – I think most people will find its current position acceptable but if you want to move it that’s how to place it elsewhere.
Choose More Commands to add more commands to the Ribbon. From the Choose Commands From list you can select commands to view. These include Popular Commands, Commands Not In The Ribbon, in other words commands that are available in Microsoft Word but for which you have no other easy way of accessing, All Commands or Macros. The remainder of the dialog gives you access to the individual tabs in Word so that you can get access to icons listed there.
Some options you may want to add to the Quick Access Toolbar include the Close/Close All Button, Quick Print and I like to add Switch Windows which is available from the All Commands list. Other tools that you use frequently can be added to the Quick Access Toolbar making them instantly accessible.
You should note that you can set the features for all documents or for just an individual document so that you can, for example, set a different toolbar for a specific document. When you choose this option the specific document will get all the tools on the standard quick access toolbar plus those that you’ve added to just its toolbar.
Helen Bradley
Labels: Excel 2007, Excel 2010, Helen Bradley, mini toolbar, OneNote 2010, Outlook 2010, PowerPoint 2007, PowerPoint 2010, Qat, quick access toolbar, Ribbon, Word 2007, Word 2010
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posted by Helen Bradley @ 8:00 am1 Comment links to this post
Wednesday, April 11th, 2012
download: Photo Express on the iPad – free
When it comes to apps sometimes you get great value in free apps and other times you get rubbish. Photoshop Express falls somewhere between the two extremes – it isn’t rubbish but it’s far from great.
Photoshop Express has a very strange interface which left me tapping furiously on the screen trying to get it to do something – anything! The problem is you have to swipe the screen to adjust the intensity of the edit? So, to increase saturation you choose the Saturation option then swipe across to the right to increase it or to the left to decrease – Ok – where exactly did that interface metaphor come from? I feel like I missed class that day and there is nothing on the screen that makes this behaviour easy to discover.
Interface complaints aside this app lets you crop and fix your images and apply some effects to it.
Here is the crop/straighten/rotate/flip options:
Here is the image with contrast and saturation improved:
The noise reduction tool requires you to buy an add-in – OMG Adobe just gets some things sadly wrong and this is one of them! Either give the program away or don’t but why do they make one fix a pay for feature? It makes no sense – and they could just have easily left out noise reduction altogether. If you want this feature, expect to pay a hefty $4.99 for it.
In the border area there are a handful of free borders and others you can buy but which you can preview on your image first – this is useful so you get to see how they look before you commit to buying them. They come as an all in pack of 22 borders for $1.99.
There is also a small range of effects you can apply by selecting the effect to add to the image.
A lot of folks will download this app because it is from Adobe. Lots of these same folks will be wondering why they bothered to do so. This app is competent but it is hard to look past the silly in-app purchases and the screwball interface – Adobe is better than this – this app damages the company’s reputation – why not do something like they have at photoshop.com?
You don’t have to reinvent interfaces for the iPad and you don’t have to make up new interface gestures for adjusting images when a slider will do just fine – if you use sliders folks can see the slider and work out quickly how to use it – instead here with the swiping you really have to guess how to make the thing work and you shouldn’t have to do that.
Helen Bradley
Labels: App, Helen Bradley, ipad, iPad app, photo editing, Photoshop, Photoshop Express
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posted by Helen Bradley @ 8:00 amNo Comments links to this post
Monday, April 9th, 2012
Download: Pixlr-o-matic on the iPad free
I love this app but wish it worked in landscape and didn’t force me to work in portrait. It is from Autodesk who are the unsung heroes of the iPad photo editing app world. They do great stuff – way better in general than Adobe when it comes to iPad stuff.
Not only that but this app is also available online so you can use it on your desktop in a browser or download a standalone version – all cool and all free! You can buy extras if you like so you can buy extra frames and effects and you get lots for your money.
Start by capturing an image or import one from your gallery. Then click the first of the options across the foot of the screen – these are filters. Here you can browse the gallery of options – you can instantly view the filter on the image or keep scrolling to try something out if you don’t like the result of your first choice. I chose Lucas for this image:
Then select the Lightbulb icon and apply a lighting effect to the image. I added Bubble to this image.
Then click the frame option and add a frame – I chose Flowery.
I would like a tool for cropping the image as I really prefer to use square images for these types of effects and you cannot do it in Pixlr-o-matic so you have to do it before you come to this program.
The icon in the top right of the screen lets you apply a random mix of settings to your image – it’s a sort of “I feel lucky solution” – worth trying if you just want to see what the program can do.
Your save options are to the Photo Gallery or iTunes – it would be nice to see some integration with, say, Facebook or Twitter too?
I love Pixlr-o-matic on the desktop and the iPad. I have bought all the extras because you can never have too many cool features and I am willing to overlook some minor frustrations like no crop and portrait mode for the sake of art!
Helen Bradley
Labels: App, free, free app, grunge, Helen Bradley, ipad, photo editing, plixr-o-matic, tip
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posted by Helen Bradley @ 8:00 am1 Comment links to this post
Thursday, April 5th, 2012
Here at Projectwoman we’ve been busy with our sketchbooks creating some great looking hand drawn frames for Photoshop. These frames are available for Photoshop, Gimp and Photoshop Elements and we’ve included instructions for all the applications.
The frame sets sell for ninety-nine ¢ which is way less than your morning coffee — in fact you could buy three sets and have change left over.
We’ve created two sets of square frames because we think you just can’t get enough of square frames. We have a luscious floral set and a great set of speech bubble frames from our newest illustrator all ready for your photos.
There are circles, rectangles, simple frames and complex frames. Every one of them is hollowed out in the middle so that you can easily place your image in it and they are created as PNG files with opacity built into them. All you do is open your image, drag it in and it all works! And just in case you need a little more help, the step by step illustrated instructions will get you going instantly.
All the frames are lusciously sized at somewhere around 2,500 pixels in length or height so they’re a perfect size for framing all your images. Digital SLR images will pop straight into the frames and if you’re shooting with an iPhone or your brand new iPad 3, just size them down a little bit and you’re ready to go. Here are the framesets that we’ve got linked to the shopping cart page. Click a set and you’re ready to go.
Floral Frame Set
Simple Frame Set
Square Frame Set
Circle Frame Set
Heavy Line Frame Set
Speech Bubble Frame Set
Rectangles Frame Set
Square #2 Frame Set
Helen Bradley
Categories:Uncategorized
posted by Helen Bradley @ 8:00 amNo Comments links to this post
Thursday, April 5th, 2012
Download: PhotoPad by Zagg for the iPad free
This app is interesting and would be useful if it were more functional. It has a few problems and most annoying is the inability to preview changes on the image before you select them. So you have to apply the effect and then undo it if you don’t like it. It just seems a whole lot more cumbersome to use than many other apps of this genre.
The rotate tool has no grid so lining up a rotation is total hit or miss. And worse still the program adds a colored matt background around the rotated image – wtf? Most photographers won’t want an image on an angle with a colored background showing up just what you did to the image. In reality what we need and want is the option to rotate the image and, at the same time to crop or resize the image to get rid of this skewed background.
There are a range of paint tools which let you sample colors from the image or select your own color and paint onto the image. This paint goes on a layer above the image so you can erase it if desired. There are 4 brush types – soft, hard, square and line but they’re not really different enough or a wide enough range to do much – you’d go to another program if you were serious about doing real painting of an image. Here I just did some fun brush lines.
The fixing tools are limited to color levels, saturation and hue, contrast and brightness and things like redeye.
There are a few filters but the thumbnails don’t indicate well enough what they do so you have to apply them to the image to test them. Basically they’re a pretty lacklustre range of filters which just about sums up this app – lacklustre and hardly worth bothering with – there are far better apps out there which do all this does and more and way more to boot.
Helen Bradley
Labels: App, Helen Bradley, ipad, Painting, photo fixing, PhotoPad, Photoshop, review, tip
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posted by Helen Bradley @ 8:00 amNo Comments links to this post
Wednesday, April 4th, 2012
If you’re in the market for some new graphic software the first thing you’ll want to know is what’s the best for you. The folks at findthebest.com have done a lot of the work for you.
Visit the website and you can select to compare a range of applications. I’ve selected Photoshop, ArtRage and Lightroom – 3 very different applications, and then I ran a compare on them. You’ll get a heap of information including the Smart Ranking, what the purpose of the software is, the latest version and all sorts of details including ratings from the key sites such as PC World, PC Magazine, CNET and MacWorld. There’s plenty of information about supported file types, color spaces, help and online resources and whether or not the application runs on Windows or the Mac.
Findthebest.com is a great resource when you’re looking to compare different programs. Use the slideshow tab to view simplified information about each selected application and click the chart to see how the applications compare.
There’s plenty to like about this site when you need to get an overview of the kind of programs that you may want to use.
I think the interface looks a bit similar to those airline ticket site where you can sort by price, category and all sorts of things. Only here, you’ll get the best photo editing programs not a ticket to London!
Helen Bradley
Labels: art software, artrage, choose software, comparisons, design, Find the best, graphics, graphics software, Lightroom, paint shop pro, photo editing, Photoshop
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posted by Helen Bradley @ 2:00 pmNo Comments links to this post
