Thursday, August 1st, 2013

Word 2010 and 2013 Tip – Add a time and date stamp to a printed page


Know when your document was printed by adding a date and time stamp to each printed page

Add a date and time stamp all your printouts by placing the current date and time in the document footer so it prints when the page is printed.

To do this in Word 2007, 2010 and 2013 choose Insert > Footer > Edit Footer. Click the Date & Time button and enable the Update Automatically checkbox. From the list of dates and times choose a date or date and time – depending on what you want to see on the page. Click Ok.

Select the text that Word has inserted in the footer and you can now format it to a small font – such as Italic 8 pt. You can also prefix the text with the words Printed On: or something similar, if desired.

Click Close Header and Footer to return to your document. Now the current date and time will be printed in the footer each time the document is printed.

Helen Bradley

Friday, June 28th, 2013

Photoshop – Adding Images to your Reusable Layout Template

Learn how to populate the layout template that we created in an earlier post with images of your own.

Click Here for Part 1


Transcript:
Hello, I’m Helen Bradley. Welcome to this video tutorial. In this tutorial I’m going to show you how you can actually make use of your reusable layout template that we made in an earlier video. In the previous video I showed you how to create this template.

It has a background color of white but that could be any color. It has space for two images. And then it has two copyright symbols here. One is black and one is white depending on which we want to use for any particular layout.

Now I’m going to show you how you can take this particular template and make it into this by adding images to it. I’m just going to hide this one away and we’ll focus on the one that we created.

I haven’t saved that yet but that doesn’t matter too much. Now I’m going to open some images that I want to use in it. So I’m going to go and select the images that I’d used previously. That’s winter7. And I want bird7 as well. So I’m just going to move these images into position. This is the main template and these are the individual images.

So to start off with I’m going to just drag and drop the background layers from each of these images into my main template. So this is this image first. I’m going to drag and drop it into position and I’m going to drag and drop this one in. Now you can see that the images that I’ve dragged and dropped in are way, way bigger than the template is. But that doesn’t matter because we know how to make them smaller. I’m going to click on the layer thumbnail, Ctrl T and then Ctrl Zero. You can see how much bigger these images are than the actual template itself. I’m going to size the image down quite small, click on this link here so I make sure that I don’t destroy its ratio of width and height, and I’m just going to move it roughly into position as to where it’s going to be in the final template. Now I’ll click the checkmark here and let’s go ahead and resize this one.

Click on the layer thumbnail, Ctrl T, Ctrl Zero. And now I’m going to scale it small, place it roughly in position, make sure that the width and height are scaled correctly in exactly the same proportion, finish off the positioning of it and then click the checkmark here. Now let’s zoom into the image. To make sure that this now works as we expect it to we need to bring back this line down here and we probably need to crop these images. Now the template has those crops already built into it.

The first thing I’m going to do is to drop this particular layer immediately above the layer that’s going to control its size. And then I’m going to drop this one immediately above the layer that’s going to control its size. And we’re going to use a simple feature called Clipping Path. With the topmost of this pair of layers selected, I’ll choose Layer and then Create Clipping Mask. And what that does is it clips this image to the exact size of the rectangle below. And now let’s do that with this one, click on the layer, Layer, Create Clipping Mask. And you can see that that’s clipped this particular image here to the exact size of the black box below.

The black has disappeared. It has nothing to do with it. These colors could be any color you like. But you can see that in doing so we’ve brought back the color from this layer here. And we can prove that that’s where the color is coming from. So I’m just going to select a blue color here and I’ll just fill this layer with blue. And you can see now that the space between those two images is the exact same blue as I just filled the background layer with. I’ll just undo that because I don’t really want blue.

To finish off I’m just going to decide which of these two copyright symbols is going to work better in this instance. Well I think the white one is. So I’m going to click its eyeball or its visibility icon and turn off the black one. So that’s how we would fill that template that we created in an earlier video.

Now your templates don’t have to be as simple as this one. They can be quite complex. And you may be aware that I have templates available on projectwoman.com. This is a free set of templates that you can download and use exactly as you’ve seen here. There are some triptychs and there are also some layouts with 9, 4 and 6 images in them.

I’m Helen Bradley. Thank you for joining me for this video tutorial. If you liked this tutorial place click the thumbs up to give it a like. Think about subscribing to my YouTube channel and visit my website at projectwoman.com for more tips, tricks and tutorials on Illustrator, Photoshop, Lightroom, Photoshop Elements, iPad and a whole lot more.

Helen Bradley

Friday, May 3rd, 2013

Lightroom Tip – Understanding Import Options

Understanding Import Options

You have four import options for your photos – Copy as DNG, Copy, Move and Add. In some circumstances, not all these options are available – for example, you may choose Copy or Copy as DNG when importing from a camera card but you cannot select Move or Add when you are importing images from a card.

When you select one of these options that choice may affect the other options you have. For example, if you choose Add to add images to the catalog from a folder, you cannot choose to back up your files at the same time. You can also not convert RAW images to DNG if you are adding them to Lightroom.

So, if you want to convert images, or back up, or rename images as you import them, it is best to import them direct from your camera card. Copying them into a folder on your disk before adding them to your Lightroom catalog diminishes your options when working with your images.

Helen Bradley

Wednesday, November 10th, 2010

Lightroom: Back up images on import

You know how important it is to back up images but the actual task of doing so can be a real pain. Luckily Lightroom makes it a breeze.

When you’re importing images into Lightroom in the Import dialog open the File Handling Panel on the right. Here you can select to make a duplicate of the images on import to a second location. That is provided you’ve chosen Copy to DNG, Copy or Move as your import preference. If you choose Add the option isn’t enabled and you can’t choose it.

By selecting to make a duplicate of your files you can then select the folder or drive and folder to place the copies in. If you’re converting to DNG as you import the copies will be raw files not DNG but you’ll still have copies. If you choose Add or Move then the copies will be the same format as the original files.

Now there’s  no excuse not to back up – is there?

Helen Bradley

Sunday, January 28th, 2007

Quick Calculations in Word
Older versions of Word included a Calculate option on the Tools menu which let you make quick calculations.

You can add it back into later versions of Word by right clicking any toolbar and choose Customize. Select the Commands tab and, from the Categories list choose All Commands and scroll the Commands list to locate ToolsCalculate. Drag this onto the Tools menu and hold your mouse there until the menu opens and then drop the option into place. If desired, right click it and remove the word Tools from its name so it simply reads Calculate.

Now test it by typing some values eg 24, 25 & 26 and select them. Choose Tools, Calculate and the status bar will display “The result of the calculation is 75”.

If you later click Control + V you will paste the result of the calculation (75) into your document.

To sum a column of numbers, hold Alt as you drag over the column with your mouse then choose Tools, Calculate. It also works inside tables and you can type a more detailed calculations such as 25*25 and it will calculate the result for you (answer: 625)

Helen Bradley