Announcements

Awesome Digital Imaging Toolkit!

Wow, do we have an incredible buy for you today!

We have a set of programs called the Digital Imaging Toolkit that includes everything a digital photographer / graphics person could want (plus you're not going to believe the low price)! Oh, and you don't have to install everything you see, just the software you want!

Check it out:

#1 - Ability Photopaint - Ever hear of Adobe Photoshop? Most would say this $700 program is the best digital imaging software on the market. Ability Photopaint is an almost identical program for a small fraction of the cost (check out the screen shot at the site). In fact, for our use here at WorldStart, this could replace Photoshop - even the menus are nearly identical!

This program can do it all. Resize images, adjust brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, levels, and more. It has a huge selection of tools including cloning, lasso, magic wand, polyline, ellipse, eraser, dozens of brushes, text, blur, gradient, pencil, fill, dodge, burn, sharpen, airbrush, and tons of others!

It also includes over 90 filter effects, has unlimited undos, supports layers, works with 25 different image formats (even allows you to open in one format and save to another), and more. It really is a Photoshop for the masses. If you have ever wanted to use Adobe Photoshop, but didn't want to fork out the $700 to do it, then this is a must have program.

# 2 - Photo Easy - Here's another great image program. You can use this to organize your images, send digital photos to friends, create photo projects (cards, magazine covers, flyers, etc), fix red eye, enhance photos, even have fun with your photos by wrapping and twisting them!

# 3 - Ulead Cool 360 - This one is sweet. It allows you to create 360 degree panorama photos! Just shoot the photos, go through the 3 step process, and share your results. You can send these panoramas via e-mail, print them out, create a screen saver, or even save them to the web!

# 4 - Zoner Draw - If you have ever wanted a powerful drawing program, then you'll love this! Create your own illustrations, brochures, leaflets, letterheads, blueprints, signs, clipart, even vector animations!

This program can fit text into curves, has a rich text editor, lots of text styles, an integrated table tool, does object blending, supports larger documents, and tons more. It would take way too long to go over everything this program can do here in the newsletter, so check it out at the site.

# 5 - WebEasy - If you've ever wanted an easy way to create a web site, then you'll love this one! It's designed to make it easy for anyone to create and design their own website. You can either do it from scratch, or use a wizard - whatever you like. No HTML coding required, just point and click.

# 6 - Shutterfly - This is a service you can use to send your image to the shutterfly web server and send prints to friends and family. Very cool.

Whew, that's it. All of this comes with the Digital Imaging Toolkit software!

The price we have on this is probably the most incredible part - just $12.97 with FREE US shipping! Is that a deal or what? I tell ya, when this offer came across my desk I couldn't jump on it fast enough! This is easily one of the best deals we've ever had. Get all the details at:

http://www.worldstart.com/store/digital-imaging-toolkit.htm

PS - Don't miss this one! Even if you only see one or two programs you like it's still an incredible buy! Hurry, quantities are limited.

MS Office 101

Close It Up In A Hurry

Here's another piece of information for the function key enthusiasts.

I checked this one out in MS Excel, Word, PowerPoint and Access and found success in all four.

Here's the deal…

• Ctrl + F4 will close the file.
• Alt + F4 will close the program.

Just a couple more tricks to put on your keyboard list.

Office Tip of the Day

Quick Slide Margins - Part 2 - MS Excel

As a follow-up to the last issue, I thought it might be relevant to discuss quick margin adjustments in MS Excel.

As with Word, you can set margins in the Page Setup (under the File menu) on the Margins tab.

Works well—but, as you may already know, in Excel you have to go to the Print Preview to take a look at how things are "shaping up".

So, let's see... you're going to the File menu, Page Setup choice, Margins tab. Then you're making the necessary adjustments. You could then click the Print Preview button from within the Page Setup window to see the effect of your changes.

Don't like them?

Ok, so now you need to get back to the Margins tab to "fine tune" the situation. This means clicking the Setup button in the Print Preview window to return to your Margins tab, make adjustments again, then clicking on the Print Preview button. Or... I've actually watched people exit Print Preview and start all over again with the File menu!

Any way you look at it, it's a lot of moving around between different windows and tabs.

Click, click, click...

(You get the picture.)

Where can we seek relief for our aching index (click) fingers?

Well, a little vapor rub on the knuckle might help, but actually, relief is found right where we came from. It's in the Print Preview.

When you were searching for the Setup button did you happen to take a look at the button to its immediate right?

No?

Boy, when you find out what it does you're going to wish you had!

That little-noticed button reads "Margins".

That's right, there's a button in the Print Preview dedicated entirely to the adjustment of margins and once you've clicked it all your fine tuning can be done right there in the Print Preview window.

So let's give this a try.

Click the Margins button.

Did you see all the dotted lined "pop up" over your document preview?

These lines represent your document's current margin settings.

Run your mouse slowly over a line until it becomes a double arrow. Then click and hold on the line. At this point you've "grabbed" the margin and can drag it up / down / left / right to meet your needs.

You may have noticed that a few things appear to be amiss. First off, you've probably decided that you seem to have too many lines on top and bottom. You don't—but it appears that way.

Another item that may concern you is that the preview appears to have no measurements for the margins—you need those to make them balanced, don't you?

And finally, you may be wondering what the little marks are across the top.

All good points to bring up—so let's get to the explanations.

To begin, let's clear up the "too many lines" issue.

The reason you have two lines at both the top and bottom is because they each mark a different margin. Never forget that worksheets can have headers and footers—and those sections need margins too. The topmost line is for the headers, the top of the header to be exact.

The line at the very bottom of the page marks the lowest margin of the footer.

Next on the agenda is the problem of handling margin measurements.

On first glance, it does appear that there's no way to know the margin width / height while dragging, but look again.

Specifically, look in the bottom left corner of the window while you are still holding the left mouse button during the margin drag.

See it?

"There it is!" (As my nephew likes to say in his little sing-song way when he finds his favorite toy.)

In the corner, while dragging a margin, you can see its width / height—and for a little "bonus" they also list which margin you're dragging.

Two problems down, one to go.

The last issue dealt with the little marks across the top of the page.

These represent the right boundary of each column on the page.

What was that I heard you ask?

Can you move these column markers? If we could, wouldn't that speed up the process of tweaking page layout?

Why yes you can—and yes it can help you with quick layout adjustments—glad you asked.

You can adjust the width of a column with the old click, hold, drag—you know the routine.

In addition, you might want to note the left bottom corner of the window again. The column width is displayed—just in case you need it.

Hmmm... that Print Preview thing has turning out to be more useful than we originally thought. (Yeah—if only we could get a few of those kitchen gadgets that are supposed to be so wonderful to work out this well.)

~ April