Photoshop and Bitmap Graphics

Photoshop

Photoshop is a huge application, and there is usually more than one way to look at a given subject, or perform a certain action.You can create a website related header design and footer design and also you can create a template using this Photoshop. Its very helpful to cut the image and for collage work.The difference between vector and bitmap graphics, is one of the most important principles to understand when working with graphics on a computer, inside or outside of Photoshop. Although Photoshop primarily is a bitmap image editor, it is capable of handling vector graphics to a certain extent.

Bitmap Graphics

Bitmap graphics are made up of colored pixels. Pixels are very small rectangles (usually square, although in some video applications they are wider than they are tall) of varying colors that once put together give you an image. Bitmap graphics are usually (but not always) photographic in nature, capable of subtle graduated tones - often in the range of millions of colors per image. The problem with bitmap graphics is that they don't enlarge well as Photoshop needs to guess what color the extra pixels should be - this can result is loss of definition and a dramatic lowering in quality, depending on how much you enlarge the image. Common file formats for bitmap image data include GIF, JPEG and PNG for Internet usage and TIFF for print usage.

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Powerpoint:Broadcast Your Presentation over the Internet

Before you begin, you must have a Windows Live, Hotmail, MSN or Xbox Live email account. No, gmail won’t work. You must also have access to the Internet which is how the presentation will be broadcast.

1. With your presentation open in PowerPoint, go to the Slide Show ribbon, Start Slide Show (Play Slide Show on the Mac) group, and the click Broadcast Slide Show.
2. Click the Start Broadcast button (Connect... on the Mac).
3. If you are not already logged in, you must log in with your Windows Live ID credentials.
4. PowerPoint will create URL for you to email or copy into a a messaging service to whomever you want to join the broadcast. Be aware that this is not a secure or closed connection. Anyone with the URL can access your broadcast. You should also recommend the audience disable their screen saver or power saving options as this will disrupt their viewing.
5. When your audience is ready, click the Start Slide Show button (Play Slide Show on the Mac).
   You are in full control of the presentation. When you advance the slide, your audience will stay on track with you.
6. After presenting, press Esc (Escape) on the keyboard to end Slide Show view. You must then press the End Broadcast button on the yellow bar under the ribbon.

Currently, only Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari for Mac is the supported version. I've used Chrome without incident, but it's not an official supported browser.

Some things to be aware of when broadcasting:

• All transitions will be shown as the Fade transition only.
• Audio or video is not transmitted with the presentation through the browser.
• Website hyperlinks will not work.
• You cannot make ink annotations on screen during the presentation.

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MS Office:Open documents that Office wants to block

Old stuff ain’t safe. At least according to Microsoft. Therefore, when you try to open files in the 97-2003 file format (or earlier), Office 2010 will block editing (and macros) of these files until you decide they are safe. The problem arises when you upgrade, all your files are in the previous format and blocked from editing. You can easily click the Enable Editing button that appears in the yellow bar under the ribbon, but if you want to be proactive, you can change this setting.

In Word or Excel, go to the File tab, click Options, click Trust Center on the left, and then click the Trust Center Settings.. button. On the left, select File Block Settings, and remove the checkmarks from the older Office files that you want Office 2010 to open. There are additional settings for how to open at the bottom of the dialog box.

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Access 2007: Print Access report summaries without redesigning the report

If you need to print out all 10 reports without the detail data, and you need to have it ready within the hour. Fortunately, you don't need to create new reports -- you can hide the detail section so the detailed data does not appear in the printout. Here's how...

1. In the Database window, click Reports under Objects.
2. Click the name of the report, and then click the Design button.
3. Right-click within a blank area of the Detail section.
4. Select Properties.
5. Under the Format tab, click in the Visible property box and select No.

When you print the reports, all sections but the detail sections will print. You can use the Visible property to hide any section of the report.

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Excel 2007: Display Dashes Instead of Zeros

If you have a spreadsheet that contains a lot of zeros? It's not always easy to read the other numbers when you do. You can accomplish this with a custom number format.

1. Select the cells where you want to apply the format.
2. On the Home tab in the Number group, click the dialog box launcher to display the Format Cells dialog.
3. On the Number tab select Custom in the Category list.
   Excel number formats can contain up to four sections of code separated by semicolons. The first section applies to positive numbers, the second to negative numbers, the third to zeros, and the fourth to text. When formatting, the third and fourth are optional.
4. To specify a format for zeros, you need to add (or change) the third section of the number format code. If there is no format for zeros, add a semi-colon for the third section and then type a dash(es). This tells Excel to display a your defined format in any cell with a value of zero.
   

Keep in mind that a custom number format is stored for future use in the current workbook only.

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How technically twins are made?

An interesting post of pics depicting twins using amazing think tank!

Not a fan of babies? How about twin geek kids...

And now for the older geeks...

And let's not forget the Mac geeks...

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PowerPoint 2007: Delete all slide notes

1. Click the Office button, point to Prepare, and then click Inspect Document.
2. Click Inspect.
3. Click Remove All next to Presentation Notes. You can also choose to remove invisible on-slide or off-slide content, personal information, comments, and more.
4. Save this version of the presentation separately (be sure not to overwrite your full version), and share it safely.

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Word 2007: Convert text to a table or vice versa

1. Select the text that you want to convert. It should have a common delimiter (separating character) that will convert to columns and rows. Typically, tabs separate columns and line returns separate rows.
2. On the Insert tab, in the Tables group, click Table, and then click Convert Text to Table.
   
3. In the Convert Text to Table dialog box, under Separate text at, click the option for the separator character that is in your text.
   

In the Number of columns box, check the number of columns. If you don't see the number of columns that you expect, you may be missing a separator character in one or more lines of text.

To convert a table to text...

1. Select the rows or table that you want to convert to paragraphs.
2. Under Table Tools, on the Layout tab, in the Data group, click Convert to Text.
   
3. Under Separate text at, click the option for the separator character that you want to use in place of the column boundaries. Rows are separated with paragraph marks.
   

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Access: Automatically enter today's date in a field

For some records, you enter today's date for a particular field. When a date is to be the current date, you can eliminate entering any value at all. Set the field’s Default Value property to Now() or Date(). When you enter a new record, the property will enter the system’s current date (and time). If for some reason it is not today's date, you can still type over the default value with the correct date (and time).If you only occassionaly enter the current date, you can use the shortcut CTRL+; (semicolon) instead.

Now() versus Date()

The Now() function returns the system’s current date and time. It’s a package deal–you always get both. If all you need is the current date and not the time, use the Date() function instead. On the other hand, if all you want is the current time, use the Time() function. Don’t use Now() unless you really mean to store both the date and time.

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Windows 7: Send to what you want

You can add any shortcut to the default Send To menu by adding the shortcut to the SendTo folder in Windows Explorer.

Just type shell:sendto into the location bar on any Windows Explorer window to open the SendTo folder. Click and drag any shortcut to this folder and the item will appear on the default Send To shortcut menu.

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PowerPoint 2007: Reuse Slides

1. Open the presentation that you want to add a slide to.
2. In the navigation pane that contains the Outline and Slides tabs, click Slides, and then click where you want to add a slide.

   

3. On the Home tab, in the Slides group, click New Slide, and then select Reuse Slides.
4. In the Reuse Slides pane, click Open a PowerPoint File.
5. In the Browse dialog box, locate and click the presentation file that contains the slide that you want, and then click Open.
6. In the Reuse Slides pane, do one of the following:
• To add a single slide, click the slide.
• To add all of the slides, right-click any slide, and then click Insert All Slides

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Word 2007: AutoSummarize

Word has a little used but handy feature called AutoSummarize. It identifies the key points in a document. You can select whether to highlight key points in a document, insert an executive summary or abstract at the top of a document, create a new document and put the summary there, or hide everything but the summary.

Please note that AutoSummarize works best on well-structured documents, such as reports, articles, and scientific papers.

Before you can use AutoSummarize in Microsoft Office Word 2007, you need to add AutoSummary Tools to the Quick Access Toolbar.

1. Click the Microsoft Office Button , and then click Word Options.
2. Click Customize.
3. In the list under Choose commands from, click All Commands.
4. Scroll through the list of commands until you see AutoSummary Tools.
5. Click AutoSummary Tools, and then click Add.

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Basic Windows 7 shortcuts

I love shortcuts (because I'm lazy) and found some great ones for Windows 7 by using my mouse. Until I figured it all out, it was frustrating, but now that I understand how it works, I love it!

• Drag a window to the top of your screen to MAXIMIZE
• Drag a window to the left or right to dock it on that half of the screen
• Shake a window back and forth to MINIMIZE everything but the active window (the one you are shaking)
• Double-click the top window border (edge) with the vertical resizing arrow to MAXIMIZE VERTICALLY

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Excel: Calculate the difference between two dates

Here is the formula's syntax. (BTW, don't go looking this up in the Help section as it is a "secret" formula.)

=DATEDIF(Earliest_Date, Latest_Date, UnitOfMeasure)

Here's how it works...

1st argument: A2 is the cell reference for the early date.

2nd argument: For the late date, I used the TODAY() formula so it is dynamic for whenever I open the spreadsheet to have the current date.

3rd argument: The unit of measure can be either "Y" for years, "M" for months or "D" for days, depending on how you want the results to be calculated.

If you prefer to calculate the WORKING days (excluding weekends and holidays) you can use the NETWORKDAYS formula.

=NETWORKDAYS(start_date, end_date, holiday_range[optional])

Here it is in action...

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Excel 2007: Fill In the Blanks in Spreadsheets the Easy Way

1. Select all the rows in your Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheet data set.
2. On the Home tab, in the Editing group, click Find & Select, click Go To, click Special, click Blanks, and then click OK.
3. Click the equal sign (=) on the toolbar, select the cell above, and then hold down the CTRL key while you press ENTER. Blanks in the spreadsheet will be filled automatically.
4. Copy all the data, click Paste Special, and then click Values. This will overwrite the formulas and enable you to sort the data by filling in each empty cell with the same information as the one above. This tip will work on any size of data set.

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Access 2007: Have Access forms automatically close after use

If your users work with multiple Access forms, here’s how to make their work easier by having a form close automatically once they are finished with it:

1. Open the first form in Design view.
2. Double-click the Form Properties button.
3. Click on the Event tab.
4. Click in the On Deactivate text box.
5. Select Event Procedure.
6. Click the Build button.
7. At the prompt, enter: Me.TimerInterval =1.
8. Press ALT+Q.
9. In the Form Properties window, click in the On Timer property text box.
10. Select Event Procedure.
11. Click the Build button.
12. At the prompt, enter: DoCmd.Close.
13. Press ALT+Q.
14. Save the form.

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PowerPoint 2007: Fine-Tuning Objects in Presentations

When working with text in Microsoft Office PowerPoint, you can use the F2 key to switch between selecting text in a placeholder and selecting the placeholder itself. So the next time you've edited some text and want to reposition it on the slide, instead of clicking the tiny edges of the box, just press F2. The entire text box will instantly be selected for you, ready for alignment.

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Word 2007: Rearrange Paragraphs in Word

Swapping paragraphs in Microsoft Office Word can be complicated. As well as having to cut and paste, you often have to reformat line breaks afterward to make the paragraph line up properly. You can use the mouse to drag and drop paragraphs to a new location or, you can use the SHIFT+ALT keyboard shortcut.

Click the paragraph that you want to move, hold down SHIFT+ALT, and move the paragraph up or down by using the arrow keys. Each press of an arrow key causes your selected paragraph to jump over one adjacent paragraph.

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Excel 2007: Paste into Non-sequential Cells in Excel

You can use the CTRL key for multiple selections. Sometimes, you want to copy a formula or piece of data into a series of non-sequential cells in Microsoft Office Excel. You can do this quickly without having to paste into each cell individually.

1. Copy the data from the source cell.
2. Hold down the CTRL key as you click to select each destination cell.
3. After all the cells are highlighted, paste the data by pressing CTRL+V. You have to paste only once.

Similarly, you can type data into a series of cells simultaneously.

1. While holding down the CTRL key, click all the cells that you want to type the same text (or value) into.
2. Type the entry, and then press CTRL+ENTER. The text will be added to all the selected cells.

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Format mergefields to be currency

When doing a mail merge into Word using an Excel file, any field formatted as currency or accounting in Excel does not carry the formatting into Word. Although you can just add a dollar sign prior to the mergefield, it doesn't help when some numbers are whole and others are decimals. Who wants to view the amount they owe as $15.3? I'd prefer the forced placeholder for the cents (decimal places) to see it as $15.30.

1. Right-click the mergefield and select Edit Field.
2. Click the Field Codes button in the lower-left corner.
3. Click behind the mergefield name and then type the switch for a numeric picture (\#).
4. Use # for optional numbers and 0 (zero) for required numbers.
5. Click OK and preview your results.

Here's an example how some may look:
MERFIELD Price \# $#,##0.00 = $1,234.56 or $789.00
MERFIELD Price \# $#0.00 = $12.34 or $56.00
MERFIELD Price \# $#,##0 = $1,234 or $567.00

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Office 2007: Minimize the Ribbon

The Ribbon helps you access more of the commands you need, when you need them. But if you want to see the Ribbon only when you need it, you can minimize it so that only the tab names appear all the time. To minimize the Ribbon in any Microsoft Office program, double-click any tab name, or press CTRL+F1. You can also right-click any tab name for the option to minimize the Ribbon.

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PowerPoint 2007: Add More Levels of Undo

You can go back farther than the default 20 undos in Microsoft Office PowerPoint to undo up to 150 actions.

1. With PowerPoint open, click the Office button, and then click PowerPoint Options.
2. On the Advanced tab, change the Maximum number of undos from the default 20 to any number from 3 to 150.

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Word 2007: Line Breaks Without Bullets or Numbering

When you're creating a bulleted or numbered list in Microsoft Office Word or Microsoft Office PowerPoint, you might want an item to appear in the list without a bullet or without incrementing the number. You can start a new line without a bullet by pressing SHIFT+ENTER. This will create a manual line break in the paragraph, but not a new paragraph. The next time you press the ENTER key, the new line will continue the bulleted or numbered list.

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Access 2007: Creating a new Report

Microsoft Office Access 2007 helps you make sense of complex information by offering easy-to-use interactive design tools that you can use to quickly create rich reports that display sorted, filtered, and grouped information. In addition to the traditional Report Designer (Design view), Office Access 2007 introduces a Layout view, so you can look at your data while you’re authoring the report.

To create a report:

1. Open, or select in the navigation pane, a table, a form, or a query.
2. On the Create tab, in the Reports section, click Report. Access automatically includes all the fields in the object selected and opens the report in Layout view.

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Introduce Your Possee in a Presentation

First, I find it easier to break the slide up into parts with a grid. You can turn on the default guides or make adjustments for the number of pictures you have. I right-clicked a blank area of my screen in PowerPoint 2007 for the context menu and selected Grid and guides... I chose to display the drawing guides. You'll get guides for a vertical and horizontal center. Hold [Ctrl] to drag a copy of the guide to a new location. Once I had my custom guides, I was ready to add the pictures.

1. Insert the first picture. Size and/or crop the picture to fit the first box. Continue adding the remaining pictures. You'll see in my example that I only had 10 headshots, so filled the other two grids with text.
2. Apply an appropriate animation to the first headshot. I chose the Wipe animation. Be sure to modify the start of the animation to After Previous. In necessary, you can also change the direction of the animation. Continue for the remaining headshots. I chose to have them randomly appear, but you can do it in order if you prefer.

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PowerPoint 2007: Convert a Bulleted List to a SmartArt Diagram

Need to update those old list to a new SmartArt diagram? Right-click anywhere in the bulleted list, point to Convert to SmartArt, and then click the diagram layout that you want to use. If you don’t see your preferred diagram layout, click More SmartArt Graphics to choose a layout from the Choose a SmartArt Graphic dialog box. After your list converts to a diagram, the SmartArt Tools Design and Format tabs appear when the diagram is active. Use those tabs to apply formatting or even change the diagram layout.

Note: This does not work in MS Word

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Change New Word Document Defaults

You need to remember that there are three levels of formatting: font or character, paragraph and section/page. You will need to change the default for all three levels.

We'll start with font.

1. Click on the Font dialog box launcher button.
   
2. In the Font dialog box, change the font to Times New Roman, Regular and 12 point.
   
3. Click the Default... button to change the Normal template.
   
4. Be sure to click the Yes button to confirm.

To change the paragraph spacing...

1. Click the Paragraph dialog box launcher button.
   
2. In the Paragraph dialog box, change the space after the paragraph to 0 points and the line spacing to Single.
   
3. Click the Default... button to change the Normal template.
   
4. Click the Yes button to confirm.

Finally, the Page margins.

1. Click the Page Layout tab and click the Page Setup dialog box launcher.
   
2. In the Page Setup dialog box, change the left and right margin to 1.25 inches.
   
3. Click the Default... button to change the Normal template.
   
4. Be sure to click the Yes button to confirm.

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Excel 2007: Easily Insert Rows or Columns in Excel

With a Microsoft Office Excel document open, you can insert extra cells, rows or columns by holding down the SHIFT key while you grab a cell, row or column by its AutoFill handle and drag it in the direction you want the insertion made.

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Word 2007: Removing Comments and Changes from a Document

Here’s one I hear all the time. How do I send a Microsoft Office Word document without the comments or tracked changes? Document Inspector eliminates this worry.

1. Click the Office icon, point to Prepare, and then click Inspect Document.
   
2. By default, all check boxes are selected in Document Inspector. Clear the check box next to any items that you don't want Document Inspector to look for, and then click Inspect.
   
3. Remove items not for publication. Document Inspector indicates what it finds in your document, so you can choose what you want to remove, and then confidently publish your document.

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PowerPoint 2007: Reduce File Sizes by Changing Image Formats

The Compress Pictures button in Microsoft Office PowerPoint can often reduce your .ppt files by up to 50 percent. But that can still leave you with large files, especially if your images have been created from .png files. You can save even more space by changing them to .gif or .jpg formats. (Note: The .png format is more flexible than the other file formats. Flattening to .jpg or .gif reduces flexibility.) Here’s how to reduce file sizes:

1. Save your PowerPoint file as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), which creates an .htm file and a folder of the same name. This folder will contain all the images from the presentation.
2. Open the folder, and sort it by size to reveal which files are the largest.
3. Locate the largest images in your presentation. They may have been scaled, so they might look smaller than the saved image.
4. In PowerPoint, make sure that the image isn't grouped.
5. Select the image.
6. On the Picture Tools menu, in the Adjust section, click Compress Pictures.
7. Right-click the image, and then click Save as Picture.
8. From the Save as type menu, select .jpg or .gif (if you need to use transparency effects), and then save the image.
9. Delete the original image from your presentation, and reload the saved image at its original place.
10. Regroup the images if necessary.

Another way to compress the images is to use an image editing tool like Microsoft Digital Image Suite. This tool gives you more image compression options and can save you yet more space.

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Excel 2007: Change the Case of Text

Converts text to uppercase.

=UPPER(text or cell reference of text)

Converts all uppercase letters in a text string to lowercase.

=LOWER(text or cell reference of text)

Capitalizes the first letter in a text string and any other letters in text that follow any character other than a letter. Converts all other letters to lowercase letters.

=PROPER(text or cell reference of text)

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Access 2007: Use charts to display data on forms

Access 2007 makes it easy to build a graph control for your form that will display calculated data — and often better than with a text form control. For example, say your employee database includes two tables: one with employee data and one with data about hours worked during 2007. The database also contains a November Hours Worked query that includes the Last Name, First Name, and Employee ID fields from the Employee Data table, and the Week Ending and Hours Worked fields for November from the 2007 Hours Worked table. You create a form based on the query that includes all of the fields. To add a chart to the form that graphs the total hours worked for each employee for the month of November, follow these steps:

1. Open the form in Design view.
2. In the Forms Design Tools, Design ribbon, in the Controls group, click the Insert Chart tool.
3. Click and drag in a blank area of the form to create the chart.
4. Select Queries under the View section and then select the November Hours Worked query and then click Next >.
5. Double-click the Last Name and Hours Worked fields.
6. Click Next > four times.
7. Enter Total Hours Worked In November for the chart title.
8. Select No, Don’t Display Legend and then click Finish.

As you click through each employee’s record, the Graph control will display a bar chart for the employee, showing the total hours they worked in November 2007.

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