Editing Images in Microsoft Office 2010

Anyone who has ever wrangled with an unedited image in Word, desperately trying to get it to look right or fit right, will understand the importance of using a different program to format images perfectly before moving them into a Word document, Excel spreadsheet, or PowerPoint presentation. Office's limited options meant that users would always have to use a different program to apply effects or change the image itself, rather than just position it in an Office document. Microsoft acknowledges their own shortcomings in this respect by providing a picture editor with the Office suite, so users can easily edit photos first.

If, however, you really find yourself with a need to edit a picture in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, Microsoft have introduced new tools with Office 2010 to make things just a little bit easier for those who'd like a one-stop-shop program. Rather than fiddling with two different programs at the same time to get things just right, you can use Office's new functionality to perform basic photo editing tasks and apply some surprisingly lovely picture effects and corrections. This saves your IT support the effort of training you to use a new program and gives you an opportunity to make more professional documents and presentations with hardly any extra effort.

Many photographers use advanced photo editing programs to blur or sharpen their images, depending on what's depicted. This wasn't previously possible in Office, but now Microsoft offers a range of options for doing just that within an Office document. When you click on an image and choose Picture Tools -> Format -> Adjust -> Corrections from the picture tools ribbon, you can see a whole range of slightly changed copies of your picture, allowing you to choose the one that you think best suits your document or pleases you most aesthetically. You can also access sliders for further customisation by clicking on Picture Corrections Options, letting you slightly change one of the preset options or just modify the existing picture. While you could change brightness and contrast in Office formerly, these new additions are welcomed for their increased convenience and choice.

Office 2010 also offers a variety of picture effects, from shadows and reflections to glow and bevel. These are easily accessed through the "Picture Effects" option on the ribbon. Again, users are given a range of preview thumbnails with levels of options, so you can choose one at a glance if you prefer, with increased control provided through another options window, similar to the correcting options.

Artistic effects are also available, and look surprisingly polished and professional. You can try everything from pencil sketch to paint strokes to mosaics. When you choose Artistic Effects, you'll see thumbnails of each effect rather than names, which makes things a bit more confusing for those of us used to Photoshop, but the previews make everything much clearer.

These options offer a quick way for novice and inexperienced users to add sophisticated effects to their pictures without purchasing more expensive and complicated software. If you just have a simple desire to change the outline or the style of your picture, Office 2010 is now a viable choice for your editing. It's still not viable for professionals or for people who simply want a gorgeous picture to share with others, but if you regularly prepare images for presentations or documents, these new options might just make your day.

Meghan Burton is a professional copywriter. She recommends Octavia IT Services for IT support and implementing business VoIP phone systems.

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Fix Blue Screen of Death With a Registry Cleaner

What are the reasons for the blue screen of death problem in your computer? In fact this is considered as a worst kind of error that your computer will experience, and your may not be able to pull through this problem, and you will be forced to shut down the system. The only way out is to fix blue screen of death (bsod) with registry cleaner.

When the blue screen of death error appears, it will be for a brief movement when you will encounter the "Stop" error code and such type of blue screen errors can only be due to the corruption that has taken place in the registry files, or your system hardware may be facing a problem. The best way to get rid of this problem is to use a registry cleaner to clean up all the corrupted files.

Ensure that your computer drivers are all updated, since the old drivers can also cause the hardware to dysfunction. This can be done by using a device driver updating process, which would scan the computer and download the updates, and make your computer drivers updated. This is better than updating the drivers manually, and can fix blue screen of death.

When you find that even after drivers of the system are updated, you continue to get the bsod error message you should now try to find out whether the Registry File has any kind of spyware, or corrupted files through some changes that you have made in the system. Even inactive codes can corrupt the files in the registry, resulting in crashing of your operating system. You can fix bsod with registry cleaner, since specific registry cleaner software can completely eliminate all these problems, and get the system function properly.

If spyware or malware is not the problem which is causing the blue screen of death error, your registry file may have jammed with inactive code, resulting in slowing down of the system, resulting in such blue screen error messages, leading to shutdown of the computer. If you delete such inactive codes your system will function properly.

If it is a problem related with the hardware of the computer, you may have to run the diagnostic tool, to check all the hardware, whether it is working properly, and locates the problems, which are causing the bsod error, thus enabling your sort out the problem.

Fixing blue screen of death error is easy to do with registry cleaner. If you scan your computer it will detect the errors in your registry and safely remove them.

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