Kids make a website

Kids make a website

Product Description

Build a great personal or business website… absolutely no experience needed!

Why pay a professional web developer? If you can use a word processor, you can do it yourself! This package contains all the software, templates, and simple step-by-step instructions you need to build a great site in practically no time!

Build sites like these using our professional-quality templates:

-Family sites

-Hobby sites

-Community and nonprofit sites

-Online storefronts that accept credit card payments via PayPal

-Post video on YouTube

8 Easy Projects

In this book you’ll see just how easy it is to create your own website. The CD included with this book contains professional website templates and a free web page editor. With the web page editor, you can quickly and easily customize the templates into your personal websites. Better still, using the editor is as simple as using a word processor.

Use easy web-based services to:

-Sell products at your own eBay Store

-Create your own personal or professional blog

-Display your digital photos on your own Snapfish site

-Share your videos on YouTube

-Create a MySpace page that’ll stand out from the crowd

-Build your social network with your own Facebook presence

You won’t believe how easy it is to build your own site...or how much fun!

CD-ROM contains all the tools you need:

• The complete open source SeaMonkey Suite software toolset for building websites (no restrictions, not a demo!)
• HTML sample templates

About the Author

Create Your Own Website is author Scott Mitchell’s eighth book; his others are Sams Teach Yourself Active Server Pages 3.0 in 21 Days(Sams); Designing Active Server Pages (O’Reilly); ASP.NET: Tips, Tutorials, and Code (Sams); ASP.NET Data Web Controls Kick Start (Sams);Teach Yourself ASP.NET in 24 Hours (Sams); Teach Yourself ASP.NET 2.0 in 24 Hours (Sams); and Teach Yourself ASP.NET 3.5 in 24 Hours(Sams). Scott is a regular columnist for Microsoft’s MSDN Magazine and has authored more than 1,000 online articles on his website, 4GuysFromRolla.com. Scott’s nonwriting accomplishments include speaking at numerous technical user groups and conferences across the country. Scott also teaches web technology classes at the University of California–San Diego University Extension. In addition to teaching and writing, Scott is a software developer. He works as an independent consultant and has authored and sold several commercial software applications.

Reading this book allows someone to create five different styles and types of Websites by walking the reader through accessing Composer and desired templates, altering the text, color, and photos to personalize each Webpage, obtain a host provider, register a domain name, and publish each Webpage to a Web server.
* Chapter 1 introduces the basic functions of what a browser and Web page are, while showing the reader how to down load a free software program provided with the book.
* Chapter 2 describes the logistics of setting up a public location for viewing Web pages on the Internet by locating a host provider.
* Chapter 3 discuses customizing a Family/Personal Website template by using Composer like any other word processor, adding or deleting pages, and saving with a URL to the same folder located on the reader's computer.
* Chapter 4 continues with detailed items in "Creating a Hobby Website" by scaling images, changing existing hyperlinks, adding rows, discussing anchors, and the effect they have on sharing information with Website viewers.
* Chapter 5 "Creating a Website for an Organization" introduces obtaining a map from the Internet to replace the templates generic sample, offering email access to customers, and providing additional tips.
* Chapter 6 "Creating an Informational Website for Your Business" shows how to customize color within cells, add tables for creating coupons, and setting navigational hyperlinks.
* Chapter 7 "Creating an Online Storefront" deals with how to implement an e-Commerce Website by merging with "Creating Paypal Merchant Account" Website. With this tool, advanced programming skills that are typically required to create a shopping cart, a means to accept payment, and the functions of using forms for transferring users from one Website to another are eliminated. This lifts those advanced tasks off the reader and transfers them onto Paypal's Website in exchange for a small percentage of the product profit.
* The Bonus Chapter goes into more depth covering specific topics, like HTML, Understanding How the Internet Works, Domain names, and Optimizing Your Digital Pictures.

Throughout this book, the author highlights topics that have been covered in Shelly Cashman's "Discovering Computers" text book. One is how the Internet works. Scott Mitchell relates the Internet to the U.S. post office and adds a picture that gives a simple analogy for beginners. I appreciated the comparison, and could visualize the delivery process of digital information clearly (Mitchell 130).

The second item introduced in chapter 2 explained the concept of bandwidth. Mitchell shares very practical information related to space and cost that should be considered when choosing a host provider. The nominal comparisons made corresponding to bandwidth gave me a better appreciation for this concept.

The title "Create Your Own Website Using What You Already Know" very accurately describes what to expect out of the contents and functionality this book provides. The reader will be happy to know that the author's voice is very excited to share information in a reassuring way. Scott Mitchell continually keeps the reader in touch with the fact that the process he is laying out will be fun and easy to do, that the reader will not only learn the process but enjoy going through it.

I found the way the information was presented kept the progression of details simple enough for a first timer to feel very comfortable using and exploring all the items introduced.

"Mitchell gives us a breezy, confident approach to making a website. He emphasises that, within reason, you can do it all by yourself. With the aid of this book, naturally.

He walks us through the templates on the CD that comes with the book. The general thrust is to show how if you can read and write, well, then you can make a website. There is certainly more involved than in merely using a browser to peruse the web. But the book gives a total absence of HTML tags, until the last chapter. Instead, Mitchell lists 3 web authoring tools - Microsoft's FrontPage, Macromedia's Dreamweaver and Mozilla's Composer. These handle the grungy details.

You can regard this book as an independent validation of the claims made for the above tools. Indeed, no programming appears to be necessary for a simple website.

Along these lines, the chapter on making an online storefront is well done. The example storefront is actually quite limited. But even so, to have it running without programming is impressive. "

How Can I Make My Own Website

If you want to have an online presence but don't know how to do it, you are more than likely asking yourself that vexing question: "How can I make my own website?" luckily, for internet newbie’s there are a number of simple options to grasp a quick internet presence without spending a great deal of cash, or in fact, any cash at all. The option you go for will in the end come down to your purpose.

Instead of asking "How can I make my own website?" maybe the first question you should ask is "Why do I want my own presence on the net?" Your response to this question will determine what sort of website you will choose and how you will go about creating it.

For instance, if you only want a website to show family news with friends and relatives, a free hosting service who offers an online website creation tool may well be an ideal option. No cost websites can also be a great option if you would like to create a hobby site that

If you simply want a site as a forum for your thoughts, you might want to start with a free blog such as Blogger or Wordpress. They are simple to use, search engine friendly so your new articles can be listed relatively quickly, and a great way to get your feet wet on the World Wide Web.

If you are planning to start an online business, you can begin with a free hosting service if they offer a reasonable site building tool, but you will probably need to quickly upgrade to a chargeable service which offers higher bandwidth and add-ons. Ideally

There are alternative types of chargeable hosting services. Some offer an online site creation tool, others don't. There is also a difference between the quality of website building software so you need to research the quality of the websites it produces before committing yourself. When deciding on a chargeable hosting service, you also need to be careful to compare like for like services. There are so many different website hosting companies that offer this facility now that you couldn't research this in one afternoon. If you decide to go down this route try to use a service that gives you the most flexibility on how you design your website and also how much webspace they let you have. Choosing this option in all honesty still means you do not have total control but worth thinking about anyway.

So the answer to your question "How can I make my own website?" is a simple one! You no longer require programming knowledge or pay big dollars to an experienced professional to design your site. You can make your own site with user-friendly software whether online or off the shelf. If you purchase your own site creating software, you gain more control over your choice of hosting service and you can move your site to another company if you are not happy. Whichever way you choose to do it, modern technology makes site creation easy. You just need to do the research to find the best fit for you.

Chris Elm is sill new to all this website building. Although still learning, what he now knows he feels will be of great value to someone just starting out. If you would like to see videos of others doing just this please visit his site: http://www.HowCanIMakeMyOwnWebsite.com

Free computer security

Free computer security

This video shows you how to download a antivirus program, firewall, and a spyware program. The programs shown in this tutorial are Avira AntiVir Personal, Comodo Firewall Pro, and Malwarebytes antimalware. These programs are all free and can be downloaded from www.download.com.

Before I start I want to make clear the fact that not everyone affords licensed spyware software thus the need for free downloadable tools for spyware and spybots removal. These being said, computer security is one of the top priorities when it comes to online browsing. If you have a personal computer and you don't consider it a good investment to buy security software, just download free spybot removal tools.

If you still don't know where to get this software from, do a search using "free Spybot Search and Destroy Download" and the first link that is displayed is the one you need. If you really need to upgrade you computer security you could try to download a freeware antivirus. Usually, the new versions of antivirus protection also offer an active protection against spyware and spybots.

Removal tools such as these make life a lot less complicated when it comes protecting you vital information. Even big companies invest a lot of money in computer security and even more in acquiring licenses and updates for the existing software. We can't compare with them but that doesn't mean that we need to spend money in our personal computers security. I see no point in doing this when there is a lot of available software out there that is more than capable of handling the job. Take my advice and use them because they might work a lot better that licensed software and you don't have to worry about security updates, they come also free.

If you really want to take the work out of looking for that right Spyware Protection from a Spybot go to the Internet and get a Free Spybot Download or a Spybot Search and Destroy to prevent your vital information from being ripped from your computer.

Gift suggestions

"While Office 2003 offered a refreshed look and some improvements in functionality, the basic structure remained the same. While veteran users were able to easily navigate the familiar menus, it had become increasingly difficult to locate some features (for instance, in Word, would you find "insert new rows" to a table in the "insert" or "table" menu?).

With Office 2007, Microsoft offers the "ribbon", a new and more intuitive way to access features that we used to find in the menus. While the features are basically the same, they are now grouped together according to when and how you would normally use them. These groupings are accessed by clicking on tabs, which are organized in the order you'd use them. The best way to get a better understanding of this change is to check out the screenshots, or download a free trial version of Office from Microsoft. While Office 2007 was released at the same time as Vista, you do not need Vista in order to run it. The program ran fine on my Windows XP laptop, which only had 512 MB of RAM, and it runs even better on my Vista laptop with 2 GB of RAM.

As for which version of Office to buy, this is the third time I've opted for the Home and Student version (which has had other names in previous releases, but is still being sold for $149). I need Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and this is the most cost-effective way to get those programs. I was disappointed that Microsoft dropped Outlook from the Home and Student version. In order to continue to use Outlook, I installed Outlook 2003 and haven't had any problems.

Instead of Outlook, you get OneNote, a program that uses notebooks and tabs to save and organize all sorts of files and documents. I haven't had much time to play with OneNote yet, but the more I use it, the more impressed I am with it. It looks like one of those programs that you can personalize to meet your own needs and not have to fight with it to get it to do what you want.

This is a significant upgrade and should allow all users, new and experienced, to work more efficiently and quickly."

Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007

Product Features

• Essential software suite for home computer users makes it a pleasure to complete schoolwork and other tasks
• Includes 2007 versions of Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and OneNote
• Intuitive user interface that exposes commonly used commands; updated graphics and formatting galleries help you to easily produce high-quality documents
• Work with confidence and security thanks to the improved automatic Document Recovery tool and the Document Inspector tool, which removes personally identifiable information from your document
• Enhanced Help system includes online tutorials with step-by-step instructions; includes OneNote, a digital notebook that helps you gather, organize, and search many types of information in one place

Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 is the essential software suite for home computer users and includes 2007 versions of Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and OneNote. This system enables you to quickly and easily create great-looking documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, and organize your notes and information in one place, making it easier and more enjoyable for you to get things done.

The new streamlined workspace and easy-to-browse tabs make program features easier to find and use.View larger.

Insert graphics and charts such as these into your documents to make them more appealing. View larger.

Use the new diagram and improved charting tools to create rich and stunning visuals and charts. View larger.

Quick and easy-to-use table styles help your tables look great and consistent across Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations.View larger.

The Document Inspector helps find and remove potentially sensitive "hidden" information from your documents, presentations, and spreadsheets.View larger.

Office OneNote 2007 enables you to gather, organize, and search almost any type of information. The powerful search tool is shown here, with results highlighted in yellow. View larger.

This updated version features a new streamlined user interface that exposes commonly used commands, enhanced graphics, and formatting capabilities that let you create high-quality documents, plus a powerful note and information organization tool, and more reliability and security with the document inspector tool and improved automatic document recovery. With these enhancements, Home and Student 2007 makes it a pleasure to complete schoolwork and other tasks at home.

Which edition of Office is right for you? View a comparison of Microsoft Office 2007 editions.

Create High-Quality Documents
Home and Student 2007 gives you access to updated graphics, formatting galleries, and an intuitive user interface that exposes commonly used commands. These features enable you to easily produce high-quality documents that will make you proud. Improved picture, charting, and graphics tools help you produce better-looking documents, spreadsheets, and presentations more quickly, while a large library of standard charts, quick formatting tools, and SmartArt diagrams make it easy to include rich and stunning visuals and charts. The results-oriented user interface makes it easier for you to find and use product features so you can enhance your documents according to your specifications. More stable bullets and numbers, SmartArt diagrams, and graphics and charting galleries provide you with a wealth of other formatting choices. Meanwhile, document themes help ensure a consistent appearance among the documents you create in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, to make working across the programs you use most more convenient. PowerPoint also features context-sensitive tabs and easy-to-use galleries that make it simple for you to include tables and other graphics in your documents.

Enhanced Reliability and Security Features
With an improved automatic Document Recovery tool and the new Document Inspector tool for removing personally identifiable information from your documents, Home and Student 2007 helps you work with more confidence and security. Thanks to these two features, you'll never have to worry about losing documents after a system failure or exposing your personal identification information or unwanted comments to others before sharing your documents.

Formatting galleries make it easier to find and apply formatting changes. View larger.

User-Friendly Operation
Packed with innovative features and improvements, Home and Student 2007 has a streamlined interface and an enhanced Help system, including online tutorials with step-by-step instructions, so you can quickly learn the product and find the answers to your questions. In addition, command tabs on the results-oriented Ribbon reveal commonly used commands that previously appeared only in lengthy drop-down menus. The Help system also offers a smooth transition between the Help menu in the Microsoft Office system and Help on the Internet (when connected). Larger, more informative ScreenTips provide help concerning commands, and the command tabs themselves are context-sensitive, changing automatically depending upon the task that you are trying to complete, so you won't waste time figuring out the appropriate command. When you need more guidance, online tutorials provide step-by-step instructions for common tasks.

Organize Notes and Information
Home and Student 2007 includes OneNote, a digital notebook that helps you gather, organize, and search many types of information in one place. This means you can consolidate typed text, images, audio and video recordings, digital handwritten notes, Web clippings, and more on the same page. OneNote also provides flexible note-taking tools to help you organize information the way you want. Categorize important projects or information in a way that makes sense to you, using an easy-to-use layout of notebooks, sections, and pages. Type or organize content anywhere on the page and track important items with customizable note tags. To help keep you on track, the powerful Instant Search feature helps you to find information you are looking for quickly. With it you can even search handwritten notes, the text in images and scanned documents, and spoken words in audio recordings.

Preview Changes and Spot Trends
Home and Student 2007 saves you time by making it easier to format your Office documents with Live Preview. This tool lets you quickly preview proposed changes to your document while you're working on it without having to repeatedly search through layers of menus. Taking a look at your proposed formatting before committing to it lets you experiment without risk and can help minimize future edits. Excel features highly visual conditional formatting with new data bars, more colorful gradients, and icons that you can use to format data based on specific rules, so you can more easily identify key data trends, which can help you study and prepare written papers or reports.

Create and Save Custom Slide Layouts
PowerPoint lets you create presentations with ease using prebuilt and user-defined custom slide layouts. With the custom layout feature you can quickly create the precise layout you envision without being bound by one of the prepackaged, standard layouts. You can then save your custom layout for use in future presentations.

Broader Distribution of Your Documents
Home and Student 2007's features aren't limited to the work you do at home; they extend to broader distribution of your documents and presentations. New support for Portable Document Format (PDF) and XML Paper Specification (XPS) file formats helps ensure increased distribution and sharing of your documents with users on any platform. This is particularly ideal for either sharing documents with friends and families, or for presenting information and assignments in a computer-integrated class.


Product Description
May be installed on up to three non-commercial home computers.

My Best Friend Jerry: Gift Suggestions and Birthday Deals

oday is my best friend Jerry’s birthday. He is now twenty-five years old. Of course, being the klutz that I am, I had forgotten the date, and that’s why I woke up this morning cursing at the ceiling. A few minutes after that, I was at the computer table, searching the Internet for gift suggestions andonline coupon codes.

What to give Jerry? He lives in an apartment by himself, a bachelor with too much space around him and too much time in his hands, but he really isn’t that much into sports or rock music or video games like most guys in our neighborhood his age are. Well, he does love alcohol – but I am not going to spend on cases of beer or box of expensive wine for that guy! (I like to promote good habits, you see.)

Anyway, I am thinking of getting him a one-year subscription to a men’s magazine, like Esquire or Men’s Health or GQ. He can read the tips in there on how to keep fit, maintain a bachelor pad, tie a necktie, shave against the grain, and date successfully. Do you think he’ll get the hint and take offense? The truth is, he needs a bit of motivation right now to make his life more active, more productive, more worthwhile. And nothing motivates more than a magazine with, say, a picture of Tyra Banks on the cover.

Or maybe I ought to get him a stainless steel kitchenware set. I saw one on the Web that’s on sale – from a thousand bucks to five hundred, as long as you use the store’s online coupon codes. It comes with a cooker, a countertop oven, a coffee maker, a 3-speed blender, and a chopper. (Pretty good deal, I tell you.) Anyway, I think that this gift will teach Jerry the rudiments of preparing a home-cooked meal; he can even invite a date over to his house for some roast potatoes and fried buttermilk chicken. He won’t have to go to McDonald’s all the time; he won’t have to stuff his mouth with cheeseburgers and high-cholesterol snacks. He can watch his weight, his diet, his health. (I am such a thoughtful friend.)

Speaking of watching, I have one more birthday gift idea for Jerry. He loves movies: action flicks, romance comedies, sci-fi films, critically acclaimed dramas, classics from the fifties, what-have-you. (In fact, our love of movies is one thing we have in common.) Should I present him with tickets or a free membership to an online DVD rental store? I am still not sure, but at least Blockbuster rental store has wisely made available at their website all sorts of gift cards and online coupon codes. The sweet part about this deal is that it can be shared with family and friends. I can come over to his apartment anytime to chill out and enjoy a Star Wars marathon or something.

Or maybe I should just get him a Kobe Bryant Olympics Edition Team USA jersey.

Dave is computer programmer and web developer, and a weekend writer.He has been operating Free Essays 123 for over 4 years. Get more free essays, term papers and book reports by visitinghttp://www.freeessays123.com.

Photo editing program

The first step to choosing photo-editing software is determining how you want to manipulate photographs. In part, this will depend on your level of skill. If you are an amateur and just want to "mess around," you would just want the most basic photo-editing software. If you are an experienced user, you may want more features like creative effects. Next, you will need to decide on a budget. Photo-editing software can be quite expensive. If the software is for a student, find the academic versions. These versions will provide everything a student would need and they offer a very large discount.

Once you know what you need and the amount you can afford start comparing programs. Consult the following list to begin your research:

The Top 5 Photo-Editing Software Programs

Adobe Photoshop Elements 7

Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 is an easy to use program that offers a wide variety of features for both the beginner and the expert. Some of its more unique features include a beginner's guided editor and online functions through adobe express.

Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2

For years, Paint Shop Pro has been and excellent choice for beginners and professionals alike. The easy to use interface makes it perfect for beginners and the reasonable price appeals to professionals. Paint Shop Pro X2 is almost as powerful as Photoshop Elements 7. However, it does not offer some of the less popular features.

Serif Photo Plus X2

This is the perfect program for someone just starting out editing photos. It is easy to use and offers sound assistance. The program contains all the necessary features for beginners but offers some of the more advanced features also. The beginner will not easily grow out of this program.

Ulead Photo Impact X3

This program is a little more difficult to use as Adobe Photoshop Elements 7. However, once the basics have been mastered the program becomes much easier to use. The program can be used in two modes - expressfix and full edit. Ulead Photo Impact X3 also has the ability to make web pages.

ACDSee Photo Editor 2008

This program combines photo editing, graphic design and presentation projects. It features How-To projects to help the novice learn some of the more complex features. However, it does not offer much in the way of sharing or organizing.

Now, you can edit photos easily like the professionals! Visit http://www.PhotoEditorX.com now. PhotoEditorX is the advanced photo editor software that allows you to enhance and manipulate photos Be among the rare few to own this "highly-exclusive" software suite before it vanishes. This is previously available only to professionals in the magazine houses... Visit PhotoEditorX.com now to grab your *FREE* photo sketching software

Dreanweaver

Dreanweaver Tutorial - Create a basic Webpage Insert Content

Dreanweaver

What is Dreanweaver and the Advantage of it?

The ability to use Adobe Dreamweaver puts web designers ahead of other competitors in a job market with very few opportunities.

One good thing about Adobe Dreamweaver is that you may choose to use both HTML and CSS coding systems at the same time. You can learn which best suits you with Dreamweaver training in San Francisco. By the end of the Dreamweaver web design training, you ought to be able to navigate the entire Dreamweaver interface.

You will also be able to know how HTML and CSS interaction results in high quality web pages, and how to make use of a design view so as to create a web page. You will easily notice that this design view can be displayed on your favorite word processor (Microsoft Word, etc.). This makes creating websites on Dreamweaver extremely easy to use.

Dreamweaver Los Angeles classes will help you to acquire the knowledge on how to lay out tables as well as upload sites into a local or remote server. There are many other topics that you get through Adobe training but you first need to learn about the fundamentals first.

Dreamweaver is a highly interactive web page editor which enables you to build websites that are highly dynamic without having to know HTML or code anything. However, experienced users can make use of codes if this is what they prefer. If you learn Dreamweaver skills such as 'drag-and-drop', the work of making websites becomes very easy. A graphical user interface allows the user to construct highly advanced websites which make use of very complex scripting technologies.

Dreamweaver training also gives you information on how to set up login functionality which is cheap and easy to use. Some of the technologies that are incorporated are JavaScript and ColdFusion. An introductory Dreamweaver Los Angeles training class will allot you a hands-on, practical approach to web design and maintenance.

Through our interactive Dreamweaver classes, you can easily be able to differentiate between different types used and how they interact with one another. After that, you can now be ready for classes that deal with the actual work of creating websites. It is through Dreamweaver Los Angeles classes that the fundamental principles of web design are learned. Find out more about Dream weaver and Dreamweaver Los Angeles.

Flash design UK

Finding A Flash Designer In The UK

Deckchair is a uk design company with years of experience as flash designers.

An introduction to flash design.

First came the Internet, which contained only plain unformatted text. Then came the web, which gave us text formatting and graphics. As the web has developed and images we see on TV and in movies have become more spectacular, uk flash designers have looked for ways of delivering ever more animated and interactive web experiences.

Flash designers use software created by Macromedia to add sound, movement and interactivity to a website. Whether creating an entire site or just adding elements of interactivity to a standard site, a good flash designer can give a website that WOW factor.

When do you need a flash designer?
The main advantage of hiring a flash designer is that they can enhance your visitors' experience. Sites built in flash suit products whose success depends on separating yourself from your rivals on factors other than how competitive your prices are. To this end, a good flash designer can help to build your brand and add value to your product. It is important therefore to recognise what type of product you are selling and identify your target audience.

On the downside, the content of a flash website is not currently indexed by search engines. This makes it difficult to get websites built entirely in flash good search engine rankings. For those looking to expand their online presence through the search engines, a full flash site may not be the best option but your designer can still include a flash presentation on your site.

Vector graphics and animations in flash load quickly but they don't load as quickly as text and graphics. As a result, download times can put visitors off unless they are confident your site contains content they want.

http://www.deckchair.co.uk/flash-designer.php

Family Portrait Photography

Posing for family portraits requires a basic understand of good composition, as all of the people in the group should create a fluid pattern across the photograph to keep the viewer's eye moving. Pose a family for a group portrait with information from a certified professional photographer in this free video on photography.

Expert: Bob Coates
Contact: www.bcphotography.com
Bio: Bob Coates of Bob Coates Photography has been a professional photographer for 13 years in both Arizona and the Virgin Islands.
Filmmaker: Chuck Tyler

Family Portrait Photography - Use Personal Holiday Cards to Increase Business

Personal Holiday Cards are a terrific way for photographers to market family portraits. This article addresses why this is an effective marketing strategy and includes some tips on how market this way effectively.

Sending out you own personal Holiday cards is effective because it is a non-intrusive way to demonstrate the product that you sell at a time when people are purchasing that product. People friends, family, and past clients receive these cards without as a holiday gift rather than a piece of advertising. They see how beautiful you card is and think "we should get a card like this." They see your website on the card and contact you to get family portrait taken and cards made.

The following will help ensure that your marketing strategy is effective:

1. Your cards need to be top notch. Don't skip on printing or on editing time to get your own family picture just right. Your business is being judged on how nice these cards are.

2. Have your website information on a prominent location.

3. Send out your holiday cards early. I suggest you have them by the last week in September or first week in October. This gives people a chance to see your card, schedule an appointment and have their own cards made and sent out to their friends by December. While this may seem early to you, it is a way to demonstrate that you are on top of your game. You are not a procrastinator but rather you get things done early.

Many photographers already send out personal holiday cards by following these tips; they can make this already scheduled activity into an effective marketing tool.

Vanessa and Stephen Honda are Laguna Beach Photography business owners who specializes in weddings, Seniors and family portraits.

Paint shop photo x2 ultimate

Restore Faded Photos - Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 Ultimate

Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 For Image Editing - 11 Good Reasons to Choose Paint Shop Pro Over Photoshop

Paint shop photo x2 ultimate

I have been using Corel's Paint Shop Pro for several years. As a professional photographer, I absolutely depend on it for my daily image editing and management. Though I am in the minority of professionals who don't use Photoshop, I take pride in using and promoting this very powerful and cost-effective image editing suite. Here are several reasons why this is a great tool for professionals and amateur photographers. These comments are based on Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 (PSP/X2).

1. Cost. The base product is $65, with occasional sales or specials offering it for under $50. Corel also bundles it with painter essentials, media recovery, a thumb drive and more under the "Ultimate" package for under $80. Compare this to Photoshop elements at $95 and CS4 at $700. PSP/X2 is much closer in capability to CS4 than elements. And upgrades are very reasonable and frequent.

2. Workflow. The Express Lab feature lets you quickly make edits to many files quickly. The Smart Photo Fix will make suggested changes to an image to improve attributes such as brightness, contrast and more. For rapid processing of many images, this tool is very capable.

3. Shortcuts. There are several ways to activate most of the features, including assigning new shortcut keys to frequently used functions. For example, I map Alt-F1 to the Levels adjustment, and Alt-F2 to Curves. Within those dialogs, you can also assign presets so that you can reproduce certain settings with a single click. This alone saves me hours each month when editing hundreds of images.

4. Costmetics. I take a lot of people pictures, and quick cosmetic editing is one of the strongest attributes in this product. The makeup brush deals with blemishes, lines and skin tone differences. The toothbrush whitens teeth, and the suntan brush does what you expect it would. I can complete a cosmetic edit on a high school senior boy in just a minute or two. And the results are very good.

5. Image Adjustment. The good contrast tools, Curves and Levels, are quick and full of features. Straighten allows you to rotate and crop to a horizon line. White balance and other color adjustments are equally strong. Black and white conversion and "time machine" film style emulation give you some great creative options. There are many great features for image editing, cleanup and creative change.

6. Workspace. You can define, save and retrieve different workspaces for different editing activities. This lets you open and anchor dialogs and change other settings on how the program operates.

7. Plug-ins. Many if not most plug-ins designed to work with Photoshop will also work with PSP/X2. I use one called Virtual Photographer which gives me even more opportunity to artistically edit images.

8. Automation. There is a robust scripting language which allows you to automate tasks such as resize, watermark and rotate. Any function that can be done on screen can be recorded using a macro mode, and saved and edited. These scripts can then be applied in bulk to any and all images in a folder. I use this feature to copy and resize images to a new folder for upload to my lab for proofing prints. You can also bulk rename files so that they follow a name scheme and sequence. This is great for renaming the keeper images from an event such as a wedding.

9. Preservation. You can enable Preserve Original mode, where the original images is saved in a lower folder, able to be recovered if you wish to go back. This simple feature gives you the peace of mind that your images are preserved regardless of your editing.

10. Layers. I use the Layers capability very often. It is very strong, for both text and graphics/images. Special characteristics such as emboss and drop shadow are available. Layer masks and interactions provide for very powerful and quick image changes. I often produce partial color black and white images using layers and the Channel Mixer and the eraser brush. I can create nearly all partial color edits in under 5 minutes, often in under 1 minute.

11. Development. Corel releases a new version of PSP about yearly. Each new release is more stable, faster and brings more technical and non-technical features for users of all levels. My per-year cost of use is probably $50 or less, and that's purchasing every upgrade as it comes out.

12. Opportunities. I do have some needs that aren't met by PSP/X2. The browser could be more capable with image viewing, ranking and moving/copying. I use another tool for the portion of my workflow that I call "Image Triage", but I would prefer they beef up their browser interface to handle this capability. I would consider this a feature request.

This is my personal experience from my use of the product, not a comprehensive feature listing. As a professional photographer, I am very satisfied with the performance and capabilities of the product, and find it to be very cost effective and productive. I encourage you to try the product as an alternative to the other image editing products out there.

John Huegel is a photographer in the Erie, Pennsylvania area who specializes in Seniors, Dance Studio, Families and other groups. He is active in many charitable and volunteer activities in the Erie area. His work can be seen at http://jhphotomusic.com