Microsoft Photo Story – Editing your pictures

Creating a digital slideshow can be a fun experience. One part of doing so may include using simple editing procedures to make your pictures look more bright and colorful. Microsoft Photo Story 3, a digital slideshow creator, allows you to make minor corrections to individual pictures in your slideshow. Other blogs in this series have discussed organizing, importing, and arranging pictures for your slideshow. Editing pictures On the “Import and arrange your photos” screen (see screenshot near the end of this blog), you will see five little buttons below the picture display window. They look like this: Here’s a brief … Continue reading →

Microsoft Photo Story – Arranging your pictures

Now that you have organized and selected the pictures you want to use in your digital slideshow, you are ready to arrange and edit your pictures. If you missed the beginning of this series on creating a slideshow of your digital pictures, you can find it here. Arranging your pictures After selecting the pictures you want to use, they will appear in the timeline across the bottom of the program window. You can see in the screenshot below, I have selected five photos for my slideshow. Unless you took the time to order your pictures beforehand, you may want to … Continue reading →

Microsoft Photo Story – Importing Photos

Using a photo slideshow can be a convenient and fun way to show off all of your digital photos. There are numerous software programs that allow you to organize, edit, and publish your photos to a digital slideshow. One such program is Microsoft Photo Story 3, which is free to all Windows XP users. Earlier blogs introduced Photo Story 3 and discussed organizing your photos before creating your slideshow. This blog will begin the walkthrough of using Photo Story 3 to create a simple, but entertaining slideshow. Selecting a Task Photo Story 3 uses a simple, non-flashy interface that is … Continue reading →

Microsoft Photo Story – Getting Organized

So you’ve downloaded a free copy of Microsoft Photo Story 3, as talked about in an earlier blog, and are ready to begin making your slideshow. Where do you start? The purpose of this blog is to help you get started organizing your photos before you start importing them into Photo Story. Select a topic It is always a good idea to have a topic in mind of the type of slideshow you want to create. Maybe the slideshow will be about your vacation last year to Mt. Rushmore or the latest family birthday party. Selecting a topic will make … Continue reading →

Digital photo slideshows – Microsoft Photo Story 3

What do you do with all of the digital photos you’ve taken? It is easy to let them sit on your computer’s hard drive for months without a single human eye ever seeing them. You could run down to your local convenience store or photo shop and get prints made. You could even print them out at home using a color inkjet printer. If you really want to show your friends that you are tech savvy (of course you are after regularly reading this blog), might I suggest putting your photos into a digital slideshow. You can easily make a … Continue reading →

Making text easier to read on your monitor

Operating System Required: Windows XP In one of my earlier blog entries I discussed computer eye strain and some simple and easy ways to help reduce it. This will help prevent sore eyes, headaches, and the aching neck and backs associated with prolonged computer usage. Today I will be helping the families.com readers who have both Windows XP as their operating system and use a LCD monitor. If you have a CRT monitor (Cathode Ray Tube, the “TV” type) this may help you a little but this is mainly for Flat Panel and laptop displays. Microsoft provides us with ClearType … Continue reading →

Saving an entire Web page for offline viewing

Saving an entire Web page, graphics, links and all, is a really simple process. Yesterday, we discussed how to save portions of text and graphics from Web pages. Today, we’ll cover how to save complete, individual Web pages using Microsoft Internet Explorer. I’ll discuss two popular formats that you can use to save Web pages: HTML and MHTML. Saving HMTL files Saving Web pages is similar to saving any other type of file. One way to save an entire Web page is to save the actual programming code, so the page can be recreated on your computer without need for … Continue reading →

Saving and printing text from Web pages

Have you ever needed to save a few lines of text from a Web site? Or have you wanted to save an entire Web page for later viewing? Saving text and Web pages can be useful after you’ve made an online purchase, for example, and want to save your transaction ID or the digital receipt. There are numerous ways to save text and graphics from Web sites and I’ll show you a couple of the quick ways today. Tomorrow, we’ll discuss how to save Web pages in their entirety for later viewing. Copy and Paste Copying and pasting is a … Continue reading →

Tax preparation software in review

So you’ve decided to complete your federal income tax return on your own. You can either fill out all of the forms and worksheets by hand or use tax preparation software for your home computer. If you choose to do the later, the question becomes, “Which tax preparation software should I buy?” To help you out, I’ll briefly review software from each of the three main players in the tax preparation software market that I mentioned in blogs earlier today and yesterday. I’ll leave the decision of which program to use up to you, but will give recommendations along the … Continue reading →

Tax Software FAQs 2

Tax season is upon us. With about a month and a half to go before the last day to file your federal income taxes (if you owe something), it’s time to start thinking about completing your income tax return. Yesterday, we began answering some questions about income tax preparation software for purchase. Now, we’ll continue answering some additional questions before later today reviewing a few tax preparation programs for your computer. How much do tax preparation programs usually cost? It depends on which edition you purchase. The least expensive is TaxAct standard for free, with TaxCut standard for $9.99 and … Continue reading →