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COMPUTEREASE: The Creative PC
Dr. Thomas W. Shinder
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So you say you’ve got these great ideas, but your hands just don’t seem to do
what your mind sees? This is where your computer shines. Think of the
computer as the "go between" between your wonderful imagination and your
hands. It will help you express your imagination.
How? Let’s look at some of the popular programs available which allow the
creative process to be expressed.
Suppose you’ve taken some art classes in college, but you just can’t seem to
get into the paint smells, color mixing, and the mess of paint brushes and
goop left over when you’re done? Your hands just can’t seem to draw that
perfect circle or square? Bring in Corel Draw!
With Corel Draw you can draw whatever is in your mind's eye. But unlike
working within the limitations of our physical realm, now you CAN draw those
perfect images. Rather than wasting time concentrating on how to draw those
flawless circles and squares, with Corel Draw you have the option of having
the program do it for you. The program comes with a wide range of geometric
objects and shapes to choose from. The color palette spans the entire
spectrum visible to the human eye; just pick the color you want.
Perhaps drawing things from scratch isn’t your bag. Rather, you have already
seen something that suits your idea of what you'd like to draw, but the image
needs some modification to fit your artist's vision. Try Corel Photopaint.
Photopaint is meant to be an "image editor". For example, say you have a
photograph of yourself, but it's not exactly what you'd call "perfect." With
Photopaint, go right ahead and change your hair color, eye color, even your
skin color! Want higher cheekbones? No problem with Photopaint. You’re even
able to "transpose" images, so that you can use that photo of yourself taken
in your living room, and with Photopaint, put yourself in Paris!
For more information on these Corel image editing and
drawing tools you can
hit
Need to put together a slide show for a presentation? Tired of overheads? Try
Microsoft PowerPoint. This product comes with dozens of presentation
templates and even helps with the brainstorming process given the type of
presentation you would like to give. Perhaps you are putting together a talk
for a sales pitch, and want to be convincing and use all those multimedia neat
things you’ve seen others use. Well, you could start from scratch and get
those pictures and design your backgrounds yourself. Use PowerPoint, and
you’ve got a high quality, professional presentation in less than an hour!
It you want to know more about PowerPoint, try
The personal video camera has brought our personal lives to the "small
screen". But maybe you want to do more than just play back your home movies.
Using hardware/software combinations you can bring
those images on tape to your computer to edit, rearrange or reformat to give
them a professional and slick appearance.
There are thousands of still pictures waiting to be captured sitting on your
videotapes. Using a hardware device called a "Snappy" together with its
companion software, you can capture those images, and edit
them with ease. Not only can you capture still images from the scenes on your
video tapes, you can also create ".avi" files from them. An .avi file
(Windows audio-video instructions) is a movie file. Say your daughter is
graduating from college, but her grandmother can’t make it there. Just take
the video, move it over to Snappy, create an .avi file of the event, and email
to your
mom! She can experience the whole event the same day, complete with sound.
Find out more about Snappy at
Maybe you’re interested in something a little more
sophisticated. You want to direct your own movies! And, you want to save
them to video tape, rather
than use up a lot of space on your hard drive to make avi’s. Bring in the
Video Director Studio 200. With this software/hardware combination product,
you can produce your own movies.
With the Video Director Studio you can save "scenes"
(portions of your video tape), and then rearrange the scenes with drag and
drop ease. Add titles and transitions (the product comes with over 100 wipes,
fades, or dissolves). You can use the soundtrack from the video itself, or
dub in your own customized sound.
You control both the VCR and the Camcorder from your
computer. Once you’re done with your academy award winning presentation,
click the "make tape" button, and your movie is made!
For more information on home video production try
The Internet seems to be everywhere. You turn on the
televison and all the commercials refer you to their websites. During
business interactions, right after someone asks you what your email address is
they
want to know the url for your website. What? You don’t have a website?
Whether you’re a newbie or an old ‘net pro, you can create your own websites
easily. I know, people talk about "programming" HTML, XML, Active X, Java
and scary stuff like that, so you just give up on ever being
enough of a "propeller head" to ever make a web page.
No more! There are hundreds of "WYSIWYG" (what you see is what you get) web
page editors. Many are freeware or nominal cost shareware. But if you want
to be able to put together a real first rate eye catching
web WITHOUT programming, check out Microsoft Frontpage98.
Microsoft has spent a tremendous amount of time and energy to bring itself up
to speed in its implementation of web enabled products. Frontpage98 is the
leader in WYSIWYG web editors. Frontpage98 allows you
to create web pages just like you were working with a simple word processing
document. If you can use Microsoft Word, you can use Frontpage98.
But the real elegance is the ability to manage what might be otherwise large
and unwieldy websites with many pages. It's always a challenge keeping an eye
over your website, and tracking pages and making changes
using the traditional FTP format keeps Anacin sales constant. Forget whether
you’ve left a switch unswitched? Just fire up Frontpage98, and leave the
programming to the computer. You do your creative work unencumbered by
technobabble.
Check out info on Frontpage98 at
I’ve covered just a few examples of programs which will
allow you to blossom and express your creativity. Use any one or more of
these programs, and you’ll never think of your computer the same way again.
Rather
than the hunk of metal and plastic you might see it as today, it may feel more
like a musical instrument, waiting for your inspiration to produce something
of lasting beauty.
Go forth and compute!
Thomas W. Shinder, M.D. is a neurologist-turned- computer systems engineer who practiced medicine in Texas, Oregon and Arkansas before moving to his present home in the Dallas-Ft. Worth TX metropolitan area. AUTHOR'S EMAIL
Other SECTION Articles... | Your Health Matters | The Question Of Identity | The Creative You: Finding Your Own Way | Don't Wait, Just Do It! | | The Mystery Of Poetry | ALIVE Online | COMPUTEREASE: The Creative PC | Emerson on Creativity and Poetry |
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