Software Articles

November 30, 2010

Anatomy Of An Excel 2007 Formula

Filed under: Excel — Tags: , , , — admin @ 11:16 pm

As you probably know, to create an Excel formula, you begin by typing an equal sign: this distinguishes it from other types of data. A formula consists of a series of expressions. There are three key components in these expressions: arithmetic operations, such as add and subtract; Excel functions; and cell references.

To create a formula which gives us the total of two of the numbers in a spreadsheet (say 24 and 12), we could simply type “=24 + 12″. When we press the Enter key, we would get the correct result. However, the formula would have no link to the two cells containing the numbers. If the content of the cells were to change, the formula would still return the old result.

Obviously, what we need to do is to ensure that our formula contains a reference to the two cells in question. The easiest way of doing this is to click on the first cell having typed “=”. Excel then automatically creates a reference to that cell. Next type the “+” sign and click on the second cell to pick up its reference. Excel puts in a reference to the second cell and we then enter the formula either by clicking on the Enter button (on the left of the formula bar) or pressing Enter on the keyboard.

Now that our formula contains a reference to these two cells, any time the cell contents change, the result returned by formula will be updated.

If this was the only way of performing calculations in Excel, formulas would very quickly become extremely long and very complex. To avoid this, we can use Excel’s built-in functions. Functions perform complex mathematical calculations without us having to worry about how the result is arrived at.

For example, imagine that we wanted to total the contents of a hundred different cells. If we relied purely on the “+” sign, we would end up creating a formula with a hundred different arguments; in other words, a reference to each of the cells containing the numbers. Instead, we can use the SUM function.

To use a function in a formula, type “=” followed by the name of the function. Next type open brackets and enter the arguments of the function. The arguments of the function are the values required by that function in order to return a result. In the case of the SUM function, we simply need to specify which cells contain the numbers we want to total. We can do this by clicking or dragging across the cells that contain those numbers.

When you have finished entering references to all the cells containing numbers that we want to total, you can enter the formula. You don’t even need to put in the closing brackets. Excel will do this for you.

Microsoft Excel VBA training courses in London.

November 24, 2010

Understanding Photoshop’s Marquee Selection Tool Features

Filed under: Photoshop — Tags: , , , , — admin @ 11:28 pm

Adobe Photoshop’s Marquee tool is one of the three tools which are used to make selections, the other two being the Lasso and Magic Wand. It is perhaps the most basic of the three, allowing you to make a rectangular or elliptical selection on any part of the image. As with all of the other selection tools, it can be used to make both new selections and to modify existing selections. To choose the marquee shape you wish to create, simply click on the tool and hold the mouse button down until the flyout menu appears then choose either “Rectangular” or “Elliptical”.

If you are making a new selection, the modifier keys can be used to determine the behaviour the tool. If the Shift key is held down while you drag to describe the selection, the resulting selection will either be a circle or a rectangle. If you hold down the Alt key while creating the shape, the shape will be drawn outward from the point you initially click on. Naturally, you can use these two keys in combination to draw a circle or square from the centre.

Similarly, if there is an existing selection in place, you can use the same two modifier keys to determine how the selection you make will interact with the existing selection. This time, Shift is used to add to a section while Alt is used to subtract from the selection. Thus, for example, if you want to make a semi-circular selection, you could start by making a circular selection with the elliptical Marquee tool. You could then switch to the rectangular Marquee tool, hold down the Alt key and draw a rectangle which intersects one half of the circle. The area where the two shapes intersect will be subtracted from the selection.

The behaviour of the Marquee tool can be modified in the options toolbar. You can switch from Normal mode to Constrained or Fixed Size. Thus, for example, if you were creating a series of images which all need to have a 4 by 3 aspect ratio, you could choose the Constrained option and enter 4 for the with and 3 for the height. Each selection you make with the Marquee tool will then automatically have this shape.

As well as the elliptical and rectangular shape, the Marquee tool flyout menu also allows you to choose “Single Row” and “Single Column”. In this mode, simply clicking on any part of the image creates a selection one pixel high or wide going right across the image. If you zoom in, you can hold down the Shift key and click again to make it two pixels, three pixels, etc This mode is sometimes useful when restoring old photographs to select a crease in the original photograph prior to using the cloning tools to remove the flaw.

Adobe Photoshop training courses in London.

November 21, 2010

Web Design Courses Can Kick-Start Your Web Development Career

Filed under: Dreamweaver — Tags: , , , — admin @ 12:09 am

If you are a business owner you may wonder how web design training can help your business succeed. If you are involved with a computer related business, it can be easier to see how it will benefit you. However, even if you are not directly involved with computers, web design in general can be a benefit to you professionally and personally.

If you have a business that you are trying to promote, a web site can be essential to your advertising methods. It allows you to reach a much wider client base than you would be able to reach through standard media advertising, and it can allow you to present a larger number of goods or a larger amount of information that you would be able to through a print or television advertisement.

Good web design is important but it can be expensive. You can expect to pay anywhere from a few hundred dollars for a basic website to thousands for a complicated or involved design. And by allowing an outside company to design your website you are letting go of the control you have over the finished product. It can be easy and worthwhile to look into web design courses through online learning sites or through community colleges.

If you want to learn business related web design applications, you should concentrate on courses such as writing for search engine optimization, e commerce related programs and general site design concepts so that you can generate a professional and logically designed website. Web designers that are making a career of the business learn basic design principles, information on incorporating images and video, and special applications such as flash animation.

Even if you are more interested learning to design websites for yourself and relatives there are some principals that will carry through from the commercial side of the business. You will want to make sure that your site will load well no matter what the connection speed is of the people viewing it. You will also want to make sure that people can find the information they are looking for. Web design training can help you achieve all of these things and more.

Even if you complete your training you should keep in mind that you may need to take refresher courses from time to time. You need to make sure that you are up to date on new operating systems or changes and developments that take place when new versions of programs are released.

If you are interested in web design training, you may be surprised at how easy and fun the courses are. From a starter course in basic web design to building complex sites with multiple pages, you can find a course which gives you the information and the training that you need.

Dreamweaver Web Design courses.

November 14, 2010

How Dreamweaver Templates Speed Up Web Development

Filed under: Dreamweaver — Tags: , , — admin @ 1:06 am

Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 templates are one of the most powerful development aids that the program contains. Basically, a template is a master design which can be copied repeatedly to generate an boundless number of web pages all containing the same shared elements. Unsurprisingly, each time the template generates a new page, the page can be customised and the requisite elements added to it to make it unique. This is achieved by a scheme of locked page regions and editable regions.

When the template is applied to a page, locked regions cannot be modified. (You have to return to the template to adjust them.) Only the areas of the page designated as editable regions can have content added to them.

To create an editable region anywhere on the template, you simply position the cursor in the desired part of the layout and choose Insert – Template Objects – Editable Region. Enter a name for the new region and click OK. One frequent problem experienced by new users of Dreamweaver is the accidental positioning of and editable region inside a heading or paragraph tag. This means that when the template is applied to a page, only text can be placed in the editable region. To fix this problem, return to the template, click in the editable region and examine the Tag Selector on the left of the Status bar. Having located the offending tag (usually h1, h2, p, etc.), right-click on it and choose Remove Tag from the context menu.

To associate an existing page with a template, open the page and choose Modify – Templates – Apply Template to Page. Next, double-click on the name of the template to be applied. Strangely enough, there is no Dreamweaver command that enables you to apply a template to several pages at once. However, here are two suggestions for applying a template to multiple pages reasonably quickly.

Begin by selecting multiple pages in the Files panel using the classic techniques of Shift-click or Control-click (Command-click on a Mac). Then, you can right-click one of the selected files and choose Open from the context menu to open all of them. Next, activate the Assets panel (Window – Assets) and click on the Templates button (the second icon from the bottom). Finally, drag the icon of the required template onto each of the open pages. To speed up the process, use Control-Tab to switch from page to page.

To create a brand new page based on a template, choose New from the File menu and, when the New Document window appears, select the Page From Template option, click on the site that contains the template (It should already be highlighted.), then choose the template. To get the most benefit from a template, before clicking the Create button, make sure that the option “Update Page When Template Changes” is activated.

Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 training courses.

November 13, 2010

Microsoft Excel 2007 Column Charts Don’t Have To Be Boring

Filed under: Excel — Tags: , , , — admin @ 10:15 am

In this tutorial will look at the creation and customisation of a column chart. The first step is to select the data that we want to plot, taking care to include any column and row headings. Row headings will be used as the names of the chart series and will be displayed in the legend. Column headings will be used as category labels. If the selection includes two sets of column headings, Excel will automatically recognize this and create two sets of headings on the category axis for us.

The next step is to click on the Insert ribbon tab and from the Column drop-down menu choose the option that we require. The very first option is the omnipresent scattered column chart. Excel creates our chart and places it in the worksheet as an embedded chart. If we want to change it to a standalone chart, click on Move Chart in the Location section and then choose New Sheet and enter a name for the new chart sheet.

Having selected a chart, you can of course customise it to suit your requirements. To change the colour of the columns, simply click once on any column to highlight the whole series and then choose a colour from the Shape Fill drop-down menu in the Format contextual tab. As well as Shape Fill, the drop-down also offers Shape Outline and Fill Effects. The Fill Effects includes preset effects such as shadow, glow and bevel.

There are several subtypes to choose from within the column chart type. The most basic and probably the most widely used is the clustered column chart type. To change the chart type, go to the Design contextual tab and click on Change Chart Type.

In the Stacked Column type, the overall total of all series within each category takes precedence over the individual value associated with each series. The second type of stacked column is 100% Stacked Column. Here, the height of each column becomes 100% and so all columns have exactly the same height. This type of chart shifts the emphasis away from the number or quantity represented by each series to the percentage split between series.

Excel also offers 3-D versions of its three different column chart types. You will notice that these chart tpes are not strictly 3-D charts; they simply have a 3-D effect on the columns. It is the 3-D Column option which gives us an actual three-dimensional chart. Here, Excel adds depth to the chart and places the series along the z axis (the third dimension). The remaining column options are simply variations on these basic themes. For example, if we want to go for a 3-D chart, we might choose to have pyramids instead of rectangular blocks.

Microsoft Excel training classes in London.

November 11, 2010

Why Invest In Photoshop Training

Filed under: Computers — Tags: , , — admin @ 12:43 am

Beginning to use Photoshop without Photoshop training can be a frustrating experience. I had my first “hands-on” experience with Photoshop in 1995. It was one of the most rewarding and frustrating experiences in my life. I was producing a feature-length animated film for our independent start-up company in Merida, Mexico. We were developing this project with amazing talent-that was the rewarding part of the experience.

It was the first time that I found myself part of a project that relied on digital editing and compositing. Some of the people I worked with and got to know at that time were major talents in the world of high-end digital solutions-people who had risen to top positions at Apple Computer and Silicon Graphics. And then there were the whiz kids just out of college who could do anything you could imagine on a Macintosh computer running Adobe Photoshop. Just watching them use Photoshop to color animation frames in a fraction of the time it would have taken to paint the frames by hand was a great learning experience for me. I had the opportunity to watch people with amazing talent do amazing things with Adobe Photoshop. But when I sat down and started playing around with Photoshop, trying to emulate the simplest effects I had seen others create so effortlessly, I quickly ran into trouble. I didn’t take the time to seek out any sort of Photoshop training; I learned to get by with simpler design software.

I did what was necessary for my text presentations, but I gave up dreaming that I’d ever be able to do anything myself with Photoshop. Like many people, I decided that Photoshop was too deep for me-I wasn’t a graphic designer or visual effects artist anyway, so I saw no need to sign up for Photoshop training. And like most people, I thought that Photoshop training was only for those who wanted to turn their Photoshop skills into a career path. I didn’t have time for it, I didn’t really need it, so I crossed “Photoshop training” off my wish list and went on to other things. That was a big mistake.

It wasn’t too long ago that I was forced to realize-after all these years-how badly I need to learn enough digital editing and compositing to create better graphics and videos for the Internet. Just a hobby to begin with-I told myself-but something that has been in the back of my mind ever since I crossed “Photoshop training” off of my wish list. I had mastered the simpler software and gotten as much out of it as I was going to get. There is only one program in the world that can let me do what I want to do with photos and video-Photoshop. It’s time for me to get serious about Photoshop training.

I hope you’ll decide to get serious about Photoshop training, too. It’s one of the best investments you can make-even if you only want to get the most out of your photos and Internet videos.

Adobe Photoshop classes in London.

November 9, 2010

Making Sense Of Histograms In Photoshop CS5

Filed under: Computers — Tags: , , — admin @ 1:31 am

The Histogram panel in Adobe Photoshop CS5 (Window – Histogram) offers an overview of the tonal range of an image. The histogram is basically a chart which shows how many pixels are present at each luminosity value, with dark pixels on the left and lighter pixels on the right. If no selection is made, the histogram reflects all the pixels in the image. It is also possible to select just part of an image and use the histogram to examine the distribution of pixels just within the selected area. If the image consists of multiple layers, Photoshop displays a pop-up menu which allows you to choose either “Entire Image” or “Selected Layer” to determine which pixels are included in the output shown in the histogram.

A lot of photographs which were shot in average lighting and which contain a variety of colours will have a bell-shaped curve with the most pixels in the middle of the histogram and the number of pixels gradually tailing off in the lighter area to the left and right.

Obviously, the whole point of photography is that it can feature any subject, be shot under different lighting conditions and have different artistic aims. Thus, for example, if an image deliberately has a lot of white: say a white sofa against a white wall, the histogram will have a peak on the left with pixels tailing off in the middle and right. In the context of this image, the skewed shape of the histogram is perfectly healthy. Similarly, if you look at the histogram of a photograph shot at night, don’t be surprised to see a very lopsided chart with most of the pixels on the right… So how do you use the histogram to spot tonal problems in an image?

Histograms are particularly good at detecting whether an image lacks contrast. Images that lack contrast have a histogram where the number of pixels tails off to zero or close to zero in the brightest and darkest parts of the image. Such images tend to have a dull, muddy appearance.

Perhaps the easiest way to correct the problem of an image that lacks contrast is to use the Levels command. Choose Image – Adjustments – Levels and, in the Levels dialog, drag the right triangle over to the right to the position where the pixel distribution falls to nothing. Next, drag the left triangle which represents the white point of the image over to the right to where the pixels disappear. When you click OK, you will notice that the image has a lot more contrast and sharpness.

Adobe Photoshop CS 5 training courses.

April 26, 2010

Adobe InDesign’s Vector Drawing Capabilities

Filed under: InDesign — Tags: , , , — admin @ 9:49 pm

Given that Adobe own both InDesign and Illustrator, it should come as no surprise that the vector drawing tools found in InDesign function in pretty much the same way as those found in Illustrator. InDesign contains tools and menu commands for creating, manipulating and transforming vector shapes. These are used when working with text and graphic frames as well as with decorative page elements such as backgrounds, lines and flourishes.

The three shape tools (rectangle, ellipse and polygon) are duplicated in InDesign. The first series of tools are used for creating frames, containers into which the user can place images. The second series of tools is used to create simple shapes in exactly the same way as in Adobe Illustrator.

The shapes created with the two sets of tools are distinguished from each other by their contents: frames, by default, are containers for images; shapes contain nothing. You can change the contents of any item created with the two sets of tools by right-clicking on the object and choosing one of the options in the Content sub-menu: Graphic, Text or Unassigned.

Having created a vector shape you can transform it in the usual ways: move, resize, rotate, flip horizontal, flip vertical and shear. As with Illustrator, InDesign allows you to transform an object either by using one of the transformation tools or by using the options in the Transform sub-menu found under the Object menu. The advantage of using the tools is that you can specify the pivot point used during the transformation. This appears as a registration positioned, by default, in the centre of the object which may be moved to any position inside or outside the object being transformed.

One very powerful transformation feature in Illustrator is the ability to repeat a transformation using the Transform Again command and InDesign also incorporates this feature. Say for example, you are creating a layout where you want some text copied and rotated several times with each copy having a different tint of the same colour, giving a kind of fade-out effect. Having copied and rotated the original text once, you can repeat the rotate and copy step by choosing Object – Transform Again – Transform Again or by using the keyboard shortcut Control-Alt-3. It is rather a nuisance that this shortcut differs from the one used in Illustrator, Control-d, but kind of inevitable since Control-d is used in InDesign as the shortcut for File – Place.

Click here for Adobe InDesign training.

April 18, 2010

Marquee Selection Tool In Adobe Photoshop

Filed under: Photoshop — Tags: , , , — admin @ 1:14 pm

The Marquee tool is one of the three tools in Photoshop which are used to make selections, the other two being the Lasso and Magic Wand. It is perhaps the most basic of the three, allowing you to make a rectangular or elliptical selection on any part of the image. As with all of the other selection tools, it can be used to make both new selections and to modify existing selections. To choose the marquee shape you wish to create, simply click on the tool and hold the mouse button down until the flyout menu appears then choose either “Rectangular” or “Elliptical”.

When making new selections, the modifier keys can be used to determine the behaviour the tool. If the Shift key is held down while you drag to describe the selection, the resulting selection will either be a circle or a rectangle. If you hold down the Alt key while creating the shape, the shape will be drawn outward from the point you initially click on. Naturally, you can use these two keys in combination to draw a circle or square from the centre.

If you have an existing selection, you can use the same two modifier keys to determine how the selection you make will interact with the existing selection. This time, Shift is used to add to a section while Alt is used to subtract from the selection. Thus, for example, if you want to make a semi-circular selection, you could start by making a circular selection with the elliptical Marquee tool. You could then switch to the rectangular Marquee tool, hold down the Alt key and draw a rectangle which intersects one half of the circle. The area where the two shapes intersect will be subtracted from the selection.

The options toolbar also allows you to change the behaviour of the Marquee tool. You can switch from Normal mode to Constrained or Fixed Size. Thus, for example, if you were creating a series of images which all need to have a 4 by 3 aspect ratio, you could choose the Constrained option and enter 4 for the with and 3 for the height. Each selection you make with the Marquee tool will then automatically have this shape.

In addition to the elliptical and rectangular shape, the Marquee tool flyout menu also allows you to choose “Single Row” and “Single Column”. In this mode, simply clicking on any part of the image creates a selection one pixel high or wide going right across the image. If you zoom in, you can hold down the Shift key and click again to make it two pixels, three pixels, etc This mode is sometimes useful when restoring old photographs to select a crease in the original photograph prior to using the cloning tools to remove the flaw.


Click here for Adobe Photoshop training classes.

Graphic File Formats And Adobe Photoshop

Filed under: Photoshop — Tags: , , , — admin @ 1:01 pm

The native file format of Adobe Photoshop documents is “.psd”. This is the only format which supports all of Photoshop’s features: layers, layer masks, layer comps, etc. If you have used these features in creating your final artwork, it is always a good idea to retain the “.psd” version and use File – Save As to export your work in any other format.

When exporting images from Photoshop, you will normally either be targeting print or web graphics. Print graphics are saved in the CMYK colour space while web graphics remain in Photoshop’s native colour space: RGB. With print graphics the focus is on quality, while the main talent of web graphics formats is file compression.

When exporting work for print, the standard format to use is TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) and the colour space CMYK. Although the TIFF format is capable of preserving layers, best practice is to make sure that you flatten the image by choosing Layers – Flatten Image before exporting. EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) is another option for exporting files for print. However, this option is now normally reserved for files that contain one or more spot colours.

The two main formats used for exporting web graphics are GIF (Graphic Interchange Format) and JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group). The GIF format compresses files by reducing the number of colours in an image. This makes the format ideal for exporting images that contain flat colour such as logos, charts and symbols. If photographs or images containing smooth transitions of colour are saved in GIF format, posterization and banding will normally occur. This is where, instead of seeing all the colours that were in the image, we see simplified clumps or bands of colour.

The JPEG format reduces file size by dividing the image into blocks of 8 x 8 pixels and locating redundant information within these blocks and rewriting the information in a simplified manner which requires less data storage. The fact that the human eye does not detect slight changes in colour means that pixels which have very similar colour values can be treated as being identical. When saving an image in the JPEG format, Photoshop allows you to specify the degree of compression. Naturally, there is always some loss of quality, so it is never a good idea to open a JPEG, make changes to it and then resave it. It is always better to fall back on the original PSD file if changes need to be made.

Click here for Adobe Photoshop training classes.

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