CD Earth: Photo Editor and Desktop Publishing Software

Lets talk about photos and images. Everyone loves to take digital photographs. Most of us are lucky if we can get them from the camera to our computer where they sit collecting digital dust.

What if you could edit photos by removing the red-eyes or cropping out some guy walking through your photo? What if you could get really creative by adding a fancy border around your picture, splice two or more photos together, insert some funny text at bottom or even add a graphic into the photo?

Then you could create a slideshow with your new photos and the music you created yesterday using the Music Editor or add the new photos into your home video with the Video Editor. OK, we're getting ahead of ourselves. ;-)

The main thing to know is you can find great photo, graphics and image editors that let you do all these things and more. Some of the products like Adobe Photoshop and Corel Paint Shop Pro can from $250 to $600. The good news: there are excellent inexpensive and ever free graphics and photo editing software that can do everything you need.

Now that you have your photos and images, what do you do with them? Just remember that if you plan to print something, design it first with desktop publishing software.

Easy to use publishing software lets you create everything from a neighborhood newsletter to publishing a small newspaper. Use it to create business stationary and brochures, greeting cards, posters, and anything else your imagination dictates.

Some of the many things you can create with desktop publishing software:

• Newsletters
• Scrapbooks
• Greeting cards
• Photo albums
• Personal or business stationary
• Business brochures
• Business cards
• Print advertisements
• Logos
• Drawings
• Posters
• CD covers
• Publish small newspaper or magazine

There are several great retail packages such as Adobe PageMaker, QuarkXPress or Adobe InDesign but they cost up to $500 per license. There are also many excellent low price or even free desktop publishing software available that give you almost all the features without breaking the bank.

As always, don't be intimidated. It's not as hard as you think. Just have fun with it. You'll be amazed what you can create with that computer of yours.