Take your summer vacation memories to the next level with the best in creativity software.

Summertime, and the living is easy. I hope you are enjoying summer as much as I am. I feel as if the bustle of spring and early summer  has quieted down a bit and now we are into those hot and lazy days. It’s prime vacation time. Here is a photo I took while kayaking at the Bear Lake National Wildlife Refuge last week. It was nice to get away and be forced to stop and see nature, in the form of a White Faced Ibis, Sandhill Crane, Snowy Egret, Kestrel and a Huge. White. Pelican.

It was beautiful, but I digress.  I am not much of a design software buff, but since I do work at a software company and have access to all sorts of programs, I decided to edit some of my vacation photos into more usable and interesting depictions.

In my first attempt I wanted to remove the photographer’s kayak from the picture so that all you see is yours truly. To teach myself how to do this I used an article from Layers Magazine outlining how to remove elements from a photo. (If I were using CS5 I would have tried out the Content Aware Fill feature Brian wrote about back in May.)

Original Photo

Edited Image

I’m betting the Photoshop experts out there will have some criticism of my editing skills, but for my purposes this will work perfectly.

For my second editing effort I created a “painting” with my photo using Corel Painter. For this I used Kevin’s Corel Painter Tutorial, which I must say was very easy to follow.

Original Photo

Painted Image

It’s amazing how you can preserve your memories in unique ways with computer software. At SoftwareMedia.com we carry such a variety of design and creativity software programs. Curious which programs rank best of the best creativity software? Find out which programs fared the highest in our user tests (user ratings are coupled with popularity to determine the best of the best).

Best of the Best: Creativity Software

Best for User Friendly Photo Editing

Photoshop Elements
Make your photos look extraordinary with Adobe’s pared down version of Photoshop. This is a great way to get your foot into the door editing photos. It is both powerful and simple, and allows you to change a photo’s size (without distortion), fix photos, whiten teeth, adjust color and give your photos a fresh look with artwork templates. MSRP $99.99.

Runners Up: Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo, Roxio Toast Titanium

Best for Professional Photo and Image Editing

Adobe Photoshop
This one may seem a bit obvious, but when you’re the best, you’re the best. Adobe continues to innovate and be the industry-leading standard in professional image editing software. It is used worldwide by professional photographers, serious amateur photographers, and designers who want to perfect their digital images. MSRP $699.00.

Runners Up: Photoshop Lightroom

Best for Cool Photo Effects

Corel Painter
Make your photos look like they were illustrated with unique brushes, materials, and textures that mirror the look and feel of their traditional counterparts. This program is fun to use and with some basic instruction it is also very intuitive to learn. MSRP $429.00.

Runner Up: Autodesk Sketchbook Pro

Best Scrapbooking Software

My Memories Suite Digital Scrapbook Software
Build beautiful pages from scratch or make a page using one of the templates provided within this affordable software. Print individual pages, create a professionally-printed hardbound book or create a movie which you can view on DVD, iPod, online and more. Download it instantly or have it shipped to you. MSRP $39.97.

Runner Up: Scrapbook Factory Deluxe

Best for Home and Small Business Publishing

Microsoft Publisher
If you are used to the Microsoft Office interface, using Publisher will be a breeze. You can easily create a myriad of publication types, such as brochures, newsletters, postcards, greeting cards and more, without needing any prior graphic design experience. Get started easily with built-in templates and font and color schemes. MSRP $139.99.

Runner Up: Encore Print Shop

Best for Professional Desktop Publishing

Adobe InDesign
With InDesign you can design professional layouts for print and digital publishing. You get precise control over the elements of your design down to the tiniest pixel. Built-in tools help streamline design, preflight and publishing, while included interactivity, animation, video and sound in page layouts help to fully engage readers. MSRP $699.00.

Runner Up: QuarkXPress

Best User Friendly Video Editing

Sony Vegas Movie Studio
Produce spectacular HD movies with powerful tools for video composting, color correction, and surround sound. Edit video in nearly any format including HDV and AVCHD, working simultaneously with standard and high definition in the same project. Customize window layouts, burn DVDs, create slideshows and more – all within an easy to use interface. MSRP $99.95.

Runners Up: Adobe Premiere Elements, Corel VideoStudio, Roxio Creator

Best Professional Video Editing

Adobe Premiere Pro
Offering breakthrough performance for video production, Premiere Pro enables you to work dramatically faster. Eliminate transcoding and rewrapping with tapless workflows. Move from script to screen faster with Adobe Story (offered online), among dozens of other new time saving improvements. MSRP $799.00.

Runner Up: Sony Vegas Pro Production Assistant (plug-in for Vegas)

Best Priced Design Suite

CorelDRAW Graphics Suite
This suite has it all, and for less than a third a cost of the cheapest Adobe Creative Suite. You get tools for vector illustration, page layout, photo editing and tracing, web graphics and animation – all in one tightly integrated suite. The programs and easy-to-learn high quality design tools that let you do more than you thought possible. This suite is perfect for professional and aspiring designers alike. MSRP $499.99.

Best Overall Design Suite

Adobe Creative Suite
Once again, Adobe proves to be the best, but not without a price. Of course if price were not a consideration, the Adobe Creative Suite Master Collection would be the ultimate suite for a professional designer. But with a suggested retail price of $2,599, you may be wise to choose your edition based on the features you need. (Try our CS5 version comparison). Adobe has provided six different editions to address the creative need of a variety of different disciplines.

Internet access is becoming widely available almost everywhere now, and so many different devices allow you to access it. The internet is now becoming an important player in how we stay organized. Cloud Computing is simplifying the way we access all our information. Services now allow you to store all your information on their servers “or in the cloud”, and let others have the ability to access them, and collaborate in real time. This is great for businesses that have multiple offices, sales reps, or frequent travelers. Now it’s easier than ever to be able to access your important documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and even large files. It’s like your own personal intranet without an expensive IT department.  The cloud is already saving tons of businesses extra expenses, and unneeded time searching for information.

Many services are available that can help your business start experiencing the benefits of Cloud Computing, quickly and efficiently. Today we will jump into some of the difference and benefits of some of the most popular options available.

Continue reading to find out how you can streamline the way your business communicates.

Whether your business is a Windows environment or is already experiencing the benefits of Microsoft’s Exchange Server, you will appreciate the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite or BPOS. With Outlook Web Access you can experience all the features you depend on in Outlook on your computer in any web browser. With SharePoint Server your business can share and collaborate on documents easier than ever before. Access documents in your cloud from your desktop or remotely from any computer with internet access. Right now we are encouraging businesses to try BPOS by offering you a $25 Gift Card to SoftwareMedia.com just for signing up for a free 30 Day Trial. Watch the video below for more details, and an in depth tutorial for using BPOS for your business.

If your business is a Macintosh environment or you’ve experienced the great features of Gmail, you may want to consider Google Apps for your business. Your business will experience the benefits of Google’s great services in Gmail, Docs, Calendar, Sites, Video, and Talk. Google creates an entirely web based environment for your business to communicate in. This makes it easy to stay organized with your email, calendar, and documents from any computer or Smartphone.  For iPhone users Google has created optimized sites that give you quick access to everything in your cloud. Android users will experience seamless integration, as Google’s tools are seamlessly integrated into the operating system. You can also try out Google’s services for your business free for 30 days.

Both of these options are affordable and easy to setup. You can explore pricing options for BPOS, and Google Apps, on SoftwareMedia.com If you have any more questions about bringing the cloud to your business you can contact our sales team at 1(800)474-1945.

Slicer in Excel

Slicer is a new feature in Excel that gives users a new way to control the way they view data. Slicer allows you to filter data from your sheet and view it in a pivot table. Once your data is in a pivot table it is possible to sort through your data to view only the info you need.

Better tools for Handling Video in PowerPoint

PowerPoint now offers new tools that let you add all sorts of videos to your slide shows. You can now add videos from your favorite video sharing websites, by copy and pasting the embed code from the site, and the video ends up in your presentation. You can also import videos to your presentation from your hard drive. Once a video is added to your presentation, PowerPoint provides you with a lot of features for editing your video. This saves a lot of time and hassle, and makes adding videos to your Slide Show a breeze.

Remove Background Tool in Word

Voila! No Background

You can start experiencing Office 2010 for yourself today. Check out your options for purchasing now, or explore more new features in our Hands on With Office 2010 Series.

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Not too long ago, iPhone OS 4.0 beta 4 was released! I’m not sure if this is old news — I admit, I’m a bit out of the loop…

But tethering! That has to be somewhat fresh news… iPhone OS 4.0 beta has a tethering option! iPhone user? Not excited? Yeah, I wasn’t very excited either when I read about it on Engadget, Boy Genius Report and Gizmodo. Why? I had no idea what tethering was until just a few minutes ago. What was all this hype over tethering!

Contrary to what I initially thought (it’s nowhere near a virtual game of iPhone tetherball), “tethering” is the use of a mobile device as a makeshift modem to connect another device to the internet. The connection is usually made through Bluetooth or a (USB, perhaps) cable. About.com gave the best breakdown I came across in my ADD-limited timespan spent looking up the term. Tethering is particularly useful when you have no other means to connect to the internet. It also may save a bit of dough if you already have an unlimited data plan — no need for a broadband or wireless access card when you can tether off your unlimited data plan. And it may also be more secure than surfing from a public wi-fi hotspot. When I think of tethering, I think of a cell phone… and a wireless card… meshed together. If that confuses you more, I apologize… Anyway, apparently, tethering is highly anticipated.

Now, that I know what tethering is… I’d say I’m more excited… uh… well, for those iPhone users (which I am not — I oddly live in the stone age when it comes to upgrading my tech; I blame this on lack of funds).

To set up tethering — navigate over to your settings to see the new option. A pop-up will ask if you want to set up tethering on this account, just go to the website and follow the directions. There’s a quick video of someone doing this below, for those… more visual learners.

If you aren’t seeing the option to set up tethering, just reset your network settings. Once you’ve got it set up, feel free to share your experiences, frustrations, likes, dislikes, and all that jazz.

One such software titan doing just that is Microsoft with their Visual Studio 2010. In an effort to help simplify choosing among the various editions, Microsoft re-vamped their past system of names and slapped a bunch of new name labels on their Visual Studio product-line. These new names reflect those common with its recent operating systems, Vista and Windows 7. While this is great for first-timers, many of us have gone through the “physical therapy” of learning what the old titles mean. So, is Visual Studio 2008 Professional the same as Visual Studio 2010 Professional? Or is it more like Premium? What about Ultimate? Looks like a new prescription is in order.

The good news is we’ve already got your dose: may I introduce our Visual Studio 2010 Edition Comparison chart. Just follow the link, check out the bulleted feature list, and get in the know. This sweet guide goes in-depth with the four main options of VS 2010 to help you figure out which one(s) carries the tools you need. It may not answer the 2008 to 2010 upgrade question perfectly, but you’ll easily be able to decipher the features found in each new version. From there you can decide on how ultimate or premium or whatever you want to be.

If you are running Windows XP SP3, have a McAfee security solution installed, and have not rebooted since you last updated your virus definitions, DON’T REBOOT. Click on the following link for instructions on how to remedy your system:

McAfee KnowledgeBase Article

If you are a small-medium sized business, and have a server/network, click on this link for the remedy. This will allow you to use an Altiris Deployment Solution to remotely fix systems that have not been rebooted:

McAfee Virus Definition Defect (Corporate)

For networked systems that have already been rebooted:

McAfee Corporate KnowledgeBase