Continue reading »]]> In this Microsoft Word 2010 tutorial, Kyle gives us an introductory look at the “Ribbon” that has replaced the traditional toolbar in Microsoft Office.

Video Transcript

Hello and welcome back to SoftwareMedia TV. My name is Kyle, and today I’m going to be taking you through a quick, introductory look at Microsoft Word.

One of the biggest changes that you’re going to notice between Word 2003 and Word 2010 is what’s called the “Ribbon.” Now, instead of having drop-down menus like file, edit, window… you’re going to have various tabs that include all of your formatting and tools, right here for quick access.

So, first of all, is the File tab. This is where you’re going to do all of your saving, opening of documents, closing, info, recent documents that you’ve worked on, creating new documents, printing, and your help option is in here, too.

Next, you’ve got your Home tab.  This is probably the most commonly used tab. It incorporates all of the text formatting. So all of your fonts, font sizes, text format, strike-throughs, changing the sizes, colors, paragraph formatting… everything like that is going to be here on the Home tab.

Next, you have got the Insert tab. This is where you are going to put in your pictures… that’s my dog Riley. This is where you can insert pictures, clip art, hyperlinks, bookmarks, cross-referencing, headers, footers… everything like that will be done in the Insert tab.

Then, you’ve got Page Layout. This is where you can put in page colors. You can adjust the margins, page orientation (whether it’s landscape or portrait), page size, columns, line breaks, watermarks. Everything is done in the Page Layout tab.

Then References. You can add text, update tables, table of contents, you can insert footnotes and endnotes, insert captions, insert your citations and bibliography, all in the References tab.

Then you have your Mailings tab. Now this tab helps you to create documents when sending out mailings like printing out envelopes, labels, processing mail merges. You can set your recipients. You can do it all through Outlook as well. 

Next you’ve got your Review tab. This is where you’re going to find SpellCheck, researching, word count, translating… it’s really cool that you can translate right here in Word, and not have to copy and paste into Google Translate. 

And then you’ve got your View tab, which is where you’re going to change the way you’re looking at your document. You can zoom in and out, you can set it to one or two pages, you can adjust your page width, you can open new windows, you can set macros. This is all done in View.

So, that is the Ribbon in Microsoft Word 2010. In our next tutorial we are going to look at getting started, so stay tuned here at SoftwareMedia.com

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Continue reading »]]> April is just around the corner, and that means that tax season will be upon us quicker than you can say “audit”. Deductions, profits, losses, dividends, income, IRA, W-2, 1099… the endless string of numbers and terminology may seem intimidating at first, but it doesn’t have to be. SoftwareMedia.com has put together a comprehensive 2011 Tax Preparation Guide that details the many options (both free and paid) you have when choosing how best to prepare and file your 2011 Tax Return.

Of course, for those of you who already know a thing or two about filing your own taxes, feel free to peruse our selection of 2011 Tax Software for all of your tax preparation and filing needs.

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Continue reading »]]> 2011 has been a crazy year for software. Between hacktivists, anti-trust litigation, software subscriptions and Final Cut Pro X (hahahahaha), we thought we’d seen it all. That was, of course, until earlier this week when our Adobe contact informed us that the makers of such beloved creative software as Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects would be making drastic -and, to some, infuriating- changes to their current pricing models.

For years, Adobe has had a “three versions back” upgrade model, meaning that anyone using a Creative Suite that was less than three versions out of date would receive discounted prices when upgrading. Well, say goodbye to that, because as of next year, with the scheduled Adobe CS6 release, Adobe Systems Incorporated will require that anyone wishing to receive upgrade pricing own the latest version of the software.  In other words, individuals using copies of CS5 or CS5.5 will still be eligible for discounts when upgrading to CS6, however anyone using CS4 or earlier will be forced to pay full price for the latest release.

Considering that a large portion of Adobe’s (notably loyal) user base tends to remain at least one or two versions behind in order to keep costs low, this move could seem to some to be a betrayal of those very same customers who made the company what it is today. Despite an overwhelmingly negative response, however, Adobe seems unlikely to revert to the original upgrade model, pushing instead for customers to pay a monthly fee for the Creative Suite Subscription Editions or the newly announced Adobe Creative Cloud.

While many Adobe customers may be angered (or at least a bit irritated) by Adobe’s restructuring of the Creative Suite upgrade pricing, the outrage is seemingly not unanimous. Some have argued that the change is not entirely without merit, speculating that the move will create an incentive for users to stay current with their creative software and discourage people from straggling two or three versions behind the industry standard. As anyone who has done creative collaboration knows, trying to send a CS5 file to a CS3 user ranges somewhere between frustrating and cataclysmically stressful.

This move by Adobe, whether a change for good or ill, will definitely affect people where it hurts the most: the wallet. So, to help alleviate the possible financial burdens that Creative Suite users may be facing in the future, SoftwareMedia.com has dropped their prices on Adobe CS5.5 upgrades to more than 20% off, which is lower even than Adobe’s advertised discounts. We urge CS users one and all to make the upgrade before CS6 is released and avoid the inevitably pricey full-cost CS6 license.

Save now... save more later!

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Continue reading »]]> Time again for another 60 second tutorial from the guys (and gals) here at SoftwareNewsDaily and SoftwareMedia.com. In this tutorial, Kyle -our resident multimedia wizard- will show you how to create a custom brush in Adobe Photoshop CS5 in less than one minute.

Video Transcript
Kyle here again from SoftwareMedia TV. Last time I showed you how to create a custom brush in Illustrator, and today I am going show you how to do the same thing in Photoshop.

What you want to do is you want to start with an image. It can be an image you import into Photoshop or something you draw. I’m going to do a little squiggly line.

Then, using any selection tool (it can be anything… it can be the magic wand, the lasso or the marquee, it doesn’t matter) select your image.

Go to edit > define brush preset. And you can name it whatever you want. I am going to call it “SoftwareMedia TV.” Hit “Enter” and it will show up in your brush presets. Deselect, and grab the paintbrush tool, and here’s your brush.

You can edit the parameters by going into the brush panel, and you can add noise, smoothing, anything you want, it’s really all up to you. You can do whatever you want with this brush.

It’s a really awesome tool, so go forth and experiment.

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Continue reading »]]> Time again for another of our 60 Second Tutorials. In this tutorial, Kyle shows us how to create a custom brush in Adobe Illustrator. Considering that Halloween is right around the corner, he decided to fashion his custom brush in the likeness of the sleeping, eldritch horror, dread Cthulhu.

Video Transcript

Hey everybody, Kyle here again from SoftwareMedia TV. Today, I’m going to show you how to make a custom brush in Adobe Illustrator.

So, what you want to do first is you want to select any one of these tools and make a shape of any kind. In the spirit of Halloween, I am going to make a Cthulhu shape, and that is going to be our brush.

Alright, draw a little octopus head, some eyes, wings… there you go.

And then, while you have your shape selected, go over to your brush palette , select “new brush”, “art brush”. And there’s a bunch of parameters here that you can change to get your brush exactly how you want it. Once you have everything selected, hit “ok”.

We can just delete this.

Go over to our paintbrush tool, make sure you’ve got your custom brush selected… and there you go. You have a brand-new, scary Cthulhu brush.

Ia Cthulhu.

Happy halloween, from SoftwareMedia.com

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Continue reading »]]> Audio is one of the key components to good quality video, and let’s face it, the built-in microphones in most consumer (and many professional) video cameras are somewhere between crap and garbage. While this problem can usually be avoided by using an external lapel or shotgun microphone, not everyone has access to the equipment, and many consumer cameras do not support external inputs.

In this Adobe Premiere Pro tutorial, I will show you how to clean the hiss and noise from the audio in your Premiere project, by using the integration with Adobe Soundbooth (both are included in the Production Premium and Master Collection).

Video Transcript:

Hey everybody, and welcome to SoftwarMedia TV. My name is Kyle and today I’m going to show you how to use Adobe Soundbooth to reduce the noise in your Premiere Pro project.

So, what you want to do is you want to right-click here. Go to “Edit in Adobe Soundbooth,” “Render and Replace.” This will open up Soundbooth, and it will have your clip in it to edit.

You can hear that.

So what you want to do is you want to highlight your noise, go to “Processes,” “Capture Noise Print”.

And it’s that easy.

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Continue reading »]]> Everybody loves the freedom of creative self-expression, and what could possibly be a better way to say “I am an individual” than with a completely pimped-out desktop wallpaper? I suppose facial tattoos might do the trick, but something tells me that the general populace favors a less permanent proclamation of individuality.

I was going through some of our older articles today and found Kevin’s older post about VistaKnowledge.com which, sadly, no longer exists. So, I figured it would be a good idea to tell you all about HDWallpapers.net, which features hundreds of free HD desktop backgrounds for Windows 7.

Here are a few of my personal favorites.

Sort of reminds me of "Another Earth" which premiered at Sundance this year

In his spare time, Raiden, god of thunder, enjoys gardening.

Great... now I want skittles.

At first I thought this was an image of Cthulhu destroying NYC...

Do androids meditate in binary?

The colors... THE COLORS!!!!

I swear, those trees are planning something...

If you like any of these backgrounds, all you have to do is click on them, then right-click on the full image and click “set as desktop background.” You can also head over to their website and check out the rest of their cool HD wallpapers.

And if you’re still using Windows Vista, do yourself a favor and head over to SoftwareMedia.com and upgrade to Windows 7. It looks better, it’s more efficient and the functionality is incomparable. Seriously, at up to 55% off, there’s really no reason not to.

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