I'm your hostess, Dianne :) I've been working online full time since 2002, have 2 great kids and a wonderful husband. My mission has always been to help my fellow Work At Homes build successful businesses. Through my own experiences, trials and tribulations I'm here to share my knowledge and help you along your path to home business success!
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Congratulations goes out to Lindsey from Art For Hair as the winner of our July eBook Cover contest winner!
I’ll be contacting Lindsey today about her new ebook cover design and will post the cover here as soon as it’s finished 
Thanks to all our participants!
| 3.2 |
I happen to have a copy of Adobe Photoshop, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t check out free software that’s out there. Following is a list of programs that I’ve either used myself, or have seen some decent discussion on:
GIMP, often touted as a Photoshop replacement by its fans, allows you to create and edit images and photos. It has the usual facilities found in many commercial paint programs such as a variety of paint tools (Brush, Airbrush, Pencil, Clone, custom brushes and patterns, etc), full alpha channel support, layers and channels, transformation tools (rotate, scale, sheer, flip), multiple undo and redo, selection tools (rectangle, ellipse, free, fuzzy, intelligent, bezier, polygonal), animation support (including MNG), numerous file formats (BMP, GIF, JPEG, MNG, PCX, PDF, PS, PSD, PNG, SVG, TIF, TGA, XPM, etc) including conversion between different file formats, and so on. Supported systems include Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, FreeBSD and Sun Solaris. This is an open source program.
- Picasa is a photo editing program that allows you to edit and organise your pictures on your computer. You can add visual effects to your digital pictures, write captions, pan, tilt, zoom, crop, eliminate red eyes, change the contrast, colour and enhance them. Other features include the ability to create slide shows, upload your photographs to your blog or website, burn them to CD or DVD, make a desktop image, create a screensaver, etc. The software is available for Windows and Linux.
Tux Paint is a drawing software designed for young children. It has cute looking buttons, sound effects and a mascot that encourages children as they use the program. Supported systems include Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD and NetBSD.
Paint.NET is an image and photo manipulation program that supports layers, unlimited undo and redo, special effects, drawing tools (tools for drawing shapes, splines, Bezier curves, etc), etc. It runs under Windows 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista. It requires the Microsoft .NET Framework (hence its name).
Inkscape is a scalable vector graphics (SVG) editor. It is open source, and versions are available for Windows 2000, XP, 2003, and OS X.
DrawPlus 4 is a drawing and painting program. It supports the GIF, JPEG, BMP, PNG, WMF and EMF graphic file formats. The program is no longer maintained. It supports Windows 95, 98, 98 SE, ME, NT 4.0, 2000 and XP. You have to register with your email address to use the program.
PhotoPlus 6 is the fun photo editing software that brings professional image editing to everyone with just a few clicks of the mouse. This free download enables beginners and professionals alike to produce incredible images for print, multimedia and the web.
For a long time, Serif has given away previous versions of their software to entice users to purchase the current version. Currently you can download a completely free, fully-functional version of PhotoPlus 6. PhotoPlus 6 features an export optimizer, editable text, image slicing and image maps, selection tools, smart shapes, third-party plug-in support, red-eye removal tool, and photo enhancement tools. PhotoPlus 6 works on Windows 95, 98, 98 SE, 2000, NT4, and XP.
Pixia is the English version of a popular free painting and retouching software that originated in Japan. It features custom brush tips, multiple layers, masking, vector- and bitmap-based drawing tools, color, tone, and lighting adjustments, and multiple undo/redo. Like many freeware editors, there is no support for saving GIF format. Pixia is also available for many other languages. Pixia works with Windows 95, 98, Me, NT4, 2000, and XP.
This award-winning graphic editor offers a variety of painting and editing tools and features including a text tool, gradients, selections by color or region, color replacement, editing in any scale, special effects and so on.
PhotoFiltre offers a simple, but elegant user interface and a lot of one-click image adjustments, filters, and effects. There is a built in image explorer panel for visually navigating your file system, basic drawing, painting, retouching and selection tools, and batch processing capabilities. PhotoFiltre is free for private, non commercial or educational use (including non-profit organizations).
IrfanView is a fast and compact image viewer/converter. It is trying to be simple for beginners and powerful for professionals. Many supported file formats and features. Features include: multi-language support, Thumbnail option, Painting, slideshow, toolbar skins, fast directory browsing, batch conversion/editing, multipage editing, file search, change color depth, scanning, cut/crop, IPTC edit, capturing, lossless JPG operations, effects, ICC support, EXE/SCR creating, many hotkeys, command line options and plugins.
Photobie is image editing software that combines features amateurs can use with advanced tools professionals will appreciate. Photobie is free for personal use with no Pro upgrade to pay for — all features are free.
With this photo editing software, you can easily blend your digital photo onto another image (a beautiful landscape image etc) to create special effect. You can also add some pretty frames, flowers and cartoon pictures onto your photo with Magic Photo Editor.
Like it’s name, DreamLight Photo Editor is an image editing software to easily add many dream effects onto your digital photo. With DreamLight Photo Editor, just by simple mouse clicking, you can add many wonderful effects.
Pos Free Photo Editor is a free, simple and very user friendly photo editor, that lets you easily view, and enhance your photos. The photo editor supports the major graphic formats and is very intuitive to work with without any “headaches” - It was especially designed for novices as for the short learning curve.
If you know of any other software out there, let me know about it and I’ll add it to the list!
| 3.2 |
Yesterday I discovered a website that allows you to turn your pictures into fake magazine covers. What does this have to do with anything? Not much really, expect for the fact that since I thought it was pretty cool, I figured that there would be others out there who could think of a good reason to use MagMyPic
Here’s a picture of my son taken last Saturday at our local fire muster. A friend of mine was running a kids area where she had water fights, an obstacle course and more set up for the kids. We had a terrific time!
And here’s one of my daughter, from the same event… after bobbing for apples the kids had to put their face in a bowl full of flour to find the suckers hidden in it LOL. I highly suggest this event for your next gathering… except for kids 5 and under!
Create Fake Magazine Covers with your own picture at MagMyPic.com
I can think of some awesome ideas for these fake magazine covers - they could be a lot of fun to use in business too!
| 2.5 |
As a special offer for all of our visitors, I am inviting you to send your Mom a Mother’s Day Card for free! These are real greeting cards (not e-cards) that your Mom will receive by snail mail.
Here’s all you have to do:
Visit www.greetingcardsmiles.com which will kick off a tour of our greeting card system. You’ll hear the voice of system founder Kody Bateman who will walk you right through everything.
You will have the opportunity to send out a free greeting card, so I thought it would be a wonderful gift for everyone who would like to send out a real greeting card to your Mom as May 11th is Mother’s Day! You can even upload your own photo to create a super-special greeting card, totally customized for your Mom.
I hope you enjoy this free gift!
| 2.5 |
Dianne
