Webmaster 9 » Online Tutorials http://www.webmaster9.com Free Webmaster Resources Thu, 19 Jan 2012 06:06:53 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Building a Social Media Strategy? http://www.webmaster9.com/2011-02/building-a-social-media-strategy.html http://www.webmaster9.com/2011-02/building-a-social-media-strategy.html#comments Wed, 16 Feb 2011 12:58:44 +0000 Webmaster9 http://www.webmaster9.com/?p=16677 Whether you’re new to social media or an expert who needs to brush up on the basics or explain them to someone else, Informous is here to help.

Below are some steps that we have used in building our social media strategy:

1. Set Goals. Before you start down the social media path, make sure you know why you’re doing it. Do you want to generate leads? Stay up to date on industry trends? Build links and drive traffic to your website and blog? Build your brand? Stay in front of current and potential customers? The worst thing you can do is to not have any goal at all.

2. Follow through. Don’t start a social media account – whether it’s Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn – and then leave it hanging with no updates. This makes your company look irresponsible, or worse, lazy. You don’t want your clients and customers to think you’re not going to follow through in your relationship with them, so if you’re not going to follow through on social media efforts, don’t even start .

3. Allocate resources. If you don’t have anyone in charge of your social media accounts, then they’re going to be forgotten and make your company look bad (see point #2). Social media takes time to do well—a few hours a day for a small to mid-sized effort—so make sure that you allocate the appropriate number of hours to the job.

4. Select the right social media manager. Along with picking someone who has time to dedicate to social media, you have to pick someone who has the appropriate skills. We could devote an entire post to identifying the factors that go into making a good social media manager, but basically you want someone who knows your message well, is comfortable with technology, is supportive of others, and is a good writer. Of course, they should be trustworthy and consistent, after all, they now have your brand in their hands. Your intern might have 1,000 friends on Facebook, but if your company’s social media ‘voice’ suddenly changes at the end of the semester, or is only present a couple hours a week, you’re not going to get results.

5. Run a marathon, not a sprint. Don’t think of social media as a marketing “campaign,” because that implies a short term nature. Social media marketing takes a while to grow and deliver results. If you flood outlets like Twitter and Facebook right away, you’re going to be perceived as spammy and annoying. So take your time, post consistently, and you’ll start to see results. Plan for the long term.

6. Integrate. Social media does not work in a vacuum. Everything your company does should integrate your social media accounts, and vice versa. Send out an email newsletter? Include a link to your Facebook page. Get a new employee? Post about the addition on LinkedIn. Get a compliment on Twitter? Make sure your sales team gets a copy.

7. Engage. A common piece of social media advice is to “propose to your followers.” Ask them questions. Get them engaged. Begin conversations. Give out praise. Promote your friends on Facebook, followers on Twitter, and connections on LinkedIn. You’ll be amazed at how they will return the favor and promote you.

8. Measure. Remember those goals you set? Well, have you reached them? Measure your success. Find the performance metrics that work best for you, whether it’s number of retweets, or visits to your website from Facebook. See what works, and do more of that!

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    ]]>     http://www.webmaster9.com/2011-02/building-a-social-media-strategy.html/feed 0     Use Google Contacts as a Unified Address Book http://www.webmaster9.com/2011-01/use-google-contacts-as-a-unified-address-book.html http://www.webmaster9.com/2011-01/use-google-contacts-as-a-unified-address-book.html#comments Thu, 13 Jan 2011 05:22:03 +0000 Webmaster9 http://www.webmaster9.com/?p=16640 Your contacts are often scattered across multiple email accounts and social sites.

    For instance, you may have switched to Gmail but some of your contacts may still be stored in the old address books of Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail. Then there are places like Facebook and LinkedIn that store personal and professional details of your contacts (including profile pictures) but fetching this information into your main address book is often a tricky thing.

    One Place for all your Contacts

    If you find it a hassle to maintain multiple address books, a possible solution is that you consolidate them all into a single cloud-based service like Google Contacts.

    Here are some ideas on how you may go about doing this:

    Step 1: Bring all address books into Google Contacts

    Import into Google Contacts

    Go to Gmail Settings and click the “Import Mail and Contacts” button to bring all the existing contacts from Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, Google Apps, and your other email accounts into Google Contacts.

    Next download your address books from LinkedIn, Facebook, Outlook, Orkut, and other accounts as CSV files and import them all into Google Contacts one-by-one.

    Step 2: Clean-up the duplicates

    When you import contacts from multiple places, it is obvious that some of the entries would be duplicates of each other. Google Contacts however makes it quite easy for you to manage these duplicates.

    duplicates

    Choose “Find Duplicates” under “My Contacts” and the tool will group all the entries that share the same name. Do remember to review all the default suggestions one-by-one as sometimes two people in your contact list can have similar names and you don’t want to combine them into one.

    Once you’re ready, just hit the  Merge button.

    Google Contacts Manager mostly relies on the person’s name to detect duplicate entries. If it fails to recognize all your duplicate contacts, you can merge them manually as shown in the next screenshot.

    merge duplicate contacts

    Step 3: Enrich your contacts data

    Google Contacts now has basic details of all your contacts including their names, email addresses and, in some cases, phone numbers and birthdays. We are however still missing profile pictures, website URLs, social profiles, etc.

    There’s a useful online service called Gist that may help bring lot of such additional profile details into our Google Contacts. Here’s how:

    3a. Go to gist.com and open a free account.

    3b. Once your account is activated, go to “Other Contacts” and connect Google Contacts with Gist. Type your Gmail username and click “Authorize and Upload” – this uses OAuth so you can upload your entire Google address book into Gist without sharing your credentials.

    upload gist contacts

    The process of importing contacts from Google into Gist may take a while to complete depending on how you large your address book is. Take a coffee break here!

    3c. Now that all your contacts have been imported (see the progress bar at the top), go togist.com/people and you’ll find that Gist has discovered tons of extra information about your contacts that weren’t available in your original address book. This includes their blog addresses, social URLs and more.

    Let’s now bring this new information back into Google Contacts. Select all the contacts, click Export and Gist will send you a single vCard file in your Inbox.

    enhanced google contacts

    Download this v-Card file and import it into your Google Contacts.  Don’t worry, it will only merge the new details and won’t create any duplicate contacts.

    The next thing that we are missing in Google Contacts are profile pictures. There’s a utility called Google Contacts Sync that takes your Gmail (or Google Apps) credentials, finds the matching entries in your Facebook network and accordingly updates their profile pictures and birthdays in Google Contact.

    If you are not connected with all your Google contacts on Facebook, you can still bring their profile pictures through RainMaker. This is an excellent service that can populate your Google Contacts entries with photos and social details pulled from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. The free account will however limit you to 25 contacts.

    profile_pictures

    To summarize, we first imported all our address books into Google Contacts, merged the duplicates and then added profile pictures and social details of our contacts.

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      ]]>       http://www.webmaster9.com/2011-01/use-google-contacts-as-a-unified-address-book.html/feed 0       Photo Montage Design http://www.webmaster9.com/2010-09/photo-montage-design.html http://www.webmaster9.com/2010-09/photo-montage-design.html#comments Wed, 29 Sep 2010 17:17:56 +0000 Webmaster9 http://www.webmaster9.com/2010-09/photo-montage-design.html 1 – Have A Rough Idea Of The Finished Montage Before You Start

      It may work for the select few, but simply opening a Publisher document and throwing eight of your favourite pictures on there with no real idea of how you want the montage to look is unlikely to yield the best results. Think about montages you’ve seen and how you can achieve a similar look using the photos you want to use. This also gives you the opportunity to do any major work to photos that you want to use in its creation.

      2 – Use The Right Size Document   

      http://news-olipolus.blogspot.com/

      Different canvas printing services do have different document size requirements so check with the printing service before you start. This kind of information can normally be found on their website, but you shouldn’t hesitate to call if you’re struggling to see it. It’s always better for a document to be slightly too large than too small, because photos can lose quality when you increase their size but should retain the same level of quality when shrunk. Spurious results may certainly be achieved if you have to change the dimension ratio, though, so do check before you start.

      3 – Combine New And Old Pictures To Create A Photo Journal

      One of the greatest uses of a photo montage is in the creation of a photo journal. If you’re chronicling an event or celebrating somebody’s birthday then you can combine digital photos with scanned pictures. You can even include paper clippings, personally designed artwork, or flyers and invitations. Giving a montage a theme is a good idea, and this theme could be anything from a Valentines Day montage to a personal montage with pictures of yourself.

      4 - Use Unique Montage Design Styles

      One of the simplest and most common ways to combine pictures in a single photo montage is to overlap the edges of the photos a little. This prevents their being any gaps without removing any of the essential parts of the pictures you use. However, you could use a single picture as the background and then add photos in key areas of that background or use blended photo edges to create unique montage designs.

      5 – If You’re Struggling, Use Templates

      Publisher and Photoshop are the two best applications for creating a photo montage of your own. Fortunately, templates and tutorials can be found all over the Internet for both applications but especially for Photoshop. Use a template or guide as a starting point and add your own personal touches at the end.

      6 – If You’re Still Struggling, Use A Professional Designer

      If you’re still struggling to get the look that you want from your photo montage then you can use a professional designer to do the work for you.

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      ]]>       http://www.webmaster9.com/2010-09/photo-montage-design.html/feed 0       Photo DVD Maker released the feature of making Myspace slideshow http://www.webmaster9.com/2010-09/photo-dvd-maker-released-the-feature-of-making-myspace-slideshow.html http://www.webmaster9.com/2010-09/photo-dvd-maker-released-the-feature-of-making-myspace-slideshow.html#comments Wed, 29 Sep 2010 16:18:42 +0000 Webmaster9 http://www.webmaster9.com/2010-09/photo-dvd-maker-released-the-feature-of-making-myspace-slideshow.html  

      This tutorial will mainly show you how to create and publish a MySpace photo slideshow to make your MySpace profile and Blog more attractive in just simple steps. It’s also applicable youtube slideshow making.

      First we really need a wonderful slideshow maker—-Photo DVD Maker to help you create photo slideshow.

      Then I will teach you two important points to create and publish photo slideshow

      Now let’s begin to make flash picture slideshow first.

      Step 1: Download and install Photo DVD Maker.

      Step 2. Select template and add transition effects for your photo slideshow.

      Photo DVD Maker includes 80+ free slideshow templates to meet your various requirements. You can choose your favorite one to make picture slideshow.

      What’s more, Photo DVD Maker serves 210+ transition effects and 25+ pan/zoom effects for you to make your photo slideshow more animated and attractive.

      Step 3. Click the Burn Disc tab and choose Myspace Uploadable Movie as the Output Format.

      When you proceed to publish the photo slideshow, please go to the Burn Disc tab and choose the ” Myspace Uploadable Movie ” option, and then click Create Now button to export the slideshow in Myspace video format.

      Step 5: Add photo slideshow to MySpace website

      Under the “Upload Photos” box on the Add Photos page is a link to add a slideshow. Click on that link. Click Upload Button and begin to upload your photo slideshow from your PC into Myspace.

      You Myspace slideshow is already done, now you can share it with your friends and make your Myspace website more attractive!

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      ]]>       http://www.webmaster9.com/2010-09/photo-dvd-maker-released-the-feature-of-making-myspace-slideshow.html/feed 0       Photo DVD maker Professional – The best DVD maker software to create photo slideshow! http://www.webmaster9.com/2010-09/photo-dvd-maker-professional-the-best-dvd-maker-software-to-create-photo-slideshow.html http://www.webmaster9.com/2010-09/photo-dvd-maker-professional-the-best-dvd-maker-software-to-create-photo-slideshow.html#comments Wed, 29 Sep 2010 13:17:39 +0000 Webmaster9 http://www.webmaster9.com/2010-09/photo-dvd-maker-professional-the-best-dvd-maker-software-to-create-photo-slideshow.html Before reading this tutorial, you should know something about Photo DVD Maker at first:

      Software to create slideshow and burn photos to DVD

      Create slideshows for PC/TV/WEB.

      Edit photos, playlists, and DVD Menus.

      No computer experience needed!

       

      New features of Photo DVD Maker:

      New! Support Blu-ray Disc now

      New! Support HD video output

      Create slideshow DVD with photos and music

      Add text and clip arts to photo slide show

      Support iPod, PSP, mobile phones and YouTube

      Plenty of amazing slide show effects and themes

      Customizable DVD menu templates

      Fast photo DVD encoding and burning speed

      Download Now! to make your own photo slide show playable on TV!

      What do you use Photo DVD Maker for? Photo DVD Maker Professional allows you to create entertaining photo slideshow DVD that you can watch on TV, create FLV slideshow perfect for posting online to your website, generate MPEG slideshow for mobile devices such as iPod, PSP, Archons, Creative Zen, build photo slideshow video ready for You Tube, MySpace.

      How to create professional DVD slideshow? Just select your photos and drop them in the slideshow, add a custom soundtrack, pick from over 360 stunning transition effects, choose from Party style DVD menu templates, burn onto DVD disc or create MPEG video files for any mobile devices or posting online. It can also generate web photo album for your own photo website.

      What advantages does Photo DVD Maker have beyond other slideshow software?

      1) Easy to use

      Step 1: Import your photos, video clips and music and edit with built-in tools.

      Step2: Select a beautifully-designed Menu Template with music and transition effects to create exactly what you want easily.

      Step3: Burn and output your photos slideshows to gift CD/DVD and publish the photo slideshow on the Internet such as your blog or website and share with others.

      2) Multiple choice of creating output format: Photo DVD Maker Professional gives you more output options than any other slide show software. It supports DVD, SVCD, VCD 2.0, MPEG, HD video, FLV (Flash for Video), and Blu-ray disc as output formats.

      Photo DVD Maker enables you to conveniently create your own digital photo album. After the preview of your slide show created, you can easily burn them onto a blank DVD or CD disc that can be enjoyed both on your PC and TV with a DVD or VCD player.

      3)Plenty of Photo Transition Effects and fully customizable Photo DVD Maker has more than 60 transition effects, transition effect make your still images alive on the website. You can select transition effect for each picture. Or you may let the slide show to play randomly from these effects.

      Furthermore, with lots of parameters to adjust for each theme, Photo DVD Maker has lots of customizable options, and then you can adjust photo size, text color, transition effects to match your web design.

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      ]]>       http://www.webmaster9.com/2010-09/photo-dvd-maker-professional-the-best-dvd-maker-software-to-create-photo-slideshow.html/feed 0       SLR Tutorial http://www.webmaster9.com/2010-09/slr-tutorial.html http://www.webmaster9.com/2010-09/slr-tutorial.html#comments Wed, 29 Sep 2010 11:17:45 +0000 Webmaster9 http://www.webmaster9.com/2010-09/slr-tutorial.html http://www.webmaster9.com/2010-09/slr-tutorial.html/feed 0 How to Create a 3D Models From Photos http://www.webmaster9.com/2010-09/how-to-create-a-3d-models-from-photos.html http://www.webmaster9.com/2010-09/how-to-create-a-3d-models-from-photos.html#comments Wed, 29 Sep 2010 07:17:39 +0000 Webmaster9 http://www.webmaster9.com/2010-09/how-to-create-a-3d-models-from-photos.html How to Create a 3D Models From Photos.

      Movie studios, video game manufacturers and advertisers make frequent use of 3D models. While some of these models are made entirely based on sketches and the imagination of the modeler, others are based on photos. The process of using photo references is often used when the model is complex and the model has to be particularly accurate. Keep in mind that you will want to take the photos direct on, and not from a corner. And you will want three photos one each from the side, top and front. The process used here is called box modeling.

      Instructions

      Hexagon

      Google SketchUp

      Wings3D

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      ]]>       http://www.webmaster9.com/2010-09/how-to-create-a-3d-models-from-photos.html/feed 0       FREE Photoshop Elements Tutorials – Most Used Editing Tools http://www.webmaster9.com/2010-09/free-photoshop-elements-tutorials-most-used-editing-tools.html http://www.webmaster9.com/2010-09/free-photoshop-elements-tutorials-most-used-editing-tools.html#comments Tue, 28 Sep 2010 23:17:50 +0000 Webmaster9 http://www.webmaster9.com/2010-09/free-photoshop-elements-tutorials-most-used-editing-tools.html Even a beginner can put Adobe Photoshop Elements to good use and come away with the intended effects. Prior to delving into the complete software, you should master the three most important tools it has to offer: smudge, blur and sharpen. When working on digital images, these three tools are perfect for editing images to achieve the desired affect.Both the blur and sharpen tool function can be located by right-clicking the ‘smudge’ icon. Through the use of the smudge tool function you will be able to add special background and foreground effects to an image of your choosing. The smudge tool function will allow you to blur the foreground into the background or blur the background into the foreground. With the use of the smudge tool, you are able to edit images that may be out of focus or have a shadow in them that you prefer to remove. Both the blur and sharpen tools can be used to either slightly blur a photograph should the image appear too sharp or make a photograph sharper if the image is too blurred.If you wish to create darker tones in your digital images, you can do so by editing with the use of the burn tool. If your images have been over-exposed, the burn tool can also highlight details that may have been missed in the original image. The dodge tool is yet another option in this software and it too can be found by right-clicking (this time on the burn icon), however, it should be noted that this particular tool should be used if you want to make your images lighter by bringing out the details caused by shadows in over-exposed pictures.Another great editing tool that can be located by right-clicking the burn icon, is the Sponge tool. This particular tool allows you to both saturate or de-saturate a photograph. By saturating a photograph, it can make the image brighter and more colorful, whereby the use of de-saturation will dampen the color in a photograph making it appear more dull. For additional special effects, you have the option to switch to both foreground and background colors which will make your digital photos look more unique. This particular tool will allow you to interchange the foreground color of an image to the background color and vise verse.With just the click of a button the Adobe Photoshop Elements software will change the colors around for you. You can play around with the colors to create some really awesome images, such as setting your background to red. Then you can write over part of the image in the same color, by simply clicking on the icon and Adobe Elements will change the colors around, allowing you to write in red on the image.All of the above, are just a few of the basic techniques you can use to come to a better understanding of how the tools in Adobe Elements software works.This begins a new series of free Photoshop Elements tutorials that will be covering the very best tools and features of all the latest versions of Adobe Photoshop Elements software.We have a set of highly acclaimed, proven Photoshop Elements video coaching tutorials designed specifically to take a newbie to a competent and confident user level very quickly. If you want to learn Photoshop Elements without the headaches, then these tutorials will most definitely be what you have been looking for.For a more detailed overview (including sample Photoshop Elements video tutorials including before and after work on photos) just click here.By the way, in just a couple of hours you too will be able to produce some really amazing photo edits that will surely impress your family and friends – (more than 1500 other Photoshop Elements beginners have already done so since January this year, and just through watching our video tutorials!)

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      ]]>       http://www.webmaster9.com/2010-09/free-photoshop-elements-tutorials-most-used-editing-tools.html/feed 0       How To Use Adobe Photoshop By Watching Photoshop Video Tutorials http://www.webmaster9.com/2010-09/how-to-use-adobe-photoshop-by-watching-photoshop-video-tutorials.html http://www.webmaster9.com/2010-09/how-to-use-adobe-photoshop-by-watching-photoshop-video-tutorials.html#comments Tue, 28 Sep 2010 22:18:44 +0000 Webmaster9 http://www.webmaster9.com/2010-09/how-to-use-adobe-photoshop-by-watching-photoshop-video-tutorials.html Photoshop can be a bit overwhelming for people to take on. This leads to many people only using a few features of this program that they are comfortable with without ever realizing the full potential of this software. Taking lessons and video tutorials are a great way to expand your knowledge of Photoshop and give you some hands on experience.Photoshop video tutorialsPhotoshop has many features and options to tackle and learn. By taking small steps at a time, you can explore what Photoshop offers to use them to your best advantage. Here is only a short list of the many things you can look forward to mastering through basic Photoshop video tutorials.The importance of learning the basicsThe basics of Photoshop video tutorials will dwell on getting you familiar with the different aspects to manage Photoshop. This includes screen areas, layers and styles, droplets, actions and even the creation of new images. This will also give an introduction in understanding images. A good tutorial will incorporate how to blend modes and differentiate the vector from the bitmap graphics.Techniques and ToolsAfter passing the basics, the video tutorials can next lead you to navigate the selections on painting, drawing and creating shapes. This will dwell on how you can do filling, cropping, cloning, sampling, annotation and retouching. This part of the Photoshop tutorial will help you appreciate more how the Internet web sites and web in general are structured. You will see how graphics and animation basically operates.Optimization and DownloadYou can learn about browsers, JavasScript, platforms, backgrounds, positioning, monitor resolution and interpolation at this stage. This will be especially helpful for you if you plan to expand on your web page. Any Photoshop endeavor will also bank a lot on the colors. This part of the tutorial will help you explore the best color choices for your web page. You can learn how to use colors, explore their modes, and choose them properly.Photoshop Tutorials OptionsOnce you know the significance of taking lessons on your Photoshop program, then you can begin exploring the many options for you to discover. Here are some of them:-1. Web Page TutorialsYou can access web sites that will teach you how to operate Photoshop. You can investigate the site and get everything you need to learn for a fee.2. Demo VersionThere are also demo versions for Photoshop video tutorials that you can download for free. This will include very few chapters only. You can use this to evaluate the offers of a particular site before purchasing the whole package.3. CD VersionYou can also buy the CD to do your Photoshop tutorial even if you are not online.4. PDF FilesSome web video tutorials offer video tutorials in the PDF format making them a good choice for people who want a printout for their lessons.5. Video TutorialsPhotoshop video tutorials are a great option for those needing visualization. These video tutorials will show you exactly what you need to do and walk you through it.ConclusionOnline Photoshop video tutorials offer the best chance for people to make the most of their program and skills to become more productive and creative. Take the time to broaden your Photoshop knowledge. For a more detailed overview at Photoshop video tutorials (including sample video including before and after work on photos) just click here.By the way, in just a couple of hours you too will be able to produce some really amazing photo edits that will surely impress your family and friends – (more than 1500 other Photoshop beginners have already been successful since January this year just through watching video tutorials!)

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      ]]>       http://www.webmaster9.com/2010-09/how-to-use-adobe-photoshop-by-watching-photoshop-video-tutorials.html/feed 0       Get Adobe Elements Software Tips With Step By Step Tutorials http://www.webmaster9.com/2010-09/get-adobe-elements-software-tips-with-step-by-step-tutorials.html http://www.webmaster9.com/2010-09/get-adobe-elements-software-tips-with-step-by-step-tutorials.html#comments Tue, 28 Sep 2010 19:17:54 +0000 Webmaster9 http://www.webmaster9.com/2010-09/get-adobe-elements-software-tips-with-step-by-step-tutorials.html Adobe Photoshop Elements doesn’t just have one single interface and is capable of launching the program in several different modes. There a selection of different modes on Elements for different requirements like organizing photos, the full edit mode, the quick fix, and you can even produce your own photo album books.Should you have the Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 version you may have seen some interesting features including email, burning to CD or DVD, and the uncluttered interface makes everything so more simplified, especially if you need to move images round the screen.Quick Fix Guide Mode: The quick mode enables you to make very basic alterations to your images as you can alter the following; Lighting, colour, sharpen, and you also have the options to do a smart fix. Elements also gives you an auto fix button which can be found on the right hand side. Another way to access the adjustments buttons is through the Enhance menu.Auto fixing is perfect for complete elements newbies if you’re looking for a quick photo fix. Check out these six great editing tools and features.1) Just hit the “Reset Button” on the after picture, if your editing changes are not going to plan. 2) To view the before and after photos you will find a drop down button which says “View” in the lower left hand corner, . 3) The tool box is located on the left hand side of the view screen. 4) You are able to zoom in from your photo here and a zoom button is located in the lower left hand corner. 5) On the right hand side of the screen you will find the time saving auto tab buttons. 6) The quick mode feature allows the option of using sliders, which you will find very useful.The full edit mode provides the necessary tools to change any of your photo images. The majority of the tools and commands are to be found in the palettes.The palettes are used for managing your layers and applying effects to your images. By default the layers and effects palette are displayed automatically. If you wish you can also open more by choosing from the windows menu, which can be found at the top. Another really cool feature for the palettes is they float, so you can have them where you like. Once you have brought your image up, you’ll find below the main image window your images that you have opened.

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