Fast and Fabulous 3D Photo Editing in Office 2007 (Small Business Edition)

Honorable mention 2: Office 2007 (Small Business Edition)

Yes, that's right. Office 2007 is really useful, particularly the Small Business Edition.

Somewhere in my work process I discovered the "secret editor" in Office Outlook/Word 2007, which

• simplifies advanced design, such as 3D rotation, 3D shadows and mirror effects (one click buttons, and you have a glossy finish)
• simplifies design and editing of diagrams in Excel

To prove I am not just offering empty praise for Microsoft, check out the photo to the left and compare it to my profile photo on this page.

The mirror effect is done in... Microsoft Office Word.

How do you access this feature?

• Open Word or
• Open an e-mail. Switch to HTML, if the e-mail is in real text. Otherwise, just proceed directly to Forward to enter editor mode.
• In the top menu, locate the tab Insert. Choose Image, Smart Art or Diagram to explore the extended options. In Image, notice the options to add shadows or effects. In Diagram, click on Edit in order to launch Excel. The diagrams in Excel are similar, but it is way easier to edit directly in the document. Switch between Excel and Word/Outlook in order to check the result of your updates.

Here are the tricks:

• Don't start up the diagram in Excel, but choose to have the capacity to view your visualization before you begin programming Excel
  
• Edit photos directly in Word and Outlook for ease and a very neat, professional finish
  
• If you are editing for the web in Photoshop or similar photo editing software, and you need to apply a shadow, a mirror effect or a 3D rotation, just throw the picture into one of those two editors and capture it back to Photoshop with the PrtScr option or copy and paste.

3D effect applied with a series of easy commands: Open Word, insert photo and click once to apply 3D rotation. Then PrtScr, change to Photoshop, press Ctrl+n and Ctrl+v, and cut the part of the screendump you want to use. Save as preferred format. Please check out the header on this blog to compare.

Finally, I should mention Microsoft Office Picture Manager. It is still, after all these years, in the top section of my Windows Start menu.

Why? Because it is the fastest way to scale illustrations for the web or HTML newsletters. I never use MOPM for editing brightness/contrast/color, but none of my other programs offer the preconfigured resize feature.

Did I mention that some of the templates in Word, upgraded from the ridiculously useless Microsoft Office Publisher, and preformatted templates in Excel are actually very useful?

Want faded edges in no time and with no signs of a shaking hand? Same thing: Just click a button in the Office or Outlook Format tab in the editing menu. After transformation you can insert the picture again for one more round of effects and so forth ad libitum.