Laptops All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies- P24: Okay, I’ll admit it: I’ve got a strange biography. I’ve been a writer all my life. My first semi-pro job was sports editor of my high school newspaper. (Go Commodores!) After college I was a political reporter for daily newspapers in Ohio and New York (I covered four national nominating conventions and two Presidential campaigns) and a correspondent for The Associated Press. And then, in 1983, I gave in to my inner geek and became the first Executive Editor of PC Magazine, back in the days when most people asked, “What is a PC?”. | 204 Manipulating Images Table 2-1 continued Tool How to use it Ellipse Draw a perfect circle or an elongated ellipse. Click in the image to set a starting point and then drag the pointer to expand it to draw a circle hold down the Shift button while moving the pointer. Polygon Make a shape with any number of sides from triangle to dodecagon a 12-sided shape and beyond. Pick a color drag the pointer to create a straight line and then click each point where you want to add a side. When done double-click to turn off the tool. To create sides with 45- or 90-degree angles hold down the Shift key while making sides. The Color Palette comes with 24 colors plus black and white. However you aren t limited to those colors double-click the palette to expand the choices to 48. Figure 2-9 You can work with the basic colors of the Paint palette. Create custom colors by moving an onscreen selector or manually entering color or hue information. Manipulating Images 205 And you can go further defining your own colors 1. Choose the Define Custom Colors menu. 2. Click into a set of colors. 3. Choose an approximate shade. 4. Use the slider to adjust its appearance. Or type values into the Red Green and Blue boxes in this way you can Look up a color value in a reference book. Specify to a colleague that the particular shade of blue you want to use is created using 96 57 and 251 in RGB values. Windows Photo Gallery Digital photography is one of those modern technologies that has zoomed from Flash Gordon sci-fi to products so common and simple that even a college-educated adult can be taught to use them. See Figure 2-10. In fact the once-booming industry of film-based photography has dried up you have to go out of your way to find a laboratory to develop film and make prints. The advantages of a digital camera are immediately evident to anyone who uses one. The cameras are microcomputers all by themselves. They can focus by themselves choose the proper exposure and otherwise capture what
