June 17, 2004
Please feel free to invite some of your colleagues from your or another city/county if you think it would benefit them to be a part of our group.
Location: City of Overland Park
(Meetings alternate monthly between MARC in
Kansas City and the City of Overland Park, KS.)
Attendance
Joseph P. Janner.............
Jackson County, MO
John Sims......................
City of Kansas City, MO
City of Gladstone , MO. ............... Kelli Behr
City of Kansas City ,
MO. ............ John Sims and Rich Lovett
City of Olathe..........................
Chris Holdman
City of Overland Park , KS ........... Chris Audano, Randy
Ellis, and Susan Waters
City of Shawnee , KS ................. Sonya Fendorf
and Roman Madrigal
Clay County , MO...................... Leslie Ensign
and Lutz Mueller
Jackson County , MO.................. Dan Davis and Joseph
P. Tanner
Johnson County , KS .................. Tom Erickson, Erica Reynolds
and Karen Sorensen
MARC, KC Metro............................... Barbara Hensley
The April minutes were approved.
Presentation: Paint Shop Pro…plus more tips
and tricks
Presented by
Roman Madrigal; supplemented by Barbara Hensley
Paint Shop Pro is an easy-to-use professional digital imaging software package geared mostly for intermediate digital image enthusiasts. It's similar to but faster than the well-known Adobe Photoshop. Cheaper, as well! The price of Paint Shop Pro's newest version, 8.0, ranges from $45.00 to about $100.00. PhotoShop costs about $800.00. Quite a difference! Paint Shop Pro’s 7.0 version is only slightly different. The 7.0 version is still available for about $19.95 (check online at http://www.paintshoppro.com/ , or other sites such as www.Amazon.com, for the lowest price). Roman Madrigal demonstrated Paint Shop Pro 7.0.
With either version of Paint Shop Pro, you can easily edit, repair, and enhance photos (or create graphics) for presentations and the Web! As Madrigal proceeded, attendees were convinced, Paint Shop Pro is a complete program with a full set of painting, drawing, and text options plus many creative choices. Madrigal easily transformed snapshots into high quality photographs, professionally corrected. A best buy for the money! Features demonstrated and discussed included:
- Time-saving tools: grids, guides, alignment, and grouping.
- Enhancing photos with fun tools and effects such as random clip art.
- Previewing an image in a Web browser.
- Replacing color with a magic wand.
- Recording and saving any series of steps or actions as a Script.
Note: High-quality color print production, out-sourced to print shops, may require Photoshop.
Alternative and additional software options were also discussed. Specifically, Adobe's barer-bones Photoshop Elements 2.0:
- Works atop the same engine as Photoshop’s full version and provides many of the same tools for a fraction of the price, $99.00 (http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopel/main.html ).
- Can input images from a variety of sources, including scanners and digital cameras. It's more powerful than the average program usually bundled with these devices.
- Red-eye removal is a streamlined task that results in a natural looking pair of irises.
- Erase-to-background enables you to paint away any part of a photo and leave just the unpainted parts as a foreground image.
As for extra software package add-ons, points mentioned included:
- Availability for both Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro, some by third-party vendors.
- Provide even more options such as special Web buttons, banners and animations plus more powerful web album features.
- Importing and integrating is usually an easy, automated installation procedure.
- Some are expensive, some are not.
- Conducting a search on Google can also yield free PhotoShop filters.
The presentation switched to questions about Photoshop. A couple of tips on Dreamweaver were also included. Observing Barbara’s step-by-step navigation through the multiple menus and layers helped the group’s understanding and facilitated discussion of such topics as: color replacement, watermarks, Adobe gamma wizard, and color correction with curves.
Questions were also asked about basic navigation in Photoshop. Also please refer to Karen Sorensen's handout, "Photoshop's environment: manipulating its palettes and views.”
Note: For those members not present, attending demonstrations are encouraged. A kind of collaborative learning takes hold with the group’s pooled knowledge and experience. The relaxed atmosphere makes problem-solving easy and fun. Thinking is stimulated and new perspectives are formed. Online tutorials and classes, however, are available and regularly used by some members. To utilize this option, begin by using a search engine to look for the task or topic you are interested in.
Old Business
2004 Government Webmasters Conference Update
September 23-24, 2004, “Conference
2004”
Sonya Fendorf provided a quick update. The content of each session is being finalized as well as arrangements with vendors. The planning committee is pleased with the progress. Twenty-nine people have registered so far. The event is four months away. The fee is $125.00 if it is submitted by August 2; $150.00 by August 2-10. Free meals!
Upcoming Meeting Topics
Kurt Loudon, the chair of another local web group,
Heartland Users Group (HUG) Special Interest Group (SIG) http://66.136.157.99/webmaster/default.htm
will direct his presentation towards Geographical Information Systems (GIS)
and the Web. Kurt Loudon is a Software Engineer/GIS Specialist for Burns & McDonnell.
Kurt is proficient using the following tools and languages: MS Access, MS VB,
ASP, ColdFusion, HTML, MS SQL Server, Oracle9i, Adobe Acrobat and ESRI ArcSDE.
Kurt has developed websites, Enterprise and Web applications for "Burns & Mac" corporate
clients.
October is slated for a presentation about RSS Feeds by Dan Davis from Jackson County.
Next Meeting
July 15, 2004. MARC, Kansas City, MO.
Meeting minutes: Karen Lynne Sorensen, Johnson County Wastewater.