Apart from this, it also comes with some handy presentation features. You can view them as a slideshow, with your own comments. Equally, you can display multiple pictures as part of picture collage, as multi-exposure, or a picture pile of some description.

Its image editing, admittedly, is probably not as comprehensive as you will find in a commercial package. But, it is still good, with all the basic fixes like crop, straighten and contrast. Plus, effects are available with soft focus, sharpen and color saturation amongst numerous available.

If you are seeking greater image editing options, then Paint.Net is an alternative worth consideration. While it has the more traditional display, it has a greater number of special effects you can use to alter the photo. Particularly novel are its artistic effects, which can change your photo to resemble more of an oil painting, ink sketch or pencil sketch. Likewise, you can make numerous adjustments to such aspects as hue saturation, contrast etc. Color levels can also be tinkered with.

Aside from the photo editing features, Paint.Net also has paint and artistic features, which can allow for more artistic editing. You can paint, draw, or add shapes.

GIMP is not a package I have tried. However, it is stated that this is a free alternative to PhotoShop - one of the best commercial products. Such is the status of the freeware, that it has its own website.

It boasts features such as a customizable interface, photo enhancement, barrel distortion and digital retouching. All sounding very impressive, in addition to good hardware support and multiple platforms supported from Linux to Mac OS X. It also has documentation available on site.

The best thing about these 3 photo editing packages is indeed the freeware factor. They are not shareware limited to 30-day trial periods. Any limitation of one package is probably overcome by the other free alternatives, and collectively they surely must equal the value of a commercial product. So, browse, download and enjoy these freeware software, the best free photo editing has to offer.

1. GIMP

   It's a lot like Photoshop without the huge price tag. Free! Originally designed for Linux, it has been made for Windows as well. Works great for Vista where older Photoshop versions and other issues of compatibility don't exist!
   

2. Namo WebEditor

   So you want to create a website and may or may not know some html. Not a problem. Namo is structured similarly to Dreamweaver and again without the huge pricetag. This software runs $100 and comes with Namo FreeMotion and Namo FreeCanvas. I'm more impressed with FreeMotion as it's a flash based program and the instructions included make it easy enough for an amateur to use. Namo FreeCanvas isn't bad but I wouldn't pay anything extra for it. Worth checking out as part of the bundle. If you already own another web editor, there is typically a rebate for $20 off.
   

3. Pinnacle Studio

   Do you like editing video clips? If you do this program is reasonably priced and though not as fancy as Adobe's Premiere it's also much cheaper! Versions range from the original studio through Plus and Ultimate based on your needs. If you're editing standard video you can pay as little as $50. High Definition will cost you $100 and Studio Ultimate which allows for Dolby 5.1, fx editor, and a few other features be prepared to dish out $130. Typically Studio allows for an upgrade version and/or rebate based on your previous purchase.
   

4. Paint.net

   Again another photo editing software similar to Photoshop but easier to navigate for those that aren't advanced users. Free software again, can't complain there. The interface is easy and it doesn't lack features

Now is the time to make some changes to this spreadsheet. However, we do not want to lose the original, so first we will make a copy. Here is the spreadsheet as it is at the moment.

• Click in cell A1
• Select the whole spreadsheet by clicking and dragging, or by using the SHIFT and arrow keys
• Go up to the EDIT menu
• Choose COPY
• Click in cell A20. We are telling the computer that we want the copy of the spreadsheet to start from this point when we paste it.
• Go to EDIT
• Choose PASTE

Now you should be able to see an identical copy of the original spreadsheet.

Important: In the subsections that follow (4.2 to 4.6) you are going to make changes to this copied spreadsheet but NOT to the original spreadsheet above it.

Inserting Rows And Columns

Make these changes to the spreadsheet copy:

Insert a new row called Car between the rows containing Clothes and Others. To create this new row:

• Click in any cell in row 32 (for example, in A32, which contains the word “Others”)
• Go up to the Insert menu
• Click on Rows
• You now have an empty row in which you can type:

Car 59.56 4.67 296.45 112.49

Now insert another row called Presents between Car and Others.

• Again click in the row containing the word Others. Go to INSERT then ROW and type in:

Presents 45.78 10.78 27.99 278.89

To improve the layout of the spreadsheet, let us create a blank column between the figures and the Yearly Total, i.e. between columns E and F:

• Click anywhere in column F
• Go to the INSERT menu
• Choose COLUMNS

NoteF: After you typed in each of the new figures for Car and Presents, did you notice that the totals at the bottom of columns B to G changed? When we insert a new row or column, the formulae take the changes into account.

Deleting Rows and Columns

The expenditure figures in row 27 suggest that you gave up smoking after March 2003, so you have decided to delete this entry completely from your spreadsheet. This means that you can delete the whole row.

You would follow a similar procedure to delete a whole column. To do this you would click anywhere in the column, select EDIT, followed by DELETE then click on Entire Column and OK

Copying and Pasting Cells, Formulae, Rows and Columns

In Excel, as in Word and other Microsoft applications, we can copy the contents of any part, or even the whole, of a spreadsheet. When we do so in Excel, it copies not only text and numbers but also any formulae that are in the area that we are copying from. As an example, let us copy the first line of the lower spreadsheet (row 24 beginning “Fares and Travel”).

• Select cells A24 to G24
• EDIT
• COPY
• Click in cell A38
• EDIT
• PASTE

So, you can see that you can copy and paste not only text and numbers, but also the formulae and the computer will calculate the answer for the new location.

• Finally, as we do not need the extra row, click on the Undo button to remove the data in row 38.

Formatting Number Cells to Show Decimal Places or Currency

To make our finished spreadsheet look more professional we shall make a couple of changes to the formatting of the numbers.

You may have noticed that some of the numbers in this spreadsheet look a bit odd. Look at these two rows:

Most of the numbers show two figures after the decimal point e.g. 24.32, 104.39 but others don't do so. This is because these other numbers would have 0 (zero) at the end after the decimal but do not show zeros. So, 226.00 appears as 226 and 19.50 appears as 19.5. We can change this so that all numbers show two decimal places, including zeros.

• Highlight all cells from B24 to G35
• Go to the FORMAT menu and choose CELLS

Next, change the Quarterly Totals and Yearly Totals to currency values:

• Do the same for cells G24 to G35 in the Yearly Totals column

Save your work again.

There are many different options in the NUMBER screen. You will be asked to FORMAT cells quite frequently so you will become familiar with these as your knowledge of Excel increases.

Your lower spreadsheet should look like this:

More About Number Format and Integers

In an earlier section you learnt how to change the format of numbers so that all numbers showed 2 decimal places. There is a shortcut way to do this, using buttons on the Formatting Toolbar. Try this:

• Select cell B24 containing the number 127.63.

• Click on the Increase Decimal button on the toolbar. Note how the number now has a 0 (zero) at the end: 127.630. This does not change the value of the number because the 0 comes at the end of the number after the decimal point.
• Click the Increase Decimal button again and you will see that another 0 has been added: 127.6300. The number therefore has 4 decimal places.
• This time, click on the button to the right of the Increase Decimal button. This is the Decrease Decimal button, which has the opposite effect. If you click it twice, your number will return to its original form: 127.63.
• Click the Decrease Decimal button twice more and you will see that the number has no decimal places and that it has been rounded up to the next whole number: 128
• We describe a whole number like this as being in Integer Format. You will meet this term in future Excel exercises, so you need to know what it is and how you can produce it (as you have just done!).

NEXT: PRINTING YOUR SPREADHSEET

Freeware

Freeware is a software that is distributed freely without charge. It may have a big brother program which you can upgrade to for a charge but mostly they are great little stand alone programs.

Professional

If you want top be like a professional with a complicated program then GIMPShop is for you. GIMPShop is an open source replacement for Adobe Photoshop. It does a pretty good job of imitating Adobe Photoshop. A friend of mine who was a regular user of Photoshop found he adapted to it quite quickly. It has good features and runs well so my friend has not gone back and won't even if Photoshop were available free.

Simpler Version

I prefer a simpler program myself and have found the French program Photofiltre to be excellent. The free version does all I want and more and has many extras and add ons or plug ins that extend the effects available. (For 30 euros you can get a registered version with even more features called photofiltrestudio but the free version and free plug ins do everything I want.)

Organizing Images

Organizing photos is a breeze with the free IrfanView. IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative FREEWARE (for non-commercial use) graphic viewer for Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista. It is simple for beginners and powerful for professionals. This program has a useful plug in for editing exif data with your jpeg images. It also has a free plug in for lossless rotation of jpegs. If you don't understand these then you don't need them!

Filtering Noise

Finally noise is something that makes photos less perfect than they can be. Noise isn't something you hear but speckles in what should be areas of pure color and they are common with the less expensive cameras and when taking pictures in poor light without flash. JPEG (.jpg) image compression doesn't save all the information in an image. It compresses images so consume only a small amount of disk space (e.g. compared with .bmp), but also damages them with a "blotchy look" and "JPEG artifacts". Most graphics editors have JPEG as a default format. And almost all digital photo cameras save images in JPEG format.

JpegEnhancer is a simple and extremely powerful program that lets you restore the images damaged by low-quality JPEG compression. It also is a free download.

Do It All For Free

So that is what I use - try it and see how you get on. And remember although I have safely downloaded and used all these programs it is VERY IMPORTANT to have good, up to date anti-virus software on your computer if you are going to download programs from the Internet.