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Microsoft Word is a great program to use for printing out your photos. Rather than messing with unfamiliar photo programs that only want to print one photo per page, you can use Word to assemble your photos and save paper when sharing pictures. It's so easy to just plop a bunch of photos on a page, adjust their size, and print the page to pass around. Put them together and bind them in a binder or comb binding and voila, instant photo album!
If you have a scanner or digital camera and a color printer...why spend time waiting in line to use a photo machine at Walgreen's, when you can do a great job on your PC!
To insert a photo into a Word page, just choose Insert | Picture | From File and go find the photo you want on your hard drive.
Word does a terrific job at keeping the resolution looking good when you need to resize your photos on the page. With a click to select the photo, you can drag on a corner handle to change the size of pictures you need to print, without destroying the way the images look. This technique is great for printing a lot of smaller copies to pass around to friends.
To enhance the printout, you can find tons of types of special photo printing papers. You can get everything from special, glossy paper that makes your printout look just like a real photo, to post cards you print and punch out. Word works with Avery (http://www.avery.com/), one of the biggest suppliers of these types of papers. So you'll find most all of the predesigned templates ready to go right from within Word. To find these predesigned templates, click Tools and navigate to the Envelope and Labels option.
These templates are just preset Word table layouts with cells the size of the label, business card or post card you'll be printing. You can easily drop in a picture to create your own post cards. If you don't want to purchase special paper, just measure out a post card size and create a table with cells set to the dimensions you need. Then use standard card stock papers and cut out the cards.
Once you have your layout for one page, hit Ctrl + Enter to insert a page break and add a second page. You can include some text to explain the picture and a vertical rule so you'll know where to stop writing to leave room for the address and stamp. With the help of a couple textboxes, you can quickly design the back of the card to look just like a store bought post card ready to warn the family that your teen now has her driver's license!
To further enhance your pictures, you might want to add a frame, maybe a page border, or some AutoShapes to add fun comments.
Click View | Toolbars and turn on your Drawing Toolbar. There you'll see the AutoShapes feature. Click and drag out any shape. Select it, right-click and choose Add Text. Now you can write anything you want inside the shape.
You can also modify the shading by selecting the Format AutoShape option after your right-click on the item.
Page borders can quickly add a nice look. Word offers a selection of both fun and serious page borders. You can click Format | Borders and Shading | Page Borders | Art to apply designed borders.
Maybe you'd prefer to enhance your photo with a frame. There are tons of frames you can find by hunting the web. And once you find one, you can insert that image into a document and then insert the proper size AutoShape over the frame to allow you to insert a picture into the shape.
You can align or resize an AutoShape more precisely if you hold down the Alt key while you are moving or resizing the image. Holding down the Alt key forces Word to temporarily turn off the default snap grid, which makes it easier to make minor adjustments.
After you have the AutoShape positioned inside the available spot in the frame, you can add a picture inside the AutoShape. Click to select the AutoShape. Right-click and choose Format AutoShape. On the Color and Lines tab, click the dropdown under Fill Color and choose Fill Effects.
You can use a photo to fill your shape. Click on the Picture tab and locate your photo.
And here's a nice finishing touch: a plaque to identify the photo. To design a plaque, draw a shape, and then right-click to add a fill and some text. Maybe use more AutoShapes with fill effects to create the look of the bolts holding the plaque in place.
Not a bad photo design for a word processing program, eh? (The image below was snapped right from my Word document...all designed in Word!)
As a gift to you, I've compiled several frames and zipped them up in a file you can download by clicking this link: http://www.mousetrax.com/pub/Frames.zip (869k)
After you've enhanced your photos and printed them out, you might want to insert them all into a binder to use as a special photo album. A wonderful finishing touch would be to design up a cover page for your album. But rather than just typing some boring centered text saying "My Photo Album," you can go wild and throw in a lot of images and text scattered all around the page! It's your photo album, so you can do whatever you want!
Have fun using Word to create wonderful photo presentations that your family and friends will love!
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