Q. Thank you for all the great tips. I missed the one where you described in detail how to download photo-enhancing software. Would you please fill me in?
Greg Cameron @pwgsc.gc.ca
A. Heaven knows that I’ve written a lot of stuff about ways to find software that lets computer users crop, enhance, adjust and otherwise tweak digital photographs, but I continue to get asked about this. It’s understandable considering that not only are digital cameras replacing traditional film ones, but cell phones are replacing digital cameras. I wonder what will replace cell phones? Hmmmm. Sorry for the digression.
Folks should know that many of the online photo-printing services permit customers to crop, fix red eye and do other minor enhancements with free software such as that from the Shutterfly Web photo service available at www.shutterfly.com and from its competitor Snapfish at www.snapfish.com. I prefer Shutterfly because Snapfish makes you sign up as a customer before letting users download the software to make edits.
In terms of simplicity and lack of bother, nothing beats Picasa, the free photo-handling software from the Google search service. Picasa mainly focuses on letting users keep track of all of the digital images that build up on their hard drives, but it also includes editing tools that meet most folks’ needs with little fuss. It is at www.picasa.com and it is well worth a look for anybody with a couple of dozen photo files scattered about the hard drive.
If you’re into serious digital photo work, take a look at GIMP, an amazing, and free, open-source image-editing program that delivers a great many of the same powers as expensive commercial applications like Adobe Photoshop CS or the consumer-level Adobe Photoshop Elements. The GIMP (GNU image manipulation program) comes up with a display very much like Adobe’s famous Photoshop workspace, offering a broad pallet of tools with icons that look a lot like the ones in Adobe’s software. You can download this open source treasure at www.gimp.org.
Good as it is, GIMP isn’t as easy to use as Photoshop Elements, and it doesn’t come with a nice, fat, printed user manual as Adobe provides in the box. Ironically, the easiest way to learn how to use the array of tools GIMP offers for free is to learn on Photoshop or Photoshop Elements.
Q. My problem stems from having a hard drive crash and then taking it to a local tech company to get it fixed. It seems to work well except loading my Adobe Acrobat 6.0 standard software. When I go to load the program, I get an “Internal Error 2753” and “Dist(underscore)Acrodist.exe,” which halts the loading of the program. Any suggestions on how to remedy the problem and simply get it to load and work?
Mike Borquez, San Jose, Calif.
A. It looks like it is Adobe day here on the Q and A front. The situation you’re encountering can be fixed in a way that should delight you. Point your Web browser at www.adobe.com/reader and follow the prompts to the new version of this near-ubiquitous software for viewing those pesky PDF files that crop up more and more as the giant company’s footprint grows.
As background, the Adobe Reader is a plug-in module for Web browsers, including Microsoft Internet Explorer, that lets Web users open and view the browser window contents of PDF files. These portable document format files let government, academic and business heavyweights post files where they can control the layout, the ability of viewers to copy specific stuff and a great many other things. PDFs display in crisp and eye-friendly fidelity and are especially easy when one is searching for content in a file.
Since your current version of the reader software is bollixed, I suggest that you try to uninstall it first and then go out and acquire Adobe Reader 7, which has replaced that Version 6 on your computer.
Click on Start and then Control Panel and then open the icon for Add/Remove Programs. Select the one for Adobe Reader near the top of the list of programs that comes up and follow the prompts to remove it. This should get rid of whatever is causing that error message and let you reinstall with a blank slate.
The Reader software now is in version 7.0.8. There are so many additions and improvements for displaying and finding stuff in PDF files that it eclipses prior versions of the program.
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Let me add that a lot of customers get tired of the frequent need to upgrade the Reader software, and Adobe reacted by making available downloads of Versions 5 and 6 at that same Web site where 7.0.8 resides.
Q. We recently got a new computer. We had everything running fine. Here’s the problem: One day, I went to click on the Microsoft Word icon and could not open Word. The only way to open Word is by opening a saved Word file and starting a new document from there.
Brenda Mehlberg @frontiernet.net
A. For some reason the icons for Word documents on your computer are no longer pointing to the program for Microsoft Word. My guess is that a bit of computer plumbing known as File Associations went awry.
First, you need to find the exact location of the WinWord.exe software on your computer. Give a right-click on the Start button and then select Explore. This brings up the Windows Explorer file finder that has a narrow pane on the left for folder names and a big pane to the right where the contents of selected folders are displayed. Click on the icon on the left for your C: drive, and then go down to the folder named Program Files. Open that and go down to the folder for Microsoft Office. With the Office folder open, look in the right-hand pane for WinWord.exe. Jot down that set of directions so you can find it again.
Now, click open the My Computer icon and select Tools and then Folder Options in the drop-down menu that appears. In the next display, open the tab for File Types. This is where Windows keeps track of which program to run whenever someone clicks the icon for a file with its distinctive three-letter ending or extension. For Word, this ending is DOC. So scroll through the alphabetized list of file types registered on your computer to the one for DOC.
With the DOC entry selected, click on the Change button on the File Types tab just below the list. This brings up a file-pointing tool that can locate folders and files to home in on whatever program is to be associated with a file type.
Look for the Browse button in this file-finder box and now check your jotted-down directions to move to the folder where you can select what you want. When asked if you are sure you want to associate the file type, say OK. This will restore the WinWord.exe program’s file association to DOC files and override the settings now bothering you. Word icons now will open as directed.
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Contact Jim Coates via e-mail at [email protected] or via snail mail at the baiduhai, Room 400, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago IL 60611. Questions can be answered only through this column. Add your point of view at chicagotribune.com/askjim.