If you’re a computer novice, it can be difficult to train yourself or call upon your IT support to train you to use another program to edit and customise your images, and it’s very likely that you’ve wished for one place where you can prepare all aspects of a document, spreadsheet, or presentation. Microsoft Office has never really provided that functionality beyond the basics – and sometimes not even those. In Office 2010, however, Microsoft have changed their game and added in some image editing choices and effects to help users make professional and customised images without heading to another program first. This post will focus solely on the addition of effects to Office documents.
For minor tweaks, Office now offers the ability to sharpen or blur images. Their new layout is incredibly convenient if you’re pressed for time or not really that fussed with perfection. When you choose the option to edit your photo from the pop-up toolbar, only accessible once you’ve actually imported the image, you’re presented with a range of thumbnails with your image sharpened or blurred to varying degrees. You can preview these to find the right one or choose to go in a little bit deeper and adjust a variety of sliders yourself to achieve precisely the correct level of effect.
Office also newly includes a variety of artistic and picture effects. You can apply surprisingly good looking sketch effects to your photos, for example, with a simple click of the mouse. Again, Office will pop up a range of choices, allowing you to choose which thumbnail suits you best, or allows you to fine tune the details yourself either from the original picture or the slightly edited version. You can also look at all the effects at once, deciding at a glance which best fits your document.
You’re even able to correct picture colouring or just play with the saturation and tone. If you’ve taken a picture of a particular shade of flower, you can use the recolouring tool to change it to another one. You can then go even further by using the background removal tool to get rid of the now improperly coloured background and import your new image back onto your old one – changing the colour of the flowers without disturbing any grass or sky that might surround it.
Office’s new photo editing features clearly enhance their bid to get everyone using Office – and Office only. These in no way surpass the capabilities of Adobe’s Photoshop, which has a price tag to match what it can do, but if these abilities prove popular, Microsoft could easily drive out lower cost software with less functionality. After all, most people have Microsoft Office somewhere, whether it be at work or home or both, and these features make it much easier to perform tasks frequently done elsewhere in the past.
Have you used Office 2010’s photo editing features? What did you think? Let us know in the comments.