VISIBLE RANKING — ONLINE MARKETING

Create Excel dropdown list step by step guide

Just like a drop-down list on a web page, the drop-down list on an Excel spreadsheet presents a [limited] number of options for you to select, thus limit potential data entry errors and make the output more consistent and uniform. The drop-down list mentioned in this post has a down arrow button, but it is not the Filter/AutoFilter functionality of Excel, which can be accessed through menu Data > Filter > AutoFilter.  Read more...

Create web graphics with Photoshop – The Fundamentals
Part 2 – Save image for the web / Optimize image for the web

Already know about different image types supported by web browsers, below are some simple steps to save your images for the web with Photoshop.

To save image for the web or to optimize it for the web, you just need to open your image in Photoshop, then go to menu File > Save for Web or File > Save for Web & Devices with CS4, or you can use the combination of keys Ctrl Alt Shift S. No matter what versions of Photoshop you’re using, a dialog box will appear to let you change your image settings and your image size. That’s basically it.  Read more...

Create web graphics with Photoshop – The Fundamentals
Part 1 – GIF, JPG, or PNG

Photoshop is a very deep software, you can play and learn with it for hours, days or even years and probably still discover something new and interesting about it. This post or series of posts aims to provide you with fundamental but easy skills to understand as well as to create better imagery for the web in a matter of minutes.

Part 1 is about image types supported by web browsers: GIF, JPG, or PNG. If you know about this already, then check out Part 2 Photoshop – Save image for the web or Part 3 Photoshop – Essential tools.  Read more...

Create custom color palette / custom swatches palette in Photoshop
Updated for Photoshop CS4

Photoshop comes with many built-in color swatches palettes. However, more likely the colors in these palettes are not the ones you’re going to use. Without a custom color swatches palette, whenever you want to use your colors, usually you’ve got to manually enter the RGB or CMYK color values. That’s obviously not very efficient considering you may enter the wrong RGB or CMYK values. Thus, if you have certain color palettes that you use all the time, it’s recommended to create your own custom color palettes so that you can easily use them with Photoshop short-cut or the eye-dropper tool.  Read more...

Step-by-step guide on how to create HTML email in Outlook 2003
Updated for MS Outlook 2007

Already know about the good, the bad, and the ugly of HTML through the post about HTML email overview, let’s start creating an HTML email in Outlook.

Quick notes about Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007: the process below is the same for both Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007. The difference between these two versions of Outlook is not in the process of creating and sending HTML email but in the built-in HTML email readers. Thus, there may be a bit difference if you create HTML for Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007, but there won’t be any difference if you create HTML in or with Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007.  Read more...

Free photo editors including both photo editing softwares and
photo editing online applications

If you have a high resolution stock image or an image from your digital camera and wonder how to put it on the web with smaller size, then you need to use a photo editing software/application allowing you to crop, resize, and do some other photo adjustment/enhancement. Here are some working, reliable and completely free image editing software and image editing web-based application.

Things worth considering while deciding which freewares to use: who owns/creates the software; whether it’s still being upgraded and supported? the size of the installation file? the functionality? other users’ ratings…  Read more...

Apply RGB colors / custom colors/ custom color palette to MS Excel charts and text.

Using consistent colors and color palette across different marketing tools and materials — ads, sale literature, web pages, spreadsheets and charts,… — are significantly important and beneficial. However, most of the time your business colors are not included inside Excel default color palette. If that’s the case, you’ll need to replace the default colors in Excel with your customized color palette. Here’s how:  Read more...

Create a spreadsheet to hold your custom colors

• Ctrl N to create a new blank workbook