Q&A: Editing Microsoft Word Files on an Android Tablet

Q. I don’t have a subscription to the Office 365 site, so what’s the easiest way to read and edit Microsoft Word documents on an Android tablet?

A. The Google Play store has several apps for working with Microsoft Word files. When shopping for an app, check the feature list carefully, as some free programs allow you only to view files on your Android device, not edit them.

Apps that offer document editing include the $15 full versions of Documents To Go or OfficeSuite Pro 7, the free Kingsoft Office or the free Olive Office Premium. Features and user reviews vary by app, so study up before downloading to make sure you get everything you want.

Quickoffice, another popular app for working with Word files, was recently withdrawn from the Google Play store, but for a reason. Last year, Google bought the company behind the software, and last month it made Quickoffice free for Android and iOS users. The new Quickoffice app requires a free Google account and stores files online with Google Drive. The new version does not support online syncing and storage to other services like Dropbox, as previous versions did.

Using Folders in the Safari Bookmarks Bar

Q. How do I make a drop-down menu of related bookmarks on my Safari toolbar in Mac OS X 10.8?

A. Safari, Apple’s browser for the Mac, can store folders of favorites (as well as links to single sites) in the “bookmarks bar” below the address/search box. When you have a folder in the bookmarks bar, clicking a folder name reveals a vertical menu with all the bookmarks stored in that folder.

If you have bookmarked sites in Safari that you want to add to the bookmarks bar, start by making a folder. Right-click (or hold down the Mac’s Control key and click) in an empty spot on Safari’s bookmarks bar area and choose New Folder. You can enter a name for the new folder right there.

Next, right-click or Control-click the new folder and choose Edit Contents. This opens the Bookmarks window in Safari, with the Bookmarks Bar icon selected and a list of the program’s bookmarks underneath it in the left pane of the window. From here, you can drag the bookmarks you want to add from the left pane into your new folder in the center of the screen. (If you turn on the Auto-Click checkbox in the Bookmarks window, all the bookmarks stored in that folder will open in separate browser tabs when you click the folder’s name in the Safari window.)

As an alternative method, you can also create a new folder and open up the Bookmarks window all at once — just go to the Bookmarks menu in Safari and choose Add Bookmark Folder. When the Bookmarks window opens, name your untitled folder in the left pane, drag in the desired bookmarks and then drag the new folder onto the Bookmarks Bar icon at the top of the column.

Once you close the Bookmarks window (click the small book icon in the Safari toolbar, or go to the Bookmarks menu and choose Hide All Bookmarks), your new folder should be waiting for you in the bookmarks bar. Click it and select the site you want to visit from the menu.

Gadgetwise Blog: App Smart Extra: Apps for Editing Photos

This week in my App Smart column, I wrote about some of the smartphone apps that have brought powerful photo manipulation techniques to your pocket. This is the kind of image trickery that used to be possible only on a desktop computer running Photoshop.

Many of these photo manipulation apps offer a range of effects, and you can “layer” effects on top of each other. But there are many simpler apps that can quickly transform basic smartphone photos into better images, or photos with an arty angle.

An example is Elasticam, a $2 iOS app that lets you tweak and twist your photos as if they were on a sheet of plastic. This can produce some entertaining funhouse mirror effects. The app’s easy controls can be used to pull a photo of someone’s face toward the nose, or add a crazy swirling spiral to someone’s ears, for example. Delicate touches can also make your legs look a little slimmer.

Facebox, for Android, is similar — although I did manage to crash it while testing it.

Percolator ($2 for iOS) turns your photos into a pile of colored bubbles. Close up, the altered image looks like one of those cards your optometrist uses to test for color-blindness, but from a bit farther away it looks like an arty representation of the original photo. You can adjust many settings to get the effect you want from this delightfully quirky app, which calls the process of adjusting your image “grinding” it up. It’s more for entertainment than serious photo editing.

Dash of Color is a surprisingly powerful app that can add dramatic effect to a photo. First, it turns your color image into black and white. Then you then carefully dab at the screen to restore color to parts of the image. It’s free for Android and iOS.

Apps like these turn otherwise ordinary smartphone snaps into something you may like to share with your friends over Facebook or even print out and hang on your wall. Some of them also perform some standard photo editing, like removing red-eye from photos. Others have some brain-twisting effects like changing your eye color (the free iOS app Magic Eye Color Effect).

Quick Call

TV Guide has given its free Android app a big overhaul. The app has a New Tonight, Trending feature so you can see what other people are watching, and it has more social networking so you can share your TV choices with the world.

App Smart: Mobile Editing Tools for Smartphone Photos

The granddaddy of photo manipulation on a smartphone is Photoshop. The Photoshop Touch app is a touch-screen version of the original ($10 for a tablet version on iOS and Android, $6 for iOS and Android phones). It’s powerful and can apply many of the effects you have seen in magazines and on the Web. That includes adjustments like the tilt-shift effect, which can make a townscape look like a miniature model, as well as better-known effects like red-eye reduction.

A tutorial shows beginners how to manipulate sample photos, step by step. Soon you’ll be experimenting on your own.

Because of its complexity, however, this app isn’t ideal for occasional use or for simple touch-ups of your holiday snaps. Unless you take the time to make yourself familiar with it, you’ll easily get lost in its hundreds of settings. You may find it hard to remember the purpose of its many icons.

A simpler app, Photoshop Express (free on iOS and Android) is ideal for quick fixes because it has only about a dozen effects. It’s great for cropping or quick brightness adjustments. It has clear controls and an obvious mechanism for undoing changes, though it would be nice to be able to undo an earlier effect without changing later adjustments.

You can also use it to share your tweaked photos via e-mail or over social networks like Twitter. It’s a simple app, and there’s little to dislike about it.

For a different, more entertaining experience, Snapseed is free on iOS and Android. It doesn’t have Photoshop Touch’s range of functions, but Snapseed’s tools are presented in an interesting, gesture-based interface.

Icons represent different adjustments it can make, including cropping, rotating, tilt-shift effects and retro-looking filters.

After you choose a photo from your phone’s library and select one of these effects, the app takes you to an editing page. You’ll see the image you’re working on and a simple icon bar at the bottom. In many cases, you adjust the selected photo effect with screen gestures: to crop an image you simply drag a finger from any corner of the image until you achieve the framing you desire.

Other settings, like rotating the cropping window, are controlled via the icon bar. You can hold your finger on the Preview button to see the photo before and after you’ve applied your chosen effect. When you’re satisfied, click Apply.

Some of the effects are beautiful. But I’ll admit that, even though this is one of my favorite apps and I’m practiced in its use, I find it easy to forget which gestures do what. Fortunately, the app reminds you when you start work.

A great alternative $1 app on iOS is Luminance. A full-featured app, it’s a little like Photoshop Express, but with a few more effects and a slightly different interface. It’s much more icon-driven than Snapseed and is a little more intuitive than Adobe’s apps.

For example, clicking on the icon that looks like a group of slider controls brings up a panel where you can adjust features like brightness, contrast or color saturation by moving a slider. The app also has a timeline of your edits so that you can see exactly what you did to your photo in the order you did it. It doesn’t have much in the way of tutorials or instructions, though, so mastering it may take some trial and error.

Quick Call

Google has given the free YouTube app for Windows Phone 8 an overhaul, turning it into a full-featured video app. Among its features are the ability to share videos over social networks and play clips in the background.

Exclusive - Started From The Bottom (Official Video) by R-Stonze

Official video shot and edited by Stakk Money Films in 720p HD. "Started From The Bottom", by R-Stonze. This track will be featured on his upcoming mixtape "Interview With The Vampire" which is set to drop July 4th.

Shot & Edited by Stakk Money Films
Shot With A Canon Rebel T3
Edited With Sony Vegas Pro 11

Gadgetwise Blog: Free Lightroom 5 Photo Editing Software

Lightroom 5’s Radial Gradient feature can be used to create a vignette, where a picture darkens towards the edges.

Adobe Systems has begun giving away the newest version of its photo editing software, Lightroom 5. But there is a catch.

Lightroom 5 is a public beta test version of a sister product to Adobe’s Photoshop. Lightroom is easier to use than Photoshop, but just as powerful for making overall adjustments to things like color, shadows and contrast. However, it is not as good for extremely detailed editing and has fewer tools.

At the top of the list of Lightroom’s new features is an improved ability to erase and replace objects in photos. The older Lightroom was best at erasing small aberrations, like dust spots. The new Lightroom lets users pick a larger area in any shape to replace. It’s still not as powerful as the Photoshop tool called “Content Aware Fill,” but it’s close.

Adobe has also added a feature called Radial Gradient, which lets photographers draw a circular or oval area in which to apply effects. It can be used to create a vignette, where a picture darkens toward the edges, for instance. So you could circle someone’s face, and have the picture dim as it moves away from her, creating a spotlight to draw the eye.

A new feature called Upright examines the horizontal and vertical lines of a photo to correct for lens distortion. So if you shot a photo with a wide-angle lens, and things at the edges look warped, Upright would adjust it to look as though it had been photographed with a more neutral lens.

The Upright feature.

Slide shows can now include video clips, and you can make and save custom design pages for photo books. There are other enhancements as well.

So what is the catch? When the beta test is over, you won’t be able to use Lightroom 5 anymore unless you buy the new version. Upgrade pricing will be available to people who bought an earlier version of Lightroom.