March, 2009

There’s nothing like some interesting photos to jazz up the obligatory school report. Doing a botany report? Include some close-ups of a flower with text labels on the parts of the flower. Have to write a paper on the habits of the lemurs of Madagascar? Trek down to your local zoo and have a photo shoot. Create a simple collage of lemurs eating, sleeping, and doing the other things that lemurs do. You can use the Photo Collage command in the Create panel (see details about this command in Chapter 16). Or you can create your own custom collage by making selections in the Editor (see more in Chapter 7) and dragging and dropping them onto a blank canvas. In fact, buying your children their own inexpensive point-and-shoot cameras may give them a little more enthusiasm for school work.

Nothing helps to document a process like images. The spoken word and the written word are great, but showing how something comes together is even more effective. Consider using your photographs to help document your projects from beginning to end. Whether it’s a project involving home improvement, furniture building, crafts, or cooking, take photos at each stage

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Part VI: The Part of Tens

To record the project. If you’re taking a class or workshop and the instruc­tors don’t mind, take your camera to class. Documenting the positions or steps of that new yoga, pottery, or gardening class can help you prac­tice or re-create it on your own later, either for yourself or to explain to someone else.

Import your desired photos into the

Organizer and create notes on each

PhotoDisc, Inc./Getty Images

Figure 18-3: Document your favorite projects for easier re-creation later.

Step of the project in the caption

Area. You can also create your text

On the image itself by using the Type

Tool in the Editor. Output the images

To a PDF (described in the preceding section), as shown in Figure 18-3.

Not into killing trees? Not to worry. You don’t have to print every project you make. Any file you create can be left as a purely digital file and e-mailed to other users. For details on sharing files, see Chapter 16.