Making a good first impression

Mind what it was like on the first day of work? For many knowledge workers a new job means endless training to learn new software and a great Lernkurve as they come up to speed on the company computer system. Complicated processes can use unnecessary downtime and lost revenue - and make a good impression not exactly on the talent you have worked so hard to win.

An important advantage of the Microsoft Office 365 is that it simply, new employees makes it on board. No longer must IT administrators to install and configure software on each new employee workstation. Because Office 365 in Microsoft data centers in the cloud is hosted, administrators simply can go to the "Admin Overview" page and add the new user to their Office 365 subscription. It's so easy! Employees can then login to their account and work. What's more is they can do this with minimal training as they use productivity software most of the staff already are familiar.

Among the companies that have improved their onboarding process with Office 365 is Konica Minolta Business Solutions Denmark a / s, a leading provider of image information products. The company, which rely on Lotus Notes, had significant monetary and time costs were preparing new workstations for staff arise. For each new employee spent IT staff of three to five hours to install software and configure systems. Total spent that establish IT Department over 80 hours per month and how to troubleshoot local systems.

These challenges not only in the company's profitability cut; You also frustrated employees. "We offer annual employee satisfaction and our results in the"Very satisfied"category - only about 50 percent, were not what we wanted," says Sune t. Perlman, IT Manager for Konica Minolta Business Solutions Denmark a / s.

To improve the efficiency, Konica Minolta Microsoft Exchange Server implements for advanced e-Mail access together with Microsoft Office 365 for improved communication, exchange of knowledge and remote access.

With Office 365, new employees simply login to your account and work. The only training staff now offer it a short, one hour orientation session on a new user account set up. "We spend up to five hours each employee laptop, set up" said Perlman. "With Office 365 is setup in less than an hour." The staff simply logs in and everything is ready for use.

By moving in Office 365, 80 percent of IT administrators have reduced the it spend, configure and troubleshoot local hardware and software. What's more, the staff are prices satisfaction improvement. "Employees are the backbone of our economy and happy employees mean a better, more profitable business," Perlman said.

To learn more, please consult the full case study of Konica Minolta Business Solutions Denmark . Also, please share your experience. Has Office 365 improved onboarding experience for your organization? If so, how?

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Glass icons are first class design elements

Photoshop for beginners - 6 most important first steps

Most people want to do special effects with Photoshop but as all tools capable of advanced work, pay get the essential bases under your belt first. Here is my list recommended the gist of Basic 6 that should learn any beginner Photoshop:

1 Learn the analysis image - histogram, the Info Palette and the eyedropper tools

These three tools provide you essential information on your image or a photograph. The histogram tell you everything you need to know about the exhibition of photography, it is under or over exposed and the range of tones. The eyedropper tool will give you valuable information on the colors of the image. especially if there is a color cast (color cast is a generally undesirable dominant color) you need to correct. The Info palette (or window) will provide a digital feedback when using the eyedropper tool and also the use of other tools. It is an important reference for advanced work is getting to know at the beginning.

2 Learn how straighten an image skewed - use the sovereign to find the angle of inclination.

Learn how to use the sovereign tool will allow you to precisely determine the angle of a tilted horizon, and this can then be used with command rotating canvas quickly correct a slanted image. No guesswork necessary! With so many people using cameras with only display screens back rather than a proper viewfinder, it has become it all to common for images out of the camera with a severe tilt their. Learn how to use the sovereign and rotate the canvas combination makes correcting these photos really easy!

3. Learning to crop the picture - the use of the crop tool

Reframing is the process of removing all around the edges of a photo that adds nothing to the impact of the photo. The crop tool should be learned then cropping is a very important creative process. There are very few photos that cannot benefit from being cropped. Too many Photoshop beginners just to accept the content of the photo that it comes from the camera without reflection on the question of whether the image can be improved visually by cutting unnecessary edges. The additional advantage of cropping of the photo at the beginning, it is that you also reduce the size of the file which provides additional changes to the image of running faster because you use less disk space and memory.

4 Learn how to remove dust marks and stains - use the healing brush and Clone Stamp Tools

Even with modern dust integrated, you can find your image contains trademarks of dust or other defects. Often, these will be in the areas of your smooth as a clear sky. They should be removed by the tool correction, especially useful on smooth color and tones as the sky and the Clone Stamp tool. The Clone Stamp tool is essential for the deletion or correction of the areas of detail which the correcting tool mess often enough just place. Quickly a grip on these two important tools you can really cleans up your important pictures.

5 Learn how to correct the tonal values - use the levels command

The next logical step is to correct exposure problems or issues of the tonal range. If the image is too dark or light now is the time to remedy. To make tonal corrections, you need to learn how to use the levels command. The levels command uses a histogram to display tones so your previous learning of step 1 above will help you really now. I told you it was a logical sequence of learning!

6 Learn to remove color casts - using the color Balance command

Although modern cameras represent a reasonable job of interpretation of the colour of the light reaching the sensor, they also often get wrong results in a photo with an obvious dominant color. It is known as the color cast, and to remove the command Balance colors. Once a dominant colour has been corrected, you are ready to make creative improvements of color if desired.

There, the things you learn the most important six for a beginner to Photoshop. Each of these steps can be mastered quite quickly and the knowledge acquired will provide a solid basis for all your future work of Photoshop; If you simply want to improve a family snap or produce a work of art of advanced special effects.

Now you can go to learn skills more in Photoshop by joining me and other like folk minded, free of charge to members of the Zone2Tone and after you join us, you will receive a free professional quality video tutorial.

Copyright (c) 2010 Meehan.

The Meehan is the author of seven books published digital photography and as a qualified instructor teaches workshops for more than 20 years.