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Home business owners wear many different hats--some of them unexpected. Even if you think you lack design sense, you may have no choice but to draft yourself as in-house artist, whether it means conjuring up an eye-popping logo, developing a sketch for your brochure, dressing up a photo for an ad in your local paper, or charting your organization's growth plan for a pitch to potential investors.
Let's suppose you know stylish graphics are important in everyday business--but you're no artist. What do you do? Take heart; with a PC and the right software, you can still get the job done nicely.
A good beginning is to consider the four graphics programs reviewed below: HiJaak Graphics Suite 95, Instant 3D for Windows 95, PhotoImpact for Windows 95 and Visio for Windows 95. These programs can form the core of a home business owner's essential graphics tool kit, delivering diverse, stylish capabilities such as 3-D effects, image processing and diagram creation.
All four programs strike a judicious balance between real power and ease of use for non-artists. And compared with many professional-level products, they're reasonably priced, ranging from about $50 to $200.
HiJaak: The graphics traffic cop
Call HiJaak Pro 95, included in HiJaak Graphics Suite 95 and sold separately for $49.95, the Swiss army knife of graphics utility programs. As you work within other graphics programs (including HiJaak Graphics Suite's own sketch, paint and screen-capture modules) and with a variety of graphics formats, HiJaak Pro 95 becomes your centralized graphics management tool.
HiJaak Pro 95's main claim to fame is its ability to juggle and convert many graphics formats--more than 75--for compatibility with the software you use. (By the time you read this, a new version that ups the total to 85-plus should be available.)
Once you've installed HiJaak Pro 95, you can highlight any graphics file from within Windows Explorer, right-click your mouse and see an array of HiJaak options, including one that lets you convert the highlighted file's format on the fly. So, if you use, say, Delrina's WinFax Pro and want to set up your travel business's fax cover page with an eye-catching image of the Eiffel Tower that's currently in .cgm format, HiJaak Pro 95 will readily turn the clip-art...