I was searching through my attic for fall decorations and I came across this autographed publicity photo that I got from Nick Veronis many years ago. It reminded me of how much fun I had as a teenager creating movie posters, and album and magazine covers. Back then my tools included poster board, and magic markers. I decided to resume that hobby and take advantage of today's technology. There are only two things you'll need to make your own creations - a digital image and MS Office Power Point.

I find using MS Office Powerpoint to be the most user friendly method of creating posters, magazine covers, DVD and CD jackets, images for postcards, invitations, etc. Here's all you have to do:

1. Open Powerpoint

2. Click format>slide layout

3. Select a blank format

4. Click file>page setup

5. Select the approprite orientation (portrait or landscape)

Next we are going to select a picture for our project. You can select a picture, photo, drawing etc. from different sources. For example you can chose an image from a clip art collection. I decided to choose an picture from my digital camera.

1. Click insert>picture

2. Chose the source of the picture. In my case I chose camera.

3. If you're using this option make sure the camera is connected to your computer.

4. When the picture appears on your screen grab one of the corners and manipulate it so that it fits within the borders of the slide.

The background will be an important part of the project. It will allow the subject matter to stand out very clearly. Powerpoint offers plenty of options for your background but it's better to keep things as simple as possible.

1. Click format>background

2. Select a color for your background. The more that your background contrasts with the subject matter - the pictures and the words - the better.

3. Feel free to experiment with the variety of special effects that are available - but remember to keep the focus on the foreground elements.

The title, of course, should be big and bold. It should stand out and it should be relevant to the overall theme of the project. It's most often the second thing that draws the viewer's attention after the largest image.

1. Click on the text box icon in the bottom icon tray.

2. Left click your mouse and drag across the screen to place a text box on your slide.

3. Enter your text in the text box.

4. Experiment with different fonts and colors and fill effects until you are satisfied with your results. As you can see, all of my magazine covers are based on real magazines. There's nothing wrong with imitating something that works.

Finally you want to save your creation as a JPEG (or bitmap, gif, etc.). This will allow you to further manipulate the project in a different application such a Photoshop, Paint, etc.

1. Click file>save as

2. Select a destination and a file type. I prefer JPEG and I always save a copy to my hard drive and to a thumb drive for portability. After you've accumulated several completed projects you should save them to a CD, DVD or portable disk drive as well.

I said finally but it really isn't over just yet.

You can accomplish everything using Photoshop instead but I have to warn you that it's a bit more complicated. Learning how to use the text entering tool takes some practice and if you don't use it often it's easy to forget how to use it. The nice thing, however, about using Photoshop for your texting is that the text resolution is equal to that of your image. You might notice much of the smaller text in these images is blurry. Had I used Photoshop, the smaller text would be sharper.