Tips for do-it-yourself artists

Monday was graphics day. In Little known ways to create your own graphics using PowerPoint, Tom Kuhlman showed us how to edit Microsoft clip art in PowerPoint to shape it to your own needs. I didn't know you could do it, but I've just tried in PowerPoint 2007 and you certainly can. You can delete, reshape or recolour individual strokes in each picture as if you were in a dedicated vector art package. You can also pick up a shape from one piece of clip art and insert it in another. Now I know clip art isn't everyone's cup of tea, but sometimes needs must and you might as well make the best job you can.

In Move over stock photos, Poser's here, Cathy Moore looks at alternatives to stock photos, in which, she complains, the girls are always too thin, too pretty and too happy. To increase the realism she recommends - and demonstrates very capably - using the 3D figures that come with a package called Poser. You can get these figures to adopt whatever pose or expression you like - something that's not possible with clip art or stock photography. I'm definitely going to try this out, because I often need a series of images of the same character to accompany an interactive case or scenario. Sometimes I can't find the right combination of images in something like iStockPhoto, which is where I usually turn first if there's no budget for a photo shoot, custom illustrations, video or a 3D world, so here's a new option.

Professional graphic designers might look down their noses at some of these options, but if they do we should ignore them. More often than not now, getting a message out quickly is more important than making it look like a million dollars. With the right tools and a little practice, the majority of us can do a job that is 'good enough'. In many cases, as these examples show, we can do a lot better than that.