Once you purchase a digital camera, the next question becomes "How can I use it to enhance my marketing?"

Jasc Software offers one extremely affordable solution, appropriately named After Shot.

While primarily targeted to consumers, After Shot provides at least three great features for the business user, and real estate agents in particular.

First and foremost, After Shot includes a very easy to use "stitching" tool which allows you to create extremely wide-angle and panoramic photographs. Because real estate agents are constantly faced with the need to photograph property features that even the most extreme wide-angle lens cannot capture, the ability to take a number of photographs and then quickly "stitch" them into one final image justifies the price of this software to any serious real estate professional.

Using After Shot, the process of creating panoramic photographs is no more complicated than taking a number of overlapping pictures, placing them in order, and then letting After Shot take care of the rest. As an example, the following link will take you to a panoramic photograph that was actually created by stitching five smaller images together. This image is likely to be wider than your screen, but you can use your browser's scroll bar or arrow keys to pan the full image.

Such panoramic pictures can be very useful for both Internet marketing as well as for flyers and brochures.

Another strong feature that just about any businessperson will want to use on a regular basis is the the ability to quickly create Web page presentations. Once you have added titles and descriptions for your photographs, After Shot provides a number of templates that you can choose from in order to quickly, (and most importantly, easily) create attractive and professional marketing presentations.

Again, the following link will provide an example, and it took just moments to create this image.

Finally, After Shot will also enable you to create digital movies that are useful for both Internet-based presentations, as well as for distribution on either floppy disk or CD.

While After Shot does include a "Slide Show" feature, sharing these with others requires sending an "executable" slide show "player." Unfortunately, today's heightened security concerns will naturally make many recipients very hesitant to receive any executable programs via e-mail.

However, by creating a slide show using the movie feature, you can enhance your marketing, and do so without unnecessarily alarming any recipients.

NOTE: After Shot's digital movies are presented in Apple's QuickTime format and may require the downloading of the appropriate viewer.

While After Shot includes a number of other features that will likely be appreciated by both consumers and professionals alike, it is the ability to create panoramic photographs, Web-based presentations and self-running slide shows in Quicktime format that makes this software such reasonable investment for the professional user.

After Shot is available for a free 30-day evaluation, and then can be purchased for just $45 from the Jasc Web site. At that price, it's likely to be one of the most reasonable digital marketing tools you'll find.

Published: November 14, 2002

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