How do you make a poster on windows?

[areyoutheregoditsmemargaret]

Ok, don't laugh at me for this dimwit question, but I am not tech savvy at all, dd, 9, is freaking out because she has to make a poster for a school project and she can't find her way around my windows 7. Any tips to help? Should we be downloading powerpoint or some other expensive software? Problems mainly with getting the text to stay in one place when we're trying to have text dotted all round the place and dragging and dropping images. Thank you [smile}

PowerPoint would make life easier, but you should be able to achieve what you need using text boxes on Word which you can place and control the orientation of on the page.

Get Open Office, which is free - there should be a way to create a poster of there.
It's not Powerpoint that you want, it will be the Open Office equivalent of Word. You can do all sorts of loopy colourful writing and they a have a library of borders, icons, clip art etc.

Photoscape is another free programme that is like Photoshop. You DD could play around in there for a while maybe to see how it works - she could start with a photo and change it and edit text, etc.

thanks, is Open Office really "free" or do you pay in being bombarded with adverts etc? I'd rather pay and have a clean site. I'm going to try again with her using the Word text boxes (and in the day when I am relaxed not as last night when I am trying to cook and eat dinner) but will then go for those you suggested. Wish us luck!

Open Office seems to be quite 'clean' - my DS uses it and he never mentions any problems, and he is the sort that would.

What your DD needs to do is to write some text on the page, then highlight it by holding the cursor down and dragging it across the text from right to left.
Then go to the taskbar at the top of the screen and select the options that change the size, colour, shape etc of the text.

If you look on YouTube there will be tutorials there to get her started.

Open Office is fantastic, it's the only thing I will use. There are no ads, I have never seen a single one, totally clean.

Another vote for openoffice! It's freeeee :)

By far the easiest program for creating posters used to be "Textease" produced by software company Softease, and I used it in several primary schools for over ten years. There was also a Home version that parents could buy.

It was a bit like a 'painting' program, and you could click ANYWHERE on the page to type items of text, or insert pictures or create drawings.

Items could then be manipulate by dragging them, could be re-sized, copied, rotated, stretched or squeezed using the mouse, sometimes in conjunction with Shift or Ctrl keys. And the text could still be edited, even after manipulation; so if you found a spelling mistake, or changed your mind on a word or date, you could still correct it.

Multi-pages could be automatically printed, to make GIANT posters, and 'crop marks' showed how to paste the A4 pages together: I forget what the largest I did was, but probably twelve or sixteen pages.

HOWEVER: I have been looking, and cannot find a reasonably priced edition, and it now appears only to be 'bundled' with several other educational programs - database, spreadsheet, presenter, and others.

I'll give you a link, which has email details, and you could probably find a phone number. You could ask if there is still a 'home' version, and it would certainly allow you to create the best posters you have ever seen!

www.segfl.org.uk/index.php/suppliers/show/softease/3273/s

A Professional program is Xara. This would be expensive, but there might possibly be a demonstration version you could try for a limited period of time. Have a look at Xara Gallery, to see what CAN be achieved!

www.xara.com/uk/photo-graphic-designer/

I don't know if you are still around to see this, but came across this today. Not used it, and don't know if it works/is any good but might be worth a look:

www.thebookchook.com/2013/10/online-poster-makers.html

I would use GIMP which is free, no adverts and not as perfect as photoshop but then doesn't cost thousands of pounds! You can create layers, masks etc

www.gimp.org/downloads/