Four Sites that Could Teach you to do Just About Anything

 Have you ever wanted to learn how to play guitar, change your car’s oil, increase your Twitter followers, or become way more skilled in Photoshop?  Knowledge is power and there are many web sites out there offering a Boat-load of knowledge for free.  I will cover four web sites that cover a wide array of topics and have instructions for you to accomplish just about anything you want.

 

The first is eHow (http://www.eHow.com).  A great multi purpose site, eHow, covers topics like Careers, electronics and even legal and Parenting.  For instance, are you wondering what constitutes Reasonable Suspicion for a police officer to stop you?  There’s an article on that.  Are you wondering how to pierce an ear like a professional?  Or maybe how to best choose a tattoo design?  eHow has a mountain of user-submitted articles covering all these topics and more.  The downside to this site is that many of the instructions are of a very basic nature.  Over all, eHow has provided me with a few tips and tricks valuable enough that I will go back.

 

Next is Tutorialized (http://www.tutorialized.com).  Focusing on the more technical side of tutorials, Tutorialized does a really good job of providing articles on Photoshop, Gimp, and even AutCAD.  With over 12,000 tutorials on Photoshop alone, this is a great resource for any graphic designer or photographer.  They have some great articles on simple enhancements all the way to very specific tips and tricks, like How to Create Glossy Lips and Change Hair Color.  Each tutorial has stats like the number of views, votes and a simple rating system so you can quickly evaluate which tutorials seem to be better. 

 

Not commonly thought of as a tutorial site, but Mahalo (http://www.mahalo.com) has some pretty decent tutorials covering a wide range of topics.  Just check out the How To section of the site (http://www.mahalo.com/category/how-tos) to find some great articles like How to make Pumpkin Pie or How to Make Money off of Facebook.  The articles are well done and rival just about any tutorial I’ve seen on the internet.  Don’t under estimate Mahalo the next time you are looking for directions on how to do something. 

 

Lastly,  MonkeySee (http://www.monkeysee.com).  An aptly named site, these tutorials are all video-based and range in topics from automotive repair to pet care.  One of the more interesting articles is, How to Play Air Guitar and How to Read Tarot Cards.  I thought I knew how to play air guitar, but watching a video from the world champion air guitarist, I guess everyone has something to learn. 

So, the next time you find yourself wondering how to accomplish a task on your Honey Do List, don’t worry, because you can look it up on the internet.

Little-known Free Tools from Microsoft

Live Sync: https://sync.live.com/clientdownload.aspx?ibm=10

Live Sync is a wonderful tool if you need to share files with someone or if you want a hands off backup of important files.  Live Sync allows you to synchronize foldersbetween two computers (Windows XP and later and Mac OSX up to 10.5).  The computers can be on a local network or just connected to the internet.  This is a great way to share photos with relatives or files with other people.  I personally use it to synchronize a folder full of Keepers on my desktop with a folder on my backup server so if my computer ever crashed after I added the document but before the nightly backup could run, I still wouldn’t lose the files.

 

Security essentials:  http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/

Microsoft has realized the necessity of antivirus software on windows PCs and has stepped up with the free Security Essentials.  Security Essentials provides protection against viruses, spyware, rootkits and Trojans.    This is a huge step in the right direction by providing this service free of charge.  Keep in mind, that like all anti-viruses, they are typically only effective in telling you AFTER you’ve been infected, so practice safe surfing habits like not downloading from questionable sites, don’t open e-mail attachments, and make sure you are running as a limited user on your computer and not running as administrator. 

 

PowerToys http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/Downloads/powertoys/Xppowertoys.mspx

Microsoft has a history of releasing non-supported PowerTools and Power Toys that their developers create because there is a need.  These are not publicized formally nor are they supported by Microsoft, but there are some gems.

Color Control Panel Applet:  Being an amateur photographer, being able to control how the computer displays colors and be able to control it from the screen all the way to the printer is very important.  This powertoy does just that in one centralized area.

SyncToy: If you have multiple copies of files or need a simple way to compare files, Sync Toy was built to help copy, move and synchronize various files like photos, docuemtns, etc.

RAW Image Thumbnailer Viewer:  As a photographer, I like to shoot my DSLR to capture RAW images.  The issue with RAW images is that many softwares can’t display the RAW files natively. This is where the RAW Image Thumbnailer Viewer comes in.  it allows you to see thumbnails, previews, EXIF data and even print RAW images you may not otherwise be able to see.

Alt-Tab Replacement:  If you multitask and have many files open at once, you may use the Alt-Tab key combination to cycle through the open windows.  The Alt-Tab Replacement PowerToy beefs up this ability and included page previews and the application icon.

Tweak UI:  By far, my favorite of the PowerToys.  TweakUI has been around for years allowing people to manipulate the user interface of Windows to better suit your needs.  Tweak UI is a must have for me when I set up a new computer. 

Image Resizer:  Why open up Photoshop or some other powerful image editing tool if all you need is to resize the image to e0mail or post somewhere?  With a right-click, you can resize one or many images.

Webcam Timershot:  This PowerToy allows you to set up a time lapse photo using your webcam.  Maybe you want to capture traffic or the weather moving in.  The Timershot tool is a simple way to take snapshots at specified intervals.

Artisteer: Web Design Software for the Rest of Us

For those who are WordPress addicts, which includes the creators of this site, you might want to check out a site that helps a user to create Website templates and blog themes.

The software program recently won the Red Ferret’s Journal’s Product of the Year for 2008, and it is no wonder why. It can make it easy to create websites for WordPress and other CMS products.

Artisteer also has some automated tools that do not require a first-class web designer to be able to use, just the average user. In other words, you can make some terrific looking templates from scratch, even if you don’t know scratch about web design.

So, is this the way of the future? Let’s hope so, because it will empower people like me, who are not very computer literate to create some adequate websites. Let’s hope not, because we might lose the originality that needs to happen for future sites.

Yes, you might want to check out the program that allows you to immediately become a Web design expert, editing and slicing graphics, coding XHTML and CSS, and creating Web design templates and WordPress themes, all in minutes, without Photoshop or Dreamweaver, and no technical skills. You can download it now on the Aristeer web site.

PixelPerfect, Photoshop help show, gets renewed

It’s nice when the fans of a television show speak up with a voice so loud that a production network can’t help but listen. After all, Fox actually brought back the previously cancelled Family Guy, and it was Firefly fans that were, for the most part, responsible for the movie Serenity.

A similar situation happened with the show PixelPerfect, a show from Revision3. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the show, it stars Bert Monroy, who teaches the viewer what is new with Photoshop.

Just think of it as a This Old Adobe House, and the newest episode deals with CS4 that we discussed a while ago. PixelPerfect only had about sixty days worth of online airplay before it was given the axe.

However, PixelPerfect has been saved from execution as Ron Richards of Revision 3 felt the power of the people. He is quoted as saying you spoke, through a flood of e-mails, tweets, IMs and every other imaginable form of communication short of the carrier pigeon. We listened.

Ah, isn’t it wonderful when fans get together and save a show? Now, if only shows like Pushing Daisies could be saved, and worn-out shows like Smallville can get the axe they richly deserve.

If you are interested in watching Pixel Perfect, try looking here.

Source

Design Shard, More Than Just A Web Design Blog

Whether you’re a noobie with Photoshop or a web design veteran, Design Shard has something to offer you.

Design Shard is a web blog that provides resources for web designers. On the blog you can find program tutorials, design tips and tricks, inspiration, exposure, and links to other valuable resources. There is a veritable wealth of information on this blog to help grow your artistic abilities and expand your online web pages and businesses.

Instructive posts teach users how to blend form and style to create dazzling websites. Video tutorials guide visitors through both simple and complex techniques in programs such as Photoshop and Illustrator. These tutorials aid in web design and structure, giving you the skill and capability to build it all on your own.

Design Shard shares artist collections and other tantalizing designs through the blog, bringing inspiration to you in the form of a showcase. Through the artwork posted and various external links available on the site, designers in need of encouragement can find that spark of creativity they are looking for.

The blog also offers advice on how to increase traffic to your website and build a better business through improved web design. Through the blog you will learn how to save money with better design, how to gain exposure, and how to maintain users by guiding them effortlessly through your website with elegant design as their handrails.

Best of all for designers is that Design Shard offers exposure to anyone willing and talented enough to participate. You can become a guest author on the blog, offering your own stories and advice to the community. Every guest author is given permission to promote their own websites and design work. Design Shard also has a Flickr group where community members can sign up to showcase their own artwork. The idea behind this is to give everyone a shot at displaying their own work while building a resource for others to become inspired by. This is probably my favorite aspect of the site.

The community is thousands strong and growing as more discover this gem. This is a great website for anyone that has a passion for web design or creativity in general. The content created by the website and its guest authors is interesting and informative. It would be great if new blog posts were more frequent (there are only one or two new posts every week), but most everything else about Design Shard is wonderful.

It would be a shame for anyone interested in the web design industry or creative field to miss out on Design Shard. The abundance of tools and resources is impressive, but the enthusiastic community and inspiring works are priceless.

Should You Upgrade to Photoshop CS4?

Photoshop Creative Suite 4 adds quite a few new features, some of which are very impressive. We’ll take a look at some of them and find out whether they’re worth the upgrade.

With CS 4 comes a myriad of new features and improvements. So many in fact, that it’s difficult to assess them all. This also makes it difficult to decide whether it is worth the upgrade, so we’re going to look at some of the most relevant changes.

The most significant change is that Photoshop CS4 is now available in both 32 bit and 64 bit versions. For Windows users this may be a significant advantage, allowing Photoshop to make full use of your processor, and also allowing Photoshop to access more RAM if you use the 64 bit version. Users will be able to load significantly larger images in their RAM, assuming their computer is equipped with a great deal of RAM, rather than forcing their computer to swap the images back and forth from the hard drive. Photographers who use large format cameras will find this particularly useful; a 40 megapixel picture takes up a significant amount of space, and loading one from the harddrive, which is considerably slower than RAM, could result in noticeable slow-down with Photoshop.

Another new feature relevant to photographers is a new depth of field tool. Using this tool, CS4 users can combine multiple photographs that have different subjects in focus so that they become one photograph with every subject in focus. A tool like this may well be very useful for magazine photographers, who often use this effect to get multiple subjects in the same photo at different distances from the camera, while keeping them all in focus.

But there are features that will be useful to everyone as well, not just photographers. The new zoom features makes zooming in on a picture easier and visually smoother. A new hotkey allows users to temporarily zoom out to view the whole picture, and zoom back in by releasing the key. This makes finding the area you want to zoom in to much easier, especially when working at very high zoom levels. Further, with the proper graphics equipment, CS4 will keep all lines smooth no matter how far in you zoom. This new infinite zoom feature reduces the “jagginess” that is experienced as you zoom closer and closer to an image.

The most incredible new feature is the context-sensitive resize tool. Traditionally, resizing has been mostly a pointless affair when working with complex images, unless the proportions were constrained so that the width and height changed relative to one another. When you needed to make an image thinner or shorter, the resize tool would mangle the proportions, squishing the subjects noticeably.

The new context-sensitive resize eliminates this problem. The resize tool can now determine which subject in the foreground are most important and keep all their detail and sizing, while squishing the background. This makes resizing images very simple, and works surprisingly well. This has obvious application for photographers who want to modify the composition of a photograph quickly while not ruining the subjects, but web designers may find this very useful as well. Resizing images on the web often results in squished and aesthetically unpleasing images, and sometimes an image is simply too big to put on the page. With context-sensitive resize, web designers can quickly and easily make an image fit their page without ruining its quality.

Another neat graphical feature added to CS4 is the new image rotate option. With this new control, users can rotate a picture within its window, without actually editing the image. The process is akin to rotating your actual monitor, in that it gives you a new view of the picture without degrading or ruining it, allowing users to manipulate their images and determine how they will look at different angles.

All of this doesn’t include the myriad of small improvements. Adjustments made to images are no longer permanent, and instead automatically apply the changes to a new layer. This gets rid of the need to press Back one step then Forward one step repeatedly when you want to see what difference an edit makes; now the user need only toggle off the new added layer to see what changes were made, in a manner that is non-destructive to the image.

The interface has also been improved, making navigation smoother and easier. Images are now put into tabs, making switching between them simple and quick, along with many other small interface tweaks. Also, the addition of the new adjustments panel makes adjustments much more fluid now that users aren’t require to go into the main menu every time they want to make an adjustment. Many tools have been made easier to use as well, with hot keys that work in tandem with the mouse to resize brushes, and visual improvements to the Dodge, Burn and Brush tools.

Finally for our small review, CS4 adds 3D painting and composition tools. With these new tools users can paint 2D images onto 3D objects within Photoshop, broadening Photoshop’s applicability and usefulness greatly. But this feature is only available in the Extended edition.

CS4 is without a doubt a significant improvement over CS3, but do you need it? The performance improvements with the new 64 bit version are very important for users with a system that isn’t being used to its full potential, or users who simply work with very large images, and many of the new tools are innovative and useful to just about anyone who works with Photoshop. Finally, improvements to old features and the interface make the whole experience smoother and simpler.

Photoshop is clearly the number one professional image editing and manipulation software on the market, and it’s hard to say that it’s not worth getting the update. If you’re getting by fine with CS3, and can’t spare the money, then you might want to hold off. Cons are hard to come by; CS4 improves on CS3 in many ways and doesn’t seem to have messed anything up. From what I’ve read some people complain that the Bridge tool still doesn’t allow for serious comparison of photos. But I personally have very little experience with Bridge, and don’t use it in great enough detail to say.

If you’ve got the cash to spare and are looking for some very powerful new features and improvements, by all means upgrade to CS4. It is likely that over the next few years the majority of Photoshop users will be doing the same.

Adobe Photoshop CS4 costs $699, or $199 to upgrade from the earlier CS editions. Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended costs $999, or $349 to upgrade, and comes with the 3D editing tools. Photoshop CS4 Extended is also available in all four of the Creative Suite collections: Design Premium, Web Premium, Production Premium, and Masters Collection.

Photoshop Tutorial: Use Colour Match to Enhance Your Photos

This simple tutorial will explain how to enhace an image’s colours by harnessing the colours in other photos.

Like a lot of people I’m not very well-versed in Adobe Photoshop. But I do have to use it from time to time, mainly to touch up photographs. Without formal training or experience in Photoshop, editing and adjusting photos can be frustrating, especially when you aren’t familiar with the myriad of controls, options and panels available in Adobe’s product.

You might often find that you have a strong idea of how you want the photo to be improved, but have a hard time actually getting results with Photoshop. But by using the colour match tool to sample photos that already possess some of the qualities you want in your picture, you can often achieve the effect you desire with very little technical Photoshop experience.

Step 1: Get two photos; one photo that you wish to colour-adjust, and one photo that you wish to use as the colour source for your adjustments. For this tutorial I will use a photo of a flower that I want to make more vibrant.

For the second photo you will need something that has colours similar to your photo, but with more of the qualities you want. In this case we have two simple colours, mainly green and pink, but I want them to be more bold and vibrant. For our colour source I will be using another picture of a flower, under a CC license courtesy of Kevin Law.

Step 2: Now that we have both our images, open them both up in Photoshop. Make sure that the image you want to edit is selected. Next go to the Image menu, highlight Adjustments, then click Match Colour. The colour match dialogue box will open.

Step 3: In the colour match dialogue box, click on the Source drop down menu, and select the image you want to use as the colour source. In this case it is samplex1.jpg.

Once the source image is selected you will see the image you are editing shift in colour to reflect the colours adopted from your colour source image. As you can see the colours don’t look quite right yet, so we’ll have to do a bit of adjusting.

Step 4: The colours look too bright and not enough of the image’s older colours are coming through, so we’ll make some adjustments. Lowering the Luminance slider a bit will descrease the brightness, making the brightness of the new colours match that of the photo we are editing, which is darker than the colour source. Also, increasing the Fade will decrease how strongly the new colours come through in our photo, and increase how much the original photo’s colours appear. We want to decrease the harshness of these colours, but not so much that we can’t see the difference, so we will increase the fade to 50.

We don’t need to touch the Colour Saturation slider this time, but if you find that some colours are drowning out others, this slider can be adjusted as well.

Step 5: Once you have adjusted your photo to your liking, simply press OK.

The colour match tool is a great way to edit your photos without having to deal with palettes and individual colour saturations. Looking at a photo and saying, “those are the colour I want” is easier than meticulously adjusting each variable of your photo. Further, this trick helps you speed up your work and avoid the more technical aspects of Photoshop.

There some other neat uses for the colour mathc tool as well. If you’re looking to give a series of photos a similar colour scheme, use colour match to make them more consistent. Or check out this link to see how you can use classic paintings to make your photo’s colours really stand out.

Of course, like any trick, colour match isn’t perfect. You still have to go and find a photo that possesses the colours you need, and like any quick solution, it isn’t an excuse to avoid learning more about Photoshop. But, it never hurts to have a method like this at your disposal.

Here are the original photo and the adjusted photo side by side for comparison.

Photoshop Tutorial: Editing a Batch of Photos

I’m still learning new things about Photoshop every time I open the program or listen to another person talk about what things they do with it. I’m going to give you a short tutorial on how to edit a large number of images in very little time using the batch and actions features.

Go ahead and find yourself a group of pictures you want to edit and open up Photoshop. There have been times before I discovered this method that I chose not to edit my pictures because I didn’t want to spend hours (or in some cases days) going through and editing my pics one by one. With this method, whether you have two or two-thousand pictures to edit, you can set Photoshop to automatically perform a set path of tasks to perform on each picture and save them to wherever you want while you go get a coffee. This could be useful if you had bad lighting issues one day while shooting that you need to fix or if you want to put a stamp or effect on a number of images or whatever you can think of.

Before I start, I want to let you know that I am running Adobe Photoshop CS2 on a Mac. If you have another CS version or are on a PC, you should be able to follow along just fine. It’s mostly just a warning in case my screenshots look funny to you. Let’s begin!

1. Open up a photo, any photo you want to edit.

2. Go to the Windows tab up top and open up the Actions window. Windows > Actions

3.With the open Actions window, click the icon that looks like a folded piece of square paper. This creates a new action. You can name the action anything you want, but leave everything else the way it is and hit OK.

4.Now in the Actions window, the action you just created should be selected and a red circle below it should be pressed. The red circle button is the record button. Anything you do in Photoshop from this point forward will be recorded under your new action. You can pause and continue recording whenever you want by switching between the stop (square) button and record button.

5.With your actions recording, perform any changes you want to make to your picture. As you edit your pictures, you will see your actions being recorded under the action you created.

6.When you are done editing your photo, hit the stop (square) button in your actions window.

7.Now go to File and select Automate and then Batch. File > Automate > Batch

8.The Batch menu should now be open, this is where the magic happens. Mouse over to the Action pull down menu and select the new action you just made and recorded. Then select the Source pull down menu and select where the group of pictures is coming from you want to edit. Next, go to the Destination pull down menu and select where you want your edited pictures to be saved at.

I would recommend to look at the options presented to you and select skipping over the command and error prompts so your actions perform on all of the pictures without pausing at every one for you to select ‘save.’ Once you have done all of this, hit ok.

Now Photoshop should be running through all of the pictures you selected to edit, performing the exact same adjustments you did on the original picture. Depending on how many pictures you selected to edit, this could take a few minutes or a few hours to complete, but at least you’re not sitting at your computer and a slave to Photoshop during that time! Go get a snack or watch a show and let the magic happen.

I hope this helps you!

Adobe Creative Suite 4 advancements in Photoshop

Needless to say, there have been a lot of improvements to Adobe Creative Suite 4 compared to its predecessor. The first is the free Adobe DNG Converter, which should be very popular since DNG (Digital Negative) is becoming a new standard for raw flies. As for the rest of the features, it is truly too much to cover in one article, but I will try to summarize as many points about CS4 as possible, specifically covering Photoshop.

Adobe Photoshop CS4 can work in sync with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2, so there is a more intuitive user experience, greater editing freedom, and significant productivity enhancements. It will allow the user to automatically rename files, choose the appropriate view, group photos easier, automatically apply metadata stamps, and retrace the editing steps through a History panel.

Also new to CS4 is the adjustment panel that allows for the easy accessing of every tool needed to nondestructively adjust the color and tone of images. Another new feature is the content-aware scaling, which automatically recomposes an image as it is resized.

Some enhanced features include extended depth of field, industry-leading color correction, auto-blending of images, better raw image processing, auto-alignment of layers, and more power printing options.

Adobe CS4 is available in six forms: Design Premium, Design Standard, Web Premium, Web Standard, Production Premium, and the Master Collection. For their individual programs, see here. For their individual prices, see here. By the way, these prices can be reduced if you are an educator, student, or an educational institution, which is a special deal offered from Adobe.

Source