I just found this hilarious video on Blip.tv and had to share it. Feel the pain of the IT guy.
| 4.1 (3 people) |
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Photoshop blending options give your images and text some extra impact. Drop shadows, gradients, outlines, bevels and more will give your graphics that professional look you are striving for. Below I’ll be explaining the, “Blending Options”, Pallet in Photoshop.
First off to get to the, “Blending Options”, pallet right click on the layer you wish to apply effects to. You’ll get a list of options. Blending options is the second in that list.
Yep you guessed it…the drop shadow option adds a shadow to your image or text. This effect makes your images jump off the page and give them the illusion of depth. I use this effect all the time in conjunction with, “stroke”, when making images for my site.
Again this effect lives up to it’s name inner shadow also helps give your text a realer 3dimensional quality.
Outer glow has many different applications. By adjusting the spread and opacity you can create a nice haloed effect that works well for putting behind cut out images giving them more impact. If you keep the size of the glow small you can make your text or images larger and more pronounced.
Normally you wouldn’t use all these effects together as your project would get far too busy, but for the sake of this tutorial you will at least get the idea of what each option can do. I like to use the inner glow sparingly mostly on text to give my graphics more impact.
This effect is by far way to over-used by Photoshop newbies. The, “Bevel and Emboss”, option gives your graphics a sense of roundedness. Used sparingly this effect can be quite elegant, but like I said before is the downfall of many new designers. Play with the opacity and light angle to get the effect that is right for you.
The color overlay is an option I use the least, but can be handy on occasion especially when working with shapes. Color overlay will replace your shape with what ever color you choose while maintaining other blending effects.
This is a neat looking effect. It applies well to text, but will work with images as well. Gradients can be altered by toggling through the colors and slider at the bottom.
This is one I personally don’t use that often, but can produce some interesting effects. Photoshop has some prefabbed patterns you can use or if you feel so inclined you can import your own through the pattern manager arrow on the side of the pattern box.
I use this one all the time. With the, “Stroke”, option you can put a defined line around any image or text. This is the other option I use when building graphics for my site. It provides a defined edge around your content.
| 3.0 (1 person) |
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
So you have a folder with 100 images in it that need to be resized and have a watermark added. Doing this one at a time would take you all day, but with the use of Actions in Photoshop this repetitive task is as simple as editing one image with just a few extra steps.
1. Open your actions pallet. If you don’t see it in your window tabs go to Window > Actions
2. Click the, “Create New Actions”, tab. (It’s the one at the bottom that looks like a post it note.) Name your action something that makes sense to you. If you’re resizing images call it something like resize.
3. Once you’ve created your action and named it hit the round record button at the bottom. You’ll know it’s recording your action when it turns red.
4. Apply what ever effects you wish to your images. You will see them recorded in the Actions pallet as you finish with your selections.
5. When you’ve finished adding effects, resizing, adding text, etc to your project hit the stop button at the bottom of the Actions pallet.
6. Go to File > Automate > Batch
7. When the box below will pops up select your action from the drop down list at the top.
8. Choose the folder you wish to batch from the source option.
9. Select the folder where you want these new images to go. Hit ok and go get some coffee. Depending on the size and difficulty of your action these images should be batched in no time.
| 3.5 (1 person) |
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
This is my 4th Google Screensaver project. These are some fan photos I downloaded from all over the web. Below are instructions on how to install the picture set below using Goolge Screen saver.
1. First you’re going to have to have Google Photos Screensaver installed on your machine. Download Google Photos Screensaver here.
2. Once you have Google Photo Screensaver installed open your display properties.
3. Click on the settings button and select the RSS photo feeds at the bottom. Click on the configure then copy and paste this feed. This is an rss feed of Comerica Park and Detroit Tigers fan pictures I’ve uploaded to my Picassa account.
| 3.2 |
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Having troubles opening Office 2007 files? Your version of Word doesn’t seem to know what to do with .docx file? Being an IT guy I keep running into this issue as people start upgrading their Office Suites.
“Microsoft introduced the .docx file format in its new Office and Word applications and wants it to replace the commonly used doc format. The problem with the change from doc to docx is that many users are still working with prior versions of Word or no Microsoft product at all and face the problem that they can’t load the docx file because it is not supported in their application.”
- Courtesy Of gHacks
Microsoft has released, “Compatibility Pack for the 2007 Office System“, which clears this problem up nicely.
| 2.8 |
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
I was bouncing around the net trying to find some easy, “Copy and Paste”, code to add Sociable type functionality to my Blogger blog and had little luck locating code that actually did what it said it would. So I set to the task of writing something that would.
Below is some simple code you can copy and paste into your Blogger template to add the following group of social networks to your Blogger web sites.
Socialize this post
1. Access your Blogger dashboard and click on the layout tab. Select the, “Edit HTML“, sub tab.
2. Make sure, “Expand Widget Templates“, is selected. You can also revert to your defaulted widget template by clicking the revert button on the bottom.
3. Look for the following strip of code in your template.
4. Past the code below after this tag and hit preview.
| 2.8 |
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Screen shots from my latest obsession Call Of Duty 4 Modern Warfare. Set in modern times utilizing technology used today by our armed forces this game is hard to stop playing. It’s unfortunately short, but once won cheats and arcade levels become a menu option. There are also new maps in the works as well.
If you’re tired of Middle Eastern villages and Russian forests, take heart: Infinity Ward has some shiny new battlefields on the way soon.
Call of Duty 4 DLC Map Pack Hands-On
www.callofduty.com
| 2.8 |
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
I haven’t been posting much lately because life has been keeping me fairly busy and for what ever reason when it rains it pours and thus I’ve been shirking my blogging duties. One of the things keeping me from any regular posting is my new computer. Well…constructing my new computer. My motherboard died on me and I was forced to update all my components. I can’t say that I was entirely thrilled to have to spend the money, but it’s hard to get too upset when you buy a new toy.
I had to buy a new processor as most new motherboards today no longer support the 745 socket which my AMD Athlon 2800 requires. I upgraded to A Pentium Dual Core 2.2 gig processor. Ofcourse my old 256 ATI card was no longer compatible with the new board as AGP is being fazed out for PCI Express hence I upgraded to a Nvidia GeForce 8500 GT 512 MB card which looks so much better than I imagined it even could. And last but not least I had to upgrade my Ram to PC 2 DDR giving me now 2 gigs of speedy ram.
So I’m pretty pleased with my new machine. I’ve over-clocked it just a bit and this baby really hums. I needed to put it together for freelance projects, but I have to admit I’m thrilled with the way it plays all the new Direct X 10 games especially Crysis which I have to admit I am quickly becoming addicted to.
Just look at the videos below. It’s so close life like.
Crysis - Coastal Carnage Gameplay Footage
Crysis Physics - 3′000 barrel explosion made with SandBox 2
Below are links to a couple updates and patches that fix some errors with the original Crysis install.
Crysis v1.2 Patch
Download Direct X 10
| 2.8 |
