Video Problems, More Tutorials, Dedicated Hosting, and Free Plug-ins!

Here we are about half way through the oh-so cold month of December and nothing warms you up better than checking out some great new tutorial sites and finding-on top of some great tutorials-other great stuff such as free plug-ins.

Let me get to the news first and we will talk goodies later. I don’t know how many of you have been experiencing problems with the videos on the site, but I have received numerous emails about jerkiness and failure of loading. The reason appears to be the hosting plan I have, I cannot however complain as I am using almost 1 Terabyte (about 950GB) of bandwidth monthly and this is on a so called “unlimited’ bandwidth plan, I am sure some of you have heard of the fact that there is really no such thing a “unlimited” bandwidth which is absolutely true and the overload that the site is putting on this particular server appears to be causing issues.

I am in the process of getting a dedicated server setup which should both allow the site and the videos to load each and every time as well as load a little faster. If everything goes well there may be a short down-time stint at some point, but the site will be back ASAP.

I also have two great tutorials coming this weekend, all I can say right now is one is for Illustrator CS4 and one for Photoshop CS4, I also hope to get a few new feature type tutorials up at some point soon.

While there is a lot going on I am also considering transcribing the majority of my tutorials with screenshots and creating text tutorials to accompany the videos. You could view the text if you prefer or use it as a quick refreshment course. Let me know what you guys think about this plan and maybe something good can come of it.

On to a couple tutorials some of you may be interested in. I actually ran into these completely accidentally, but they look quite nice and may be of interest to some of you, check them out below.

Creating a Magical Rainbow Flame in Photoshop:

http://veerle.duoh.com/blog/comments/create_a_magical_rainbow_color_flame_in_photoshop/

I really liked this one, 3D Pixel Stretch Effect:

http://www.tutorial9.net/photoshop/3d-pixel-stretch-effects/

I also stumbled upon this great post on PhotoshopRoadMap and it is quite interesting, especially if you enjoy plug-ins, more specifically free ones, check this out!

http://www.photoshoproadmap.com/Photoshop-blog/2008/12/04/15-fantastic-and-absolutely-free-photoshop-plugins/

Leave me a comment or drop me a line and let me know if there is anything you would like to see in the site, or any ideas you have that would make it better and I will certainly consider any ideas. I have received quite a few and am working on implementing new stuff into the site, but anything you have may or could be helpful. Thanks guys!