My Week Online

For my second installment of My Week Online I have a few pretty cool things I stumbled across on the web and a couple of things that were sent to me. Hope you guys enjoy it and find some of these things useful! We will cover Ansel Adams, Tech Blogging, and High Definition video streaming on the web! Check it all out and don’t forget to leave a comment if you enjoy the post! Enjoy my week…

Day 1: Amber MacArthur: For those you that follow online tech podcasts and tech media in general you have probably heard of this woman. She is kind of (only kind of) like iJustine another online blogging phenom, only I like Amber a little more. Check out her podcast called CommandN over at her site or on YouTube

Day 2: Adobe Groups: Fresh off the Adobe “web press” is a great new Adobe community feature known as groups and groups are…well I am not going to explain that one, but groups are really cool. I ran a search for my area and found  a couple of local groups; Flash and Flex to be specific…maybe I will start a Philadelphia Photoshop Group, has a nice ring to it. We shall see… Check it out here.

Day 3: Diving into PHP: The first episode came out! The first episode came out! Well it is only on downloading the language and some little (but important!) stuff, but really this series of PHP tutorials looks to be pretty promising. I am following it and you should too! Brush up on some PHP and learn some new tips and tricks along the way! Click here!

Day 4: Squeeze the LIME: Photography Articles and Videos:  This site was sent to me and I actually quite like it! Some great articles and videos on photography. Check it out if you are a photographer! Also check out the YouTube channel!

Day 5: The HD Web: Well this one is in here just because it is pretty cool. Believe it or not I never really thought of searching for an HD video driven website, but I stumbled upon this site and there is some pretty cool stuff there. If you have a decent system and a great internet connection check this out!

Day 6: IceFlowStudios / Mac Training / TutCast.com: My buddy Howard runs the IceFlowStudios channel on YouTube and believe it or not he is pretty popular, but recently he launched a new channel devoted to training Mac users in their ways and I checked it out and knowing Howard and his training style it is sure to be a hit. Check out all of his material with these links: Tutcast / IceFlowStudios / MacTraining

Day 7: Ansel Adams: Amercian Experience DVD by PBS. I popped this DVD in the other day and watched (as I worked of course!) and this film is great! Really gives a wonderful overview of Ansel’s life and his photography and even musical life. One of the most incredible stories from the film was during one shoot he went out one day and was photographing a number of things while he was hiking to a spot to take a shot, but by the time he got to the location to shoot he had used all but two of his plates for photographing, yet he managed to take not one, but two great photographs even sort of trying something with the second shot knowing he only had that shot left. If nothing else this DVD will make you appreciate how far along photography in general has come, the advent of digital media and no more worrying about plates, and darkrooms (not to knock on any of the older Photographers here) and how much we really do take for granted in this digital age. Check out the DVD here.

That’s all for this My Week Online hope you guys enjoyed it and don’t be afraid to leave a comment or two on this blog.

End of Contest

The very first Tutvid.com contest has come to a close, actually came to a close a few hours ago. I have just now finished looking over all of the entries and have the 3 winners selected all of whom have been emailed with regard to their shipping/contact info. Thanks to everybody that has entered and at some point in the next few days I will launch another contest and hopefully you will enter that one and go for the prize there as well!

In the news maybe the most notable thing is that there is a new version of both Camera RAW and Lightroom. These updates were released a few days ago, but for those of you that are not on top of the Adobe news I will have the links posted below. Download them from Adobe here:

Camera RAW Update

Lightroom Update

Look for a new contest in a few days with a few great prizes as well! You guys rock!

Be sure to check out the first, second, and third place entries below! Select any of the images to open to a much larger version for better viewing. Again thank you for all of the entries and stay tuned over the course of the next few days for another contest!

Top Ten [Free] Stock Images!

My latest top ten list will be for those of you who do not have much stock photography or those who have some but need/want more. All of the photos I list are both free and have the least restrictions you can have placed on them. To download any of these photos select the one that looks interesting and sign up to the site. The site is www.sxc.hu it is a great free site I have been involved with since my earlier days of designing, great folks that run the place. Head over and sign up no strings attached! It’s great! www.sxc.hu

I also want to let you guys know that we have a little less than one week left in this first Tutvid Photoshop contest (Closes on Jan. 28th). Two things I want to let you guys know:

1: There will be at least one more contest next month maybe two!

2. I will be choosing the contest winner by the months end and placing all of the entries into one video and uploading that to YouTube!

Check out rules and details for the current contest here!

The guy that pretty much got me started in Flash and really inspired me to start Tutvid and make my own training material is Justin from Cartoonsmart.com. I really can’t be appreciative enough to him for everything he provides the flash community. I just learned that he now has a bunch for flash tutorials available for free! Check them out here!

One last thing before we go on to the images. I was kind of browsing YouTube during a little break I took and I am a huge fan of some of the speed drawings you can find on YouTube, but I found this guy who does non-Photoshop drawings as well click here to check out his channel.This guy does a bunch of different celebrities as well as all kinds of great stuff, real talent here. Be sure to check out his website and maybe purchase a drawing or print from him!

After seeing that guys drawings I did a quick search on some drawing technique and came up with this informative video and this cool channel. Both links contain nice tidbits of useful info for digital and non-digital artists alike, very cool stuff. I really enjoy watching these videos as I strive to a better eye and drawing in general (at which I have never been a natural), but we are making progress.

Below are 10 great stock images all for free! Take 10 minutes and download all of them to start or boost your current stock library! Again all of these images are available at www.sxc.hu for free, the only requirement is that you sign up which is also free and has no strings attached! I highly recommend you get these images and browse to find many more!

Enjoy guys!

Minor Updates, New Video, and Suite Tips

Hey guys it’s that time I am going to give you a couple super quick little tips throughout the course of some news and info today and maybe we can do this more often.

First off the contest has been doing really well I have received more entries than I ever thought I would which has been flat-out awesome and with a little more than a week left in the contest (it ends on the 28th) things are looking great! You guys rock!

Check out the two newest additions to the Tutvid tutorial library Smoothing Skin, Removing Blemishes, and Sharpening here. as well as Dreamweaver CS4’s new Spry Tooltips Feature here.

In Photoshop if you are doing a lot of retouching or really anything where you are zoomed way in but need to continually zoom out to see what the whole image looks like simply open a second window of that document to get a continual live view at what ever size you zoom it to of your changes as you do them! Go Window>Arrange>New Window For…

I have two great Illustrator tutorials coming up on creating a Web 2.0 Style Box Icon and Drawing Realistic Vector Flames. Also some really nice stuff is in line after that.

Photoshop CS4 updates may actually make it a little faster and fix problems for some of us. Check this forum post by Adam Jerugim a Quality Engineer over at Adobe Systems.

Personally I have not experienced any issues to date, but this should be welcome news to those of you who have issues.

Export your Flash Animations as a number of different movie file types by going File>Export>Export Movie and use the little drop down menu at the base of the dialog box that pops up.

I love nice artwork, not really a fan of most artwork that requires some sort of “understanding” but artwork that looks good and/or has great qualities I really tend to enjoy. Justin over at Cartoonsmart.com has a post on his blog where he mentions some very nice artwork by a fella named Kim Keever. Really nice images! Check it out here.

If you have a bunch of RAW files in Bridge but you want to skip the Camera RAW dialog and go right to Photoshop simply hold the “shift” key and double click the image(s) to go right to Photoshop or if you have jpeg or tiff files you want to open in Camera RAW select the image(s) and hit Ctrl/Cmd + R to open them in Camera RAW.

Well today has been a little rough as not only did my Philadelphia Eagles get ousted from the playoffs yesterday one game from the Super Bowl (again!) but I was also slaving away all night long down in Center City Philly in a soon to be occupied building and will be doing the same for a few more days to come. That is the reason at this point it is taking me so long to answer emails, my biological clock is going bonkers! Hope you all had a wonderful weekend and you have a great week to come!

My Online Week

Every week I see countless websites, ads, logos, animations, blog postings, and all sorts of things that would interest a “design professional” these are just some of the things that catch my attention and I figure they just might catch a little of yours too. From here on out I will try to dedicate one blog post a week to “My Week Online” which will showcase some of this stuff. Hope you guys enjoy.

Day 1: Probably my favorite of all online tutorial creators and gurus of any kind is a fella by the name of Lee Brimelow. I first learned about him awhile ago, he really has some quality material as well as being an awesome guy as far as sharing his work and everything he does for the Flash community. I absolutely love this recent blog posting on the lost art of designing preloaders. Great for inspiration and design ideas when working with flash, animations, or simply any preloading. Click here to check this posting out!

Day 2: Off to Adobe TV! I love this place. When I have a few extra minutes I usually start watching one of many different videos here. I am typically in the Designer, Developer, or Photographer Channel(s), but they have a lot to offer! Check out the Designer videos channel .

Day 3: Off to the world of stock media, but video in particular because today I needed a clip for a project I am working on so I consulted a great site I have used before called Pond5 and, man I’ll tell ya’, every time I go to that site there is stock footage that blows me away. Great selection and prices also HD video is available! Check them out here

Day 4: The folks over at NETTuts, same group incidentally that does PSDTuts, have some info on a new proposed PHP video series which intrigued me and I will probably tag along and check this out as new material becomes available in an attempt to raise my PHP skills set, which is-admittedly-not nearly where I want it to be, but we shall overcome and all become PHP masters someday! Check this out here..

Day 5: On YouTube I am subscribed to the guys over at CameraLabs, great reviews and loads of info for any photographer. Gordon, the guy doing the reviews, is great as are the reviews he does. The reviews are all in video and the site (www.cameralabs.com) has even more info! I tend to check out CameraLabs before spending anykind of serious money on a piece of equipment to get basically a second opinion/review look at what I want to buy. Check out the YouTube channel here.

Day 6: I also enjoy browsing SmugMug when concepting (thinking of ideas to create logos, websites, or sometimes a creative way to make a tutorial) and I was looking at their video gallery section and they have some examples of their online HD capabilities which blew my mind! The guy who did the video recording in the example video clip goes by the name Vincent Laforet and his stuff on SmugMug is pretty cool. Watch this stuff in HD folks, check it out! CRAZY if you have an HD monitor this is nothing short of spectacular. Check out his gallery containing three videos right here.

Day 7: I have been looking to upgrade my meager 8.0 megapixel DSLR for quite some time. With the recent (somewhat) release of the Canon 5D Mark II which has a 20 something megapixel resolution I, more than, ever want to upgrade. It also shoots true 1080p HD video! That is crazy and now I really want it! Well as I am doing some research on the camera I come to learn that Vincent Laforet’s video was shot with the 5D Mark II which when I learned makes my stomach churn in anticipation of putting away the couple thousand dollars to get the camera, which in this economy is no the easiest thing to do, but hey if somebody out there is felling generous here is the camera, or if you don’t trust them B&H has it for a little more right over here.

My Week Online, Enjoy!

Adobe AIR and 10 Great Apps

 

Are you feeling winded by all of the things that need to be done by a Web Designer/Developer? Does time seem to just breeze by? Adobe AIR is oxygen to a designer who loves widgets (or gadgets) and also anybody who loves saving time (or in the case of some apps wasting it) and having their tools right at their fingertips, truly a breath of fresh air to those of you in need of additional tools.

First off what the heck is Adobe AIR? Adobe AIR stands for “Adobe Integrated Runtime” hence A.I.R. The idea behind AIR is to allow web and flash developers to bring their creations to the desktop. Creating an AIR app (i.e. Application) can be done using Flash, Flex (pretty much like Flash without all the drawing tools, coder friendly), or even Dreamweaver, you can even download the AIR SDK (Software Development Kit) and use any number of text editors to create your very own app!

 

I have been thinking a lot about AIR recently and it hit me to do a blog on my favorite apps and then recommend a few more. I may even do a bunch of tutorials on AIR at some point down the road. Let check out these apps:

 

The first thing you will need it AIR itself to be able to run these apps, you can download it here. Go do that and I will wait for you to get back and start checking out these very sweet, useful, and free applications.

Doomi: This is a great little app. I use it all the time as I am a list oriented person I write a list on my notepad at my desk as well as a list on my desktop. The beauty of this app is you can manage the list and create, delete, and set timers on any list item. A very simple, easy to use “organization” app. Get it here!

 

Kuler: Adobe has their own little color app called Kuler. I hardly start a project with out at least glancing at this app and getting a few color ideas or hex codes. You can easily copy the hex code of any color or of an entire color scheme, or even just download the scheme to a few of the Adobe programs! I, however, prefer coping the hex codes. This app requires you to sign up with Adobe (this is free) and you are then good to go! Get it here!

 

 

Google Analytics: I am always using analytics checking the traffic levels of my site as well as checking the demographics of the users of my site and this tool brings the Analytic Dashboard to my desktop! I love this tool! You simply setup your profile using your Analytic login information and away you go! The app sports a pretty nice interface a little nicer even than the online experience. Get it here! (look to the bottom right corner of the page).

 

WebSnapShot: Well hey I am using this app right here in this post, all these screenshots were taken using this app. This guy is very useful for bloggers and designers alike who want to get that webpage off the web to show a bit of it, or use it as a reference for something they are working on. Get it here!

 

 

TimeLoc: This is a very cool app and useful for anybody who charges by the amount of time they spend on a project. Basically this app allows you to record the time which it displays and you can add it to a project and manage other projects right from within this little app. You are also able to input an hourly rate which it keeps track of for you, very sweet! Get it here!

 

 

Em Calculator: Ever wondered how to get proper sizing using ems? This calculator is the answer for you if you are not concerned with how ems work, but rather just want to use them. Great little tool, Get it here!

 

 

Font Picker: Great app for selecting and comparing fonts! If you do a lot of designing and want to quickly check out what text will look like with different fonts, side by side, this does the trick! Get it here!

 

 

Icon Generator: This is more of a cool app, but still useful. Generate icons styled like a web 2.0 starburst/badge or like the new (well, old now) CS3 logos! This app creates the standard icon sizes from 128×128 down to 16×16. Upon creation you can save out a png file for use all over the place! Get it here!

 

 

WebKut: This app is pretty cool in the way it basically captures screenshots, but only where you decide you want it to, hence “cutting” that part of the webpage out, pretty neat and pretty useful too. Get it here!

 

 

Snippely: This is a pretty polished app which allows web developers to copy and store code snippets they find around the web in one convenient place! Get it here!

 

I hope you guys enjoy Adobe AIR as much as I do! Check these apps out as I guarantee there is at least one thing in here that will help each and every one of you as you go about your designing business everyday! Until next time have a wonderful time everyone! Download Adobe AIR!

Entries, Your Thoughts, and Inspiration

It is mid-evening here in Southeastern Pennsylvania as I write this blog entry. I have a few things I want to run over really quickly in this posting, maybe get a little input from you guys.

- I have received more entries for the contest already than I expected all month! Awesome!

- Because of the larger number of entries my mailbox quota filled quite quickly (that combined with the size of PSD files), but the mailbox is now back to working order

- I received a suggestion for putting all the entries into a video and placing it up on YouTube at the end of the contest. I think I will!

- I believe I have solved the low frame rate video issue for the Youtube videos, however I had already pre-recorded about 4 videos, so probably the next four to go up will be a little jerky…still. After than it will be smooth sailing (literally!).

- I think I will definitely start doing some written sequels to the recorded videos, is that something that would interest you?

- What kind of prizes are you guys into? Really anything, well anything that seems reasonable, but I will take a look at the crazy stuff too!

I have a few great tutorials coming this weekend which I can’t wait for. I am also working on a Photoshop 101 DVD so anything you would like to see covered for sure that maybe you have not seen in any 101 tutorials shoot me an email or leave a comment and I will take a look at putting it into the course.

I went out the other evening to a run down, beat up railroad junction which also happens to be the site of an old stone processing facility, something to do-I am sure-with a nearby quarry. Check out a couple of the nicer photographs (on the Blog posting).

Hope you enjoyed those, maybe they can inspire you and speaking of inspiration how about I list my 5 favorite (free) sites for inspiration, anything from designers block to just sitting back and checking out quality design and photography.

Logo Pond: They have a great supply of quality logos; awesome stuff here.

CSS Drive: At first glance CSS Drive may not look that awesome, but something about has me hooked. Love this site and it is high on my list of stuff to check out when I start a new project.

SmugMug: Lots of quality photography here and always new content as well as changing content. Be sure to check out the popular photos of the day!

FaveUp.com: Awesome quality logos, really great for logo inspiration. Check out their business card, flash and CSS website design section(s) as well!

Artists of Photoshop: This is just awesome gets you moving through the worst designer block attacks and has tons of great content!

HONERABLE MENTION: Best Web Gallery: This is a great site for checking out CSS and Flash sites as well. I couldn’t leave this one off the list just because it is called my top 5, could I? Check it out and let me know.

Hope you guys had a great new year! Thank you all for the tremendous support throughout the past year(s)! You guys rock!

Photoshop Contest: Win iPod

Let me start by saying that I certainly hope you all had a great New Year and that it continues to be a great year for you!

As many of you now know I am running a month-long Photoshop contest, let me run over that really quick.

1^st. iPod Nano and 5 of my videos at hi-res (normally for sale here).

2^nd. 5 of my video at hi-res res (normally for sale here).

3^rd. 2 my video at hi-res res (normally for sale here).

Check out all the contest details here on the contest page.

Rules:

Download the Image from Tutvid HERE

Make some kind of Photo edit or manipulation to the image.

Submit it to the email address on the contest page.

Additional cans/cannots:

Can: Accept entries from all over the world, if you win I ship anywhere.

Can: Enter a jpg, or gif image in addition to the psd format stated.

Can: Use your own images or graphical elements in the image.

Can: Go crazy with editing….if that’s your thing.

Cannot: Use Flash or programs other than Photoshop. I want to keep the playing field level.

Cannot: Submit more than 1 entry. Give your best!

Cannot: Steal others artwork (Duhhh…).

I think that about covers it!

Tutorial-wise I have two great videos coming up in Flash and Dreamweaver and possibly even two more, one Illustrator and one Dreamweaver, but that is still kind of in the air.

Well that about wraps up this blog, but I do want to leave you with two pretty sweet sites I cam across in the last month or so.

HV Design: They have a bunch of great tutorials and info, check out HV Design!

Also if you have never used Bridge you just have got to try it out! Check out Adobe’s Helps Center for the Bridge!

Until next time have a great time you guys, keep learning and have fun designing!