My Week Online [02.27.09]
February 27, 2009
My Week Online for the week of February the 27th 2009.
Greetings from partly sunny South Eastern Pennsylvania! The weather has been wonderful getting up to about 60 in the afternoon, perfect for outdoor work! Beautiful (and comfortable) photography weather is right around the corner! I am pumped! Time to go out and create some images!
About a week ago Lee Brimelow mentioned a flash video format called “F4v”. It sounds like this format will/does basically server as a container for H.264 encoded video which will allow flash to-among other things- add cue points. Souns like there are some problems with it, but it is pretty interesting stuff nonetheless, most of Lee’s work and blog are interesting, check out the blog post here.
A pretty cool tutorial I ran into on the web on creating these light streaks using a method know as “Light Painting” the concept is very simple and if you have ever seen some of the incredible stuff that can be done other than simple light streaks I am sure you would be blown away. Check out the tutorial and get started making your own light streaks today! Click here!
Speaking of light writing a new favorite blog of mine (you don’t want to see the large list of blogs I try to hit everyday) has a great post that went up less than a week ago on that very topic! Check it out here.
The win an iPod touch contest ends on the 28th! That would be tomorrow! Get your entry in ASAP for your chance to win! We will have another contest next month and very soon we will also have our first ever flash contest! Thanks for all the entries so far!
It looks like we may, possibly have a Photoshop and Photographers group here in Philadelphia! I am working with Adobe to get this thing rolling! If you are from the Tri-State area be sure to keep your eyes peeled. I will be sure to post a bunch of links all over the place pointing you to the group.
Now on to My Week Online a great collection of my days online this week and some killer sites and assorted junk compiled for your pure enjoyment and unrestrained joy.
Day 1: The Digital Photography School! They have tons of great tutorials, articles, and examples on their site! I believe I mentioned something about shooting light trails recently (very funny, other than the reference to light painting a second ago) and they have a very cool gallery of some examples. I really love that they even give you the exposure length to help yourself gauge how you should shoot your “Light trail” photos. Check it out here.
Day 2: Being a designer is all about color, sadly I am partially color blind…hsshhhh don’t tell any clients, but it is not super severe, matter of fact most guys I know claim to be color blind, but I think for the most part it is color-dumb. I still am fascinated by color and the profound impact it has on art and design and the reaction you gain by using great colors. Here is an awesome site for color info aptly named “Colour Lovers”. Check them out here.
Day 3: If you spend at least a third of your day in front of a computer screen you are probably into technology and gadgets, at least a little bit. This is an interesting list of 20 so-called “Irresistible” gadgets. I don’t know about you, but I would never buy some of those, some, however are quite clever. Check them all out here.
Day 4: I play a few musical instruments, but really guitar is what I am decent with. I am an all around music lover though and pretty much any genre I listen to, there are a select few I don’t like at all, but if it is musical typically I will enjoy it. I found this really cool site for finding songs and so far I have found quite a few songs online and listened to them right through the site. There is a lot you can do with this site, more than I can list here, but it is called JustHearIt and they have a super cool site. Check it out here.
Day 5: Graphic Designers ALERT! TheDieline.com is a very cool site/blog which has all kinds of info on package design. Just browse around it is a great site for burning all that extra time I know you have, or simply gaining some inspiration and ideas from other designers work. Check it out here.
Day 6: Free flash files are really awesome; I think pretty well any flash artist would agree with that. Flasheezy is a great source for free fla files of all kinds of stuff, just check out my screengrab there is a Mustang, a Sound Player, and a Clock right in that little area! Check it out here.
Day 7: Cartoonsmart.com was one of the first places I went to learn about flash and it was the first place I ever actually bought videos from. Justin is a gifted teacher and runs a great site, a true asset to the online flash community. Recently he has uploaded a bunch of material to Vimeo check his videos out here.
One last thing I want to throw in for the music lovers. I got this site from a kind young lady who emailed me through my site. It is a very cool site, part of its coolness is the fact that it is free to use and free stuff is always cool. It is called Pandora Radio and basically you create your own station for YOUR listening pleasure. Check it out here: http://pandora.com/
Until next time thank you all for your support, it is appreciated more than you know.
Win the iPod Touch! Only 7 days left!
February 22, 2009
Hey guys, just a little reminder, there are only 7 days left in the win an iPod Touch Photoshop contest! Check out this video for the details!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCn41AH-210
Tutvid contest page: http://www.tutvid.com/contest/
So far the contest is going great! I will pick the winners by the 1st or 2nd of March and we will see who won this contest and start the March contest.
N.
Combining Images/Composite Photoshop Tutorial
February 21, 2009
Bottle Image: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/658864
Water Image: http://www.stockxpert.com/browse_imag…
In this video we will use simple techniques to combine a couple images. We are actually using a couple image which are pretty difficult to combine and my hope is that you will take a few tricks from this video that will help you with combining images of all types-including those that have transparency in them-form this video.
We cover selecting with channels, copying and pasting, masking, burning, and a few other cool little things. Check it out and get started building your own “composite images”!
Be sure to check out http://www.tutvid.com
10 Great Free Fonts
February 21, 2009
The use of fonts is a vital aspect in all kinds of design. Everything from the important typeface used with a logo or page headings of a website or magazine to simply your name on the border of your photographs uses a font which will be seen by all. Now quite frankly the font is probably ignored by more people than it is noticed by, but really it is the bad, the horrible, and the ugly font faces that are noticed by most. A great font can really send a project over the top and give it a nice, clean and polished look be it Photography, or Web Design.
Adobe Systems does have a font library called Font Folio which looks nice, I, however, have not purchased it. Take a look at it here, you may understand when you see it. Click here to check it out!
In fairness to Adobe it is 2,300 fonts which tallies out to roughly $1.15 a font which is awesome and you can buy select sets for much less right here…Click right here.
With that in mind let’s take a look at 10 nice free fonts.
If you know of great (preferable free) fonts, please, drop a comment below and post a link for all to see.
Also check out these two pretty sweet blog postings I found. This first one is a collection of very nice decorated cakes; the D700 is an awesome idea! Would love to see a D200 with a 200mm+ lens, but you can’t ask for too much. This intrigues me because a few years ago I dabbled in cake decorating but never got beyond the “dabbling”, so check this out and see what I may have been able to do had I pursued that career. Click here to check it all out!
Lastly here are a few thousand free Photoshop brushes from that same site. There should be something for everyone here. I did not go through them all but what I saw looked great! Check it out here.
Zack Arias
February 20, 2009
I check out Scott Kelby’s blog on a daily basis and he had an awesome guest blog yesterday by this fellow named Zack Arias. It was a great mixture of great insight, awesome ideas, general hilarity, and a great story to go with it all. Check this guy’s work, his blog, and the video he posted on Scott’s blog out right here.
His video below:
[HD] How to write a simple XML document: Tutorial
February 20, 2009
In this video we will quickly run over XML, what it is, and what it is used for. We will then sit down and write out our very first XML document just a simple list of six people. We will use Dreamweaver, but really any text editor is fine. We will cover creating writing the actual language, adding attributes, as well as how we create our own tags and just some basics to get you going writing your own XML document. Be sure to check out http://www.tutvid.com
[HD] Basics of Using 3D Objects: Photoshop Tutorial
February 17, 2009
3D is very new to Photoshop only really coming into existence when CS3 was released. In CS3 however the 3D capabilities were pretty limited, but with the release of CS4 3D exploded into Photoshop and now has it’s own set of tools and even it’s own panel. You are now able to even create true 3D objects right from within Photoshop and texture them.
In the following tutorial we will learn about creating a base 3D object and creating a few basic textures for that object. We will also take a moment to explore the 3D tools.
There is a ton to learn about 3D and not everything is covered in this quick video tutorial. Stay tuned for more tutorials on 3D!
Tweening with Actionscript 3.0(Click to Watch)
February 12, 2009
40+ minutes of video on tweening with Actionscript 3.0. We are going to start out simple with a simple fade in animation and things will get more complex from there. I do label this tutorial advanced, but I try to explain everything out in a decent way which should allow you to learn even if you do not consider yourself an “advanced” flash user.
We will learn about the tween class, creating tweens, timers, timer events, tween events, using event listeners, functions, and lots of other little things along the way!
My Week Online 02.12.09
February 12, 2009
Hey everyone! Today is such a nice day here in SE Pennsylvania about 65 degrees (Fahrenheit) and clear skies, very nice considering it was 5 degrees outside about three weeks ago and everything was covered in ice two weeks ago, not bad at all.
Well the Photoshop contest is going great, again a whole bunch of entries. This contest is shaping up to be pretty awesome. I do not, however, think that I will create a video of all of the entries at the end of this contest, but I will keep it in mind. Thanks so far to everyone that has entered!
I have also submitted a request to Adobe for a new User Group. I am hoping to start a Philadelphia Photoshop User Group. I will keep you all posted about that and let you know what happens.
Let’s take a look at my week!
Day1: I have never been a big fan of social networking sites, but lately I have decided to try them out and see how it (they) work, or would work, with Tutvid. The downside is it is more stuff for me to watch and manage, but we will see how this pans out. I started a blog on StumbleUpon which will basically allow you guys to keep nice track of my videos as they come out and save, rate, and bookmark them. Check out the new Tutvid StumbleUpon blog here.
StumbleUpon is not really a social networking site in the truest form of the word, but I kind of bunch all of those types of sites together, maybe it is not fair of me to do that, but…
Day 2: As a designer you probably know the worst thing you can get is designers block. Because of this, and due to my desire to never “run out” of ideas, which I don’t really think is possible, but hey it keeps me searching, I am constantly looking for new and interesting sites to gain inspiration through. Recently this site kind of fell into my lap and honestly I don’t know how I have never come across it before! StyleBoost is a great site for checking out some sweet web layouts by searching, using a tag based search, or even specifying what colors you are looking for. Check out StyleBoost here.
Day 3: Because of my Tweening with Actionscript 3.0 tutorial I had been looking around trying to be sure I had memorized all of the “little” things I wanted to have memorized for the recording as that also helps speed me up when I am working on a normal project. Maybe my top resource for anything related to “development” and Adobe is the Adobe Developer Connection… shocking I know… it is a great place with TONS if info, check it out here.
Day 4: Back a few years ago I went to my very first computer oriented convention/seminar in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. The seminar was run by the good folks who run NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals). The seminar was entitled something like “Photoshop for Photographers” and it was being taught by Ben Willmore. I had never really seen much of his training material, but he is an excellent teacher and also has some really great work. Recently I came across a gallery of his on Adobe’s site, check it out here.
Check out Ben’s site here: http://www.digitalmastery.com
Day 5: Social Networking/Micro-Blogging! Twitter may well be the ultimate when it comes to blogging freaks. I am not really a “blogging freak” but I do try to keep up and post a few blogs a week, however with my new-found desire to keep Tutvid “posted” I have also started a Twitter account. Follow Tutvid on Twitter right here.
Day 6: Getting back to that whole inspiration thing, this site has some really sweet photography and it is a pretty cool place to check out. Check out 1x.com!
Day 7: Last but not least remember to check out the contest on Tutvid.com! tutvid.com/contest or click the link: http://www.tutvid.com/contest
Until next folks happy learning!
Very Suite Tip Top Tips
February 6, 2009
Time for some great tips for the creative suite! Suiteness! Got some killer tutorials coming as well as my first ever full course!
Production of a Beginner Photoshop CS4 DVD has also begun and hopefully that will soon be out and available for purchase.
Photoshop: You can quickly flatten your image YET preserve your layers by merging your layers to a new layer. The hot key is Ctrl (or Cmd) + Shift + Alt (or Option) + E. You will have successfully merged all those layer together and placed them up on their own layer.
Photoshop: Using Shift and your bracket keys ( [ ] ) i.e. Shift + [ or Shift + ] you can adjust the softness of your brush very quickly.
Flash: For those of you using Flash CS4 yet dislike the new user interface you can use the workspace drop down menu in the top right corner to switch back to the “Classic” view. The properties panel however does stay on the right, but you get to feel like you are back to business in Flash CS3 or older!
Flash: Did you know about Adobe Kuler in Flash CS4? Check out Window>Extensions>Kuler
Illustrator: Now in Illustrator CS4 you have some cooler vector brushes available to you. Open the Brushes panel Window>Brushes and click the little drop down menu in the top right corner and choose Open Brush Library>Vector Packs.
Illustrator: In CS4 the gradient tool has an annoying new feature when you use it to draw a gradient across an object. This feature is called the Gradient Annotator and, while sometimes it is helpful, for the most part it is annoying. You can get rid of it by going View>Show Gradient Annotator note the hotkey Ctrl (or Cmd) + Alt (or Option) + G
Dreamweaver: Dreamweaver contains lots of cool and very useful blank templates. Check them out by going File>New and select “New Blank Template”.
Dreamweaver: Quickly switch from Design to Code view or Code to Design View again use the hotkey Ctrl (or Cmd) + ~
Will we have Flash on the iPhone? It appears that Adobe and Apple are working together on Flash player and the iPhone….how sweet would that be? Check it out here: http://www.flashmagazine.com/news/detail/flash_on_the_iphone_is_in_progress/
