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» Silent Blog Thursday

 I have to say it, a lot of time today, I have a lot of cool things I want to run by you, but I will not to that today. Instead I will hold a silent blog Thursday for an event that happened at my school where someone unscrewed the brake systems of someone’s moped. It’s of course classified as attempted murder (even though the person doing it probably didn’t think so). The victim is someone I know and to reassure, the victim has got injuries but no life-threatening and has spoken to a teacher of mine pretty soon after it happened. It is, silent blog Thursday.

» Late Wednesday Quickies

It’s getting late here when I’m typing this and I’m almost about to head to bed but I thought I should do a little update before. I just finished an extremely busy evening. Right after school I had to go to a three hour intro course to driving, which is mandatory for everyone wanting to start practise driving here in this country, feels good to have it done but it was painfully slow, especially knowing you have a french test tomorrow Wish me luck.

• Free books are always cool and the guys over at SitePoint has right now got a full book available to download, yours to keep forever, called "The Photoshop Anthology: 101 Web Design Tips, Tricks & Techniques". It’s said to be a great book for designers and I just downloaded it myself. It’ll be a little time before I can read it myself though. Got to much on my plate, but it sounds cool and you can only download it for free for the next 30 days!
   
• I’m becoming more of an InDesign addict and really starting to using the program a lot more (it’s fun). Apart from noticing that in the tutorial index I’ve found a cool site for you all other InDesign users as well. It is called InDesignSecrets and run by Anne-Marie Concepcion. It’s a really good tips blog that makes a good read any day.
   
• If you do a lot of RGB to CMYK or CMYK to RGB colour conversions, then you’ll probably appreciate this little colour conversion tool available online, for free!

 

» Tuesday News World Update

It’s Tuesday today and I was writing this post at 7a.m this morning, before school, but apparently I was way to tired to hit the publish or save button so I quite lost all post content therefore I need to repost it now. I had my concert yesterday and thanks to my family and my best friends for being there and for being the best support. It was really awesome and went really well.

Olympus Releases E-520

Olympus is today announcing its new camera body, the Olympus E-520. It has got improved AF in LiveView, 10 megapixels, a 2.7" Screen, wireless flash control, 3.5 fps shooting and a built in image stabiliser. It is available in four kit versions, body only (£479.99), with 14-42 kit lens (£529.99), with double kit 14-42 & 40-250 (£529.99) as well as with second double kit 14-42 and 70-300 (£759.99).

Cool website - CSS-Tricks

I found out about this cool website through another blog I am subscribed to. It’s called CSS-Tricks and deals with, well, obviously cool CSS tricks etc. but also points to some good thoughts about image protection and other web related things that you really need to know and be in the loop with. A really good site I must say so keep it fresh in memory.

NAPP & Stuff clarification

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while you will know that I like to mention NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals) and the gang over there quite often. Now I want to note that I don’t get any kickbacks or anything (apart from the fun of doing it ) when I mention them and I do it only because I’m a member myself and I really like the work they do and their style (plus they are all a really amazing and friendly crowd)! There you have it, the "amazing story behind".

ScreenFlow - Recording Application

I read this on Terry White’s techblog yesterday and it got me a little bit excited. He got turned on to (and in a chain reaction got me turned on to) a screen recording application called ScreenFlow. It’s another screen recording application for the Mac that lets you edit the recorded material right after you’ve recorded it (sadly though you need to export it out after, one of the things I love about iShowU is that you don’t need to do that there) and add callouts and even record from your webcam while you’re recording your screen. Here’s a link to Terry’s review. (If you are a PC user reading this post and hoping for a program recommendation, my recommendation is Camtasia Studio.)

» Interview with Elizabeth Gast

 Here comes another weeks interview with a really cool person. Today I have the privilege to interview the amazing Photoshop artist, Elizabeth Gast. She’s a really talented artist who’s background lies in digital art and also a member of NAPP, the National Association of Photoshop Professionals, where she herself says that she’s learned more than ever. Read the full interview after the jump!

» Sunday Chilling

I was away yesterday at my cousins confirmation service and I had a blast meeting up with all the family and I got some pretty nice shots and the above being one of them. A note though, I was just one in the audience (who had an especially big camera) but luckily I was in the first audience seat. However with it being said, the above one is one of the best I got which had a really nice perspective to it.

I also posted a new Photoshop Tutorial just now about creating a cool text effect which has a cool shiny blue line effect to it so go and check that out as well.

Otherwise today it is a pretty relaxed day. I’m finishing up some presentations and essays for this week which is again going to be really full with things including my debut organ concert tomorrow so instead of a news post tomorrow there’ll be an interview posted for you while I’m gone playing

Happy Mothers Day!

» Saturday Article: How to handle client contact?

It’s a very vital part of the web designers daily routine and a very important one. It’s all about handeling the client contact in the right way so that you’ll end up scoring the jobs you want and making sure you have happy customers at the end of the day that are willing to refer you to potential new clients, the best free advertising.

You can definitely divide client contact into a couple of different categories. Here I’m going to focus on client contact over the web and internet and not so much over the phone. Why you may ask? Well, mainly because myself, I don’t speak a lot on the phone with my clients because it is easier to portray thoughts etc. through text and images on the computer. The one time I may speak with a customer over the phone etc. may be when they are signing up and we might be discussing the start of a project.

» Friday “Sunshine” News

I think I’ve just about mentioned it in all my blog posts this week! The weather here is fantastic and well, nothing short of smashing and brilliant (I could go on with extreme words like that for too long) which is causing today to be "Sunshine Friday"!

• Adobe has added a new feature to its web based photo editor Photoshop Express. From today you can now import and manage photos that is on your Flickr account in addition to the ones previously available. Pretty cool I’d say if you are using Photoshop Express and Flickr!
   
• I’m getting a lot of questions on how to work with WordPress and how to set it up for certain purposes and I thought I’d start writing a tutorial series about just that. How to work with WordPress, what settings to use, some plugins etc. I don’t have any estimated completion date but it should be within the coming two weeks I assume!
   
• Over at LightroomKillerTips, Matt Kloskowski has a good Lightroom video today about how to backup to another drive instead of your main one. (Your catalog that is) It’s something that’s indeed really hidden.
   
• If you work with the web or are a web designer like me, you probably have heard your share of SEO debates and articles but if you are a little new to the field (or even if you have been there and heard it) you’ll appreciate this article by Nick La over at the Web Designer Wall talking about SEO for Web Designers.

It’s been a long week indeed and it’s been very busy with a lot of things happening, at least for me! Now it is going to be a fun and relaxing weekend in the warm weather. Fear not, I have an article lined up for you guys tomorrow.

I’m going to be away at my cousins confirmation service tomorrow which means I’ll be in a church taking some nice pictures I hope. I might be able to share you some on Sunday!

» Professional Portrait Retouching Class by Scott Kelby

Today on Kelby Training a brand new class (like most weeks) are launched. This time however it is an amazing class by an amazing man. Scott Kelby is launching his brand new online class called Professional Portrait Retouching Techniques. It’s going to teach you the best ways to retouch your portraits, without making them look unreal or overdone. It’s all the real retouching stuff used by professionals worldwide every day. After the jump you can see a promotional video that Scott did for the class where he himself explains what is covered.

» Thursday Happenings

It’s another fine day and that makes you happy! However, there is one thing that is bothering me and in the end you guys as well. My microphone that I’m using to record the tutorials with has gone awry and I will need to get a new one (about time I got a good headset anyway). Good thing for you all is that it’s going to improve the quality of the audio. Bad news is that it’ll take me a little while to find a good one and get it shipped here, so meanwhile, all episodes of the podcast and all video tutorials will be halted. Now onto the news!

• Open Office 3.0 Beta has just been released. Being one of the best competitors to the Microsoft Office Package and being free it is a very awaited new release. What’s best for Mac users, is that it has been made to use Aqua, the program frame on Mac and thus you no longer need X11 installed to run it.
   
• Do you deal with customers a lot in your business? If so then David Ziser, famous wedding photographer, has posted a little step by step number guide on what to do when answering the phone with a client on the line. It’s a good read and most of these pointers I myself consider pretty self-explanatory but nevertheless it isn’t for a lot of people.
   
• Scott Kelby posted last week a little review on the Hoodman RAW Memory Cards which has some incredible reliability. Today he posted that he got an email from Hoodman VP of Marketing who was telling a little bit more about the cards. They do sound pretty cool so I urge you to check the post out!

 

» ACR Preset - BoomContrast

 

Another week, another preset. This time it is another Adobe Camera Raw preset called BoomContrast which will boost the contrast up tremendously to a point where it can be too much for some photos. Feel free to tweak to your liking and use, after all it is created for a reason!

Download Here