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» It’s the Friday Stuff

It’s once again this time of the week. It’s Friday and it’s a long weekend here. In the morning I’m going to be catching a train down south to join my mum at my grandparents house. I hope for some great shooting weather there and to be able to post some new shots. Meanwhile, here are some news from today!

• If you are a Lightroom user and move between a laptop and a desktop a lot and want to be able to in a good way move Lightroom stuff like that as well, you probably want to check out Matt Kloskowski’s post today over at his blog where he talked about that. Check it out here.
   
• I posted up a new review in the reviews section earlier today. If you like me are a Mac user and use the Twitter service, you might want to check out the review of the Twitterific application.
   
• I hope you are reading this amazing comic strip, but in the event that you aren’t, go and check out What the Duck. It’s a great comic strip available on the site right here. Should start up your weekend right.
   
• I’m working on some cool new website sections and updates both here and on XLD Studios and both sites will get a few new cool things added coming soon. A post is over there describing the summer changes on that side.

» Late Thursday News

I’m pretty tired after working a full day in the camera store and I’m going to be early because the day is repeating itself tomorrow. Fun but tiresome. Here are at least a few late Thursday news.

• From screenshots of the new Apple App Store we can see that they are imposing restrictions in both price and application size. The maximum size is 2gb and the prices range between $0.99 to $999, where the latter probably is for more enterprise styled applications.
   
• A new build of the Parallels Desktop shows support for both Linux as well as 3D graphics inside of Windows. To get the free update, just go under the help menu and chose Check for Updates.
   
• One of the site visitors sent me a comment yesterday noting me on a tutorial error which is indeed a realism miss. In the Pixelmator tutorial about Creating a realistic sunlight effect I missed to at the end, flip the copied image vertically so that the small piece of the window comes at the top. So for anyone being affected by this miss in the recording, now you know how to fix it.
   
• Over at his blog, Scott Kelby has posted a review of the Ray Flash. The Ray Flash is essentially a ring flash that attaches to a normal hotshoe flash to make it a ring flash. It sounds like a cool product so go and check that out.

That’s that for the news today, tomorrow I’ll be back with the Friday goodies, so stay tuned. Oh and until then, don’t have too much trouble, it is Friday 13th.

» Sorry for blog silence

 Sorry for the past day’s blog silence but things have been incredibly hectic around here these past days and hence the lack of blogging and tutorial posting. I’m right back onto everything today and will work a bit to catch up on everything (except the missing days blog posts). So expect new things to come today and through the weekend and in next week of course Things are now rolling again!

» QT: Add favourite folders in Bridge

To add a favourite folder in Bridge so you can easily navigate back to it without a hassle, just right click on the folder and select "Add to Favorites" from the contextual menu that pops up. When you need to navigate to the folder the next time you can just open the favorites panel and select it there. 

» QT: Add more undo’s in Photoshop

Who doesn’t like the ability to go back and undo things far more than the default 20 states? Luckily there is an easy way to increase the amount of states. Just go to Photoshop > Preferences > Performance (PC: Edit > Preferences > Performance) and you can see a history state option there. All you do is increase the number there and you get more states.

» QT: Rate and move to the next image

 When you are rating your photos, a good shortcut is to turn on the Caps Lock and then when you press the rating shortcuts, once you’ve rated a photo it’ll move on to the next one. A real timesaver!

» QT: Change your document settings afterwards

Did you know that you can still change your document settings after you’ve created the document and started working? You can. Under File > Document Settings you have all the settings of the new file dialog box so that you can easily modify your columns, margins, bleeds and slugs.

» QT: Save document presets

A sometimes often overlooked thing in InDesign is the availability to save document presets. When you create your new document, you have an option to save the current settings as a new preset so that you don’t need to input the settings each time. Great not only for formats that aren’t already in a preset, but for magazines and even papers that need a bleed every time etc.

» QT: Select similar layers

In Photoshop you can select what’s called "Similar Layers". It allows you to quickly select layers that are similar, like type layers, shape layers or adjustment layers. To do it, just go under the Select menu and click on Similar Layers.

» Wednesday News Stuff

One would think it would be very hard to exceed the happy news from yesterday with the cool CS4 betas and the news that the iPhone is coming here to Sweden. There are however some pretty cool stuff running today as well!

• Backing up is really important to do and yesterday Scott Kelby posted his backup stratergy on his blog which is really a good one. Last Friday he had another post about backing up and the importance of doing do (sharing a nightmare story) and I call today another backup Wednesday because it is really important!
   
• About a week ago the talented artist James Quantz Jr. redesigned his site to make it much cleaner and simpler (and more stylish) to us viewers. I really think it turned out rather nicely and I think you should all go and look at his new site if not just to sit a while in awe to look at his work!
   
• If you’ve been paying attention to this site a bit recently you’ll have noticed a little change in the sidebar and overall width of the site. I’ve expended the width so I could fit a larger sidebar with two columns instead of extending the old one to be even longer. With it I also added some new sidebar content such as a twitter summary of my twitter page and a brand new poll and countdown. Some minor new cool things
   
• If you are trying to download trials from Adobe’s website you’ll be greeted with a not so nice statement that they are unavailable. Over at InDesignSecrets you can read what you can do and why this is happening.