Home       Tutorials       Quick-Tips       Reviews       About       Contact       Podcast       Register

» Pros and cons of making a website “the easy way”

 

In this day and age it’s possible to make a website relatively easy and if you know Photoshop it’s definitely super easy. There are many programs such as Sitegrinder 2 and even Dreamweaver that helps you with this process and that could be all good, at least it seems all good. There is usually just one big flaw, the code is no good.

» Two New Photoshop Hall of Fame Inductees

It’s the time of the year, two new industry professionals are being inducted into the Photoshop Hall of Fame and this time around it is award winning book author and fashion photographer, Martin Evening as well as Photoshop Product Manager, John Nack! Both Martin and John really has done a lot for the industry and are very well worth the induction into the Hall of Fame. It was created back in 2001 as a way of honouring the people who’ve made a great difference to Photoshop.

For more information and the past inductees, visit the Photoshop Hall of Fame site.

» Photoshop variables, useable for a lot of things!

Do you know about Photoshop variables? If not then I suggset that you take a look in the tutorials section for a tutorial about it to learn it. If you have, then read along (if you haven’t, read along too to learn a bit about them).

So as you may or may not know there is a command inside of Photoshop (under the image menu) that’s called variables. These little cool guys lets us set up a layer or a photo or text to be edited and replaced for a certain graphic or some text that we define in another file (excel file for example). We can also define whether a layer should be visible or not. All this we set up through the define part in the variables under the image menu. I’m not going to talk more about how to do it so if you don’t know, read the tutorial about that.

Variables are really useful however – something which I’ve found out recently while making price signs for the place where I work. Now before you have the time to say anything, I know that InDesign might be easier to do it in but that isn’t the option as we only have PS. Their old way has been doing this with Powerpoint because that’s what they’ve known. I felt it was waay to tedious to do and took a lot longer than it needed so I decided and took it upon myself to make a new system. While thinking about it I somehow got to think about variables. How much simpler wouldn’t it be if they just needed to go to an excel file and update the price, specs etc. and then have it ready to print and go? Well a whole lot!

So from now on the new system is really really simple. We have an excel file with the variables set up where you just simply and easily can add cameras and edit the existing (or remove). Once that is done they just save it out as a tabbed text file and import as a dataset in Photoshop. Then just export all of these out, make a contact sheet from it and print it out! It takes really just a fraction of the time it used to with…yeah, powerpoint.

Why am I writing up all this? Well it is simple. I’m asking you and telling you to get creative with some features in Photoshop to be able to use it in more ways than you’d think. The people doing the price tags at that place are no Photoshop people, in fact as of now they kinda fear Photoshop. Doing it this way it doesn’t need to be hard and you hardly touch Photoshop much at all!

A lot of Photoshop features are excacly like this. You can make it simple and use it in creative ways for purposes that may or may not have been thought off. Now for the disclaimer. I would probably have done this in InDesign if we had it.

 

» Friday News Goodies

Some news goodies from today to get us in the weekend spirit as always

• Over at his blog, John Nack has posted about coming Photoshop UI updates that will mainly affect us Mac users, giving us a choice to use an application frame, meaning all panels etc. will be covered in one window instead of being stuck to the sides of the screen. Luckily they are going to make it an option to use it or not which is definitely good.
   
• If you are thinking about purchasing a Mac Pro from Apple you should watch out so you don’t happen to order a lot of video cards thinking that you are ordering a higher speed. Terry White had a post on his blog about this and you should give it a read to be aware of what you are ordering.
   
• Coming up this coming week, starting on Monday is the Apple WWDC (World Wide Developer Conference) 2008! What we are all expecting is of course a 3G iPhone and a new .Mac service as well as the hidden goodies that they usually manage to come out with. I’m for one looking forward to see what they come up with. It’s a bummer though that I can’t be following the keynote through live posts, I have a end of the year ball to attend that evening, so I’ll recap all afterwards.
   
• Some weekend fun as well and it’s time to get Simpsonized again. Visit the SimpsonizeMe website to get all yellow according to your wish and then you can go and compile your family in Photoshop

» You suck at Photoshop - Revealed

 Yes you are hearing correctly! The guys behind the now popular and famour "You Suck at Photoshop" series which is mixing humor and learning, is now revealed! In an article by the Time you get to read the story behind as well as who is doing the series. If you’ve like everyone else been wondering, you’ll probably enjoy the read!

If you haven’t heard about the You Suck at Photoshop series you can go and view the episodes here on MyDamnChannel.

» Lightroom 1.4 and Camera Raw 4.4 released

 Adobe has today released updates to both Lightroom and Camera Raw, bringing them booth up to .4 releases and the change in booth is that they now include support for the newest cameras like the Canon 450D and the Nikon D60.

• Lightroom 1.4: Win | Mac
• Camera Raw: Win | Mac

» It’s eventful Tuesday!

 There are quite a lot of things happening this eventful Tuesday so perhaps I should be getting right to the news this time around!

Apple updates iPod Shuffle - lower price and more space!

Apple has today updated their line of iPod Shuffle. It is now available in a 1gb as well as a 2gb version and the price has gone down as well from previoud $79 for the 1gb version down to $49 and the two gigabyte version is just a $69 that’s coming very soon. Very welcome updates indeed and it is now perhaps possible to buy one if you say have a Classic or Touch and need one for some running music.

Apple updates to Xsan2 as well!

Apple is not lazy today updating another product, its SAN (Storage Area Network) product, Xsan to become Xsan 2. Enhancing performance quite a bit, Xsan 2 makes it easier for first time users to set up and quickly deploy a SAN; introduces MultiSAN, allowing users on a single workstation to access multiple SANs at the same time; is fully integrated with Mac OS X Leopard and Mac OS X Server Leopard and is now qualified to work with third-party RAID storage.

 Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is 1 year old today!

Today, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is one year old! Released last year on this very date 19th Februrary at 12:01a.m EST! Actually Lightroom isn’t the only product in history to have been released on February 19th. Booth Adobe Camera Raw in 2003 and Photoshop 1 back in 1990 was shipped on this very date as well!

Cool browser plugin!

If you view a lot of photos, either on Google Images, Flickr, SmugMug or perhaps deviantART or maybe even on Facebook? Then you should be checking out this cool browser plugin that is available for both Internet Explorer, Safari and FireFox that is called PicLens! You just really got to check out the site and the demos to see really how cool it is!

» Site Update Galore

 There’s just about only one reason to why you didn’t get a news post here yesterday. I’ve been working hard, especially yesterday, to expand the tutorials sections a little bit and I’ve made a long list of subjects to cover, so far in Lightroom, Photoshop and Bridge but I am going to make some lists for the other applications as well however. If there is any subject or effect or anything you would like me to cover in a tutorial, please leave a comment on this post and I’ll read and add to my list (as long as it is possible to do).

Now the good thing isn’t tha tI’ve made a list, it is that I’ve started recording many of the tutorials and I’ve even posted a bunch of them up on the site! Lightroom has gotten an amazing number of new tutorials over two days;

• Using the Find panel in Lightroom
• Exploring the Lightroom white balance tool
• A quick look at the develop module
• Using the Identity Plate
• Learn how the Painter Tool works
• Exporting from Lightroom

The Photoshop category has also got some updates which are currently being uploaded and processed so check in there later today. If you guys have missed it, I’ve added a brand new category, Pixelmator. I was getting a lot of requests for Pixelmator tutorials so you’ve got them! 

Alright so that pretty much sums up the changes to the site right now (the reviews are also being updated frequently) and I have some further plans for it coming very soon so sit tight! Also later today I’ll sum up the recent news.

» Back home!

I’m currently back home and I’m catching up to everything that I couldn’t do whilst being away and resuming the project work as well with quite a few customer projects to do right now. Tomorrow will see a usual Monday Newsflash with some cool stuff gathering up for you Oh and by the way, there are two new tutorials up, one on History and Snapshots in Lightroom and the other one about HDR in Photoshop, they are booth in the featured tutorial box up top

» Friday News

Long week it has been without much news posted and it is finally weekend though, which is great. First off we have a contest tip! It’s from Think Tank and it’s a daily prize draw, from November 16 to December 15. Head over to the contest site and put in your first name and e-mail and you will be in the draw every day! So if you don’t win one day, you’ll still be in the next. One bag per day and the only bag you cannot win is the Airport Security Roller! So check that out!

Printing problem in Photoshop CS3…Adobe is on it!

If you are one of the many people out there having a printing problem with Photoshop CS3, you’ll be pleased to know that Adobe is working on a solution! If you are interested in testing the solution, check out John Nack at Adobe’s blog from this link: Fixes for Photoshop printing due soon

Pros and Cons of Flash-Based web galleries!

Alright so I read this cool article over at Smashing Magazine (speaking of them, they only have cool articles :D) about the use of flash based galleries for displaying text etc. Check it out!

Epson’s new Exhibition Fibre Paper

LONG BEACH, Calif., Oct. 8 /PRNewswire/ — Epson America Inc. today announced what many professional photographers are saying is the perfect blend of revered darkroom papers with the limitless creative control of ink jet printing with the introduction of its Signature Worthy™ Exhibition Fiber Paper. The paper will be available in 25-sheet packages of 8.5″x 11,” 13″x 19,” 17″x 22,” and 24″x 30″ cut sheets.

This breakthrough paper was developed over several years in collaboration with many of the industry’s leading professional photographers to meet their most discerning requirements. Many who have contributed to the development of Exhibition Fiber Paper have commented that what sets it apart are its extraordinary blacks, clean whites and a surface texture that is just like a true black-and-white silver gelatin print. Additionally, Exhibition Fiber Paper produces extraordinary color output enabling photographers to make stunning prints in both color and black-and-white.

Check it out at the full press release on the Epson site, right here!