Monthly Archives: November 2007
Notes in Pictures
Good morning all – fast breaking news as I have an extra tutorial this week. I was working on my portion of a collaborative project last night and saw a note pasted into the picture for me as a reminder of some rather important settings for the layer masks. It reminded me of the usefulness of making notes and saving those with the pictures! You can make text notes or audio notes with this feature, so check it out at your leisure. I’ll link to the dedicated page for now, and upload a flash version when I get home later … Continue reading
Welcome to the Land of Confusion
Well…I am torn now. After administering both this blog and two other ones (granted the first was very half heartedly), I am finding that Wordpres, while apparently becoming the de facto standard for blogging, is not without it’s problems. It seems themes are not universally cognizant of several features that I would have thought would be common to many bloggers – first and foremost, being multimedia. Sorry, but the plugin and configuration settings for getting basic videos to play right in a blog is just damn confusing for me. Now I grant that I am no web designer extraordinaire, but … Continue reading
Whitening Teeth
While it’s not the most glamorous thing in the world, when we do portrait work, a lot of the post process focuses on minimizing flaws and maximizing peoples assets. Part of this process can include giving a little more polished look to people’s teeth. Today, I walk you through the process of how to do this in Photoshop. It’s pretty straightforward, but a very useful skill to have regardless. Anyway, give it a try after watching the tutorial, and in the meantime, feel free to share your thoughts on the podcasts thus far either via email or the comments section. … Continue reading
Video tutorial delayed
As the Thanksgiving holiday recedes into the past, a few lingering tasks remained so the tutorial that I had planned for production tonight is not complete yet. But, never fear, fellow photogs, I have something to share. It seems recently that there has been a lot of focusing (bad pun) on photoshop techniques, yet we have these amazing devices that can really do wonders if we know how to use them – called cameras. As a service for those that could use some additional explanation, and as a refresher for the rest of us, I’ve put together a paper on … Continue reading
HAPPY THANKSGIVING – and thanks to all the viewership!
Thanks to the good folks over at www.good-tutorials.com, I’ve hit a new personal record with Canon Blogger and in the last 24 hours got almost 500 hits – 451 to be exact… beating the previous high mark of 421 back on October 29th. Quite exciting for a blog that’s only been around for 2 months. Thanks to all that have found interest in the blog and the tutorials to take the time to visit. How appropriate to be giving thanks to all that have enjoyed the blog thus far – on THANKSGIVING! Happy Thanksgiving everyone, and we’ll see about getting … Continue reading
Creating re-sizing actions in Photoshop
For those who like to create actions for their own work flows in Photoshop, I’ve created a set of re-sizing actions that I use pretty regularly to resize image from their camera raw settings to either 800px or 600px on the longest side. It took a bit of manual, but simple math, and then some tedious manual size adjustments, but the results are far better than anything you would get from a one-stop adjustment tool (unless of course it’s another action). If you’d like to see the completed action, just drop me a line and I will be happy to … Continue reading
Home project extension…
Well, the homeprojects are almost done…with one minor extension…the acrylic based paint I added in teh guest bath does not apply easily, so to get the edge area where I had hand brushed to match with the roller-applied areas beneath it, I guess I need to get an edge roller and blend that in after taping off the popcorn ceiling. What a drag…my hands and arms are really sore and sick of paint and cleaning, paint and cleaning, paint and cleaning. Too much time working, not enough time shooting! Anyone out there have any shots or photo stories to share? … Continue reading
Watching paint dry…creating worlds
Today as I entered the final stages of my home projects (2nd coats of paint), I proceeded to enjoy some Sunday football as the paint dried. Not being one to sit around much lately, I kept the TV on in the background and looked around for something else to do on the project list. Since I was waiting on the last coat of paint to dry, I was left to either watch football, watch paint dry, or create a new tutorial. Creativity won out, so here’s the latest installment for the video tutorial series…creating globes via special effects in the … Continue reading
Shooting Sunsets
Last evening was a club outing and I was able to capture a few sunset shots. One was en route and the other was after I arrived. Ironically, the first was darker, and this was likely due to how I metered the shot. Just goes to show you, photography requires attention to detail! Anyway, thought I’d share both of those shots with the viewing audience as my POTD’s since I’ve not had any images in a while…enjoy!
Weekly Video tip is finished
The regular video tutorial for this week has finished production and is ready for viewing here at Canon Blogger. This week’s subject: Using path selections to define your workspace. This is a great technique for adding text in a non-linear path (horizontal or vertical). You can use any of the pre-set marquee shapes and sizes, or make a custom one for your needs. Today, I used this technique to create an alternate logo for Canon Blogger. Other outputs could include posters, stationery, web graphics, designs, templates or pretty much anything that needs some graphical influence. Shots of the completed housework … Continue reading
News lag
It’s been a quiet few days as some home tasks have been taking up a lot of my time. Over the course of the weekend, I began an electrical project (replacing outlets with GFCI), a plumbing project (replacing faucets in bat), and construction (drywall patching, and accessoy replacements in bath and shelving downstairs). All that on top of the usual family routine of dinner and dog walks has put a bit of a crimp on my posts. Having said that, the day off on Monday allowed me to put a video podcast in the can for release on Friday, so … Continue reading
A special “Thanks”…
Today we honor all veterans of the Armed Forces of the U.S.A. I would like to take a moment to thank each and every one of those that have and those who continue to serve to protect our country. Our freedom and way of life was paved by your predecessors and continues to find new outlets in the world thanks to the sacrifices of our men and women in uniform. To all those who serve – we salute you! One of the side effects of honoring our veterans is that I got an extra day off work today. So…lucky viewers … Continue reading
Selections tutorial is finished
Just under the wire…the selections tutorial production has been completed and has been posted for viewing. At a total of just over 8 minutes, it shows three different selection techniques, that when used in concert with one another, can select exact selections with professionally feathered borders for transitions into other graphics. This is particularly useful if you are porting images taken into web designed graphic backgrounds for things like headers and banners. ETA: The closing audio was positioned incorrectly, so a correction had to be made in post production. I ran that overnight and am uploading the replacement now…it should … Continue reading
Video Podcast promises
I hope the video podcast lives up to it’s promises….it’s in post production now and should be finished and uploaded before I go to bed tonight. In the meantime, I’d like to share a great dialog that has been going on over in the community forums of the Radiant Vista website. There’s been some really interesting discussion over a post yours truly made a while back asking “How do you learn?” The whole site is thought provoking and informative, but this thread in particular is just great evidence of the quality of thoughts and ideas that can be found if … Continue reading
Podcast update
I know I had said that I woud be putting out a tutorial today showing the benefits of god quality gear (i.e. my new Samson condensor Mic), but since my typical date for release is Thursday, I dediced to hold off until tomorrow to finish the production on it, and cross all my T’s and dot all my eyes. In the meantime, for your viewing pleasure, since I’ve not done a POTD for a while, here’s one I worked up recently from last Wed. (Haloween). Kind of works for the month of November to as the color scheme also is … Continue reading
Ready and raring to go…
The new mic has been set up and all accessory components are also in place. I recorded a test podcast tonight to basically do a sound check and hear the audio quality. I must say that a condensor microphone has far and away better quality than anything I had tried via USB or stereo mini connection. I guess it would be with a diameter more than 10x that of the rinky-dink ones in Best Buy and Wal-mart, and that requires its own power supply source! The latest podcast should be out tomorrow with the new audio gear in place – … Continue reading
Creative Presentations
The aforementioned tutorial is now recorded and up for your viewing pleasure. Lots of content here including multiple layers, layer masks, gradients, keyboard shortcuts, and marquee selections in place, so hopefully a helpful tutorial all around. In the interests of providing a web-based version and a downloadable version, I am going to embed the flash one with this post, and provide a link to download either a WMV version or a Quicktime version. Fair warning, but the Quicktime version has a short feedback issue from when I re-recorded the intro vocals…will attend to that today (hopefully), but if you skip … Continue reading
After a flea market and a fair…it’s time to flop
Today, bright and early, my wife dragged me out of bed to attend the mother of all garage sales, the Jr. league’s annual sale event in downtown Charleston. For those of you that may not know, the Jr. League is a non-profit group of women who’s mission is to… “The Association of Junior Leagues International Inc. (AJLI) is an organization of women committed to promoting voluntarism, developing the potential of women, and improving communities through the effective action and leadership of trained volunteers. Its purpose is exclusively educational and charitable.” – from their website here As one of their charity … Continue reading
An amateur audio adieu and adios
Funny store I thought would be worthy of sharing on the blog today… As a blogger about photography, the last position I thought I would do is find myself in is spending my hobby monies on audio equipment, but… since I never really do things halfway, I decided to invest in some additional audio accessories. Until recently, my techno-phile tendencies were limited to two Windows-based PC’s, a Linux box that acts as a file/print server, and a Canon DSLR with a complement of a solid tripod, 3 accessory lenses, replete with multiple CF cards and gear bags. A month ago, … Continue reading
Centering Objects
Just a quick video podcast today, I ahd a few ideas on what to do, but the hours in the day ran short on me yet again, so, in time for the weekend, here is one on how to center objects inside of Photoshop. I used text here, but it really would work with any object you want to have completely centered across an entire image area. Check it out – it’s only 3 minutes total! Thanks for watching, and don’t forget to tune in next week when my new audio equipment will finally be up and running – microphones, … Continue reading
Feed Update
A new podcast will be up in just a little, but in the interim, I am posting a feed update for the Blog, so feel free to skip this read as there’s not much here… <a href=”http://www.podcastalley.com/”> My Podcast Alley feed!</a> {pca-baa5dca41ce9144deeea552894608be2}
