BrainFuel

Earlier this month Tom pointed me to the Hamachi web site and said “download this.” So I’m going to tell the rest of you the same thing. This program simply works. You can install it on all of your PC’s (no Mac version yet) and it essentially creates a VPN of sorts allowing you to browse the shared drives on those computers from anywhere. We’ve been using it at Tornado and its worked great. Thanks Tom.

Back in December I posted five simple Photoshop tips on BrainFuel. I’m excited to bring you another five Photoshop tips.

1. Use the Reset Button. When you are in a Photoshop dialog (for example, the Image… dialog) you can press the Alt key on your keyboard (Option on the Mac) and the Cancel button will change to a Reset button and you can change back to whatever settings you altered.
2. Press Alt / Option to turn Brush into Eyedropper. When you are using the Brush tool, you can hold down the Alt key and the cursor will become an eyedropper allowing you to make quick changes to your paint color.
3. Using the Eyedropper outside of Photoshop. Did you know that the eyedropper tool in Photoshop works outside of Photoshop? Yeah, it does. To do it: choose the eyedropper tool and click inside your image. Then drag anywhere on your screen to select a color from anything visible on your screen. More details are at creativebits.
4. Use the Alignment Buttons. If you have multiple objects and you want to line them up you can easily do so by linking them together and using any one of the alignment buttons that appear when you have the move tool selected. This tip is great for lining up multiple text strings or shapes.
5. You can change the brush size by pressing the bracket keys repeatedly. This one is handy for quickly changing your brush size. Simply pressing either ] or [ and it will adjust the brush size by 10 units. Thanks to Ward at Mister Shape for this tip.

Read my other 5 Photoshop tips.

We have a client who would like to purchase Photoshop to edit their product images however they don’t want to spend the money. Besides Photoshop, what image editing apps do you recommend in the sub $200 market?

I’m giving 30 Boxes a try as an online calendar. It’ll be a difficult job convincing me to switch however as I’m used to the “work week” view that I have in Outlook and we’ve managed to network it. Other ones I recently tried: CalendarHub and the new and improved Hotmail shared calendar.

I have compiled the Top 10 Photoshop tips and techniques ever posted on BrainFuel. Enjoy!

1. Use the Reset Button. When you are in a Photoshop dialog (for example, the Image… dialog) you can press the Alt key on your keyboard (Option on the Mac) and the Cancel button will change to a Reset button and you can change back to whatever settings you altered.
2. Press Alt / Option to turn Brush into Eyedropper. When you are using the Brush tool, you can hold down the Alt key and the cursor will become an eyedropper allowing you to make quick changes to your paint color.
3. Using the Eyedropper outside of Photoshop. Did you know that the eyedropper tool in Photoshop works outside of Photoshop? Yeah, it does. To do it: choose the eyedropper tool and click inside your image. Then drag anywhere on your screen to select a color from anything visible on your screen. More details are at creativebits.
4. Use the Alignment Buttons. If you have multiple objects and you want to line them up you can easily do so by linking them together and using any one of the alignment buttons that appear when you have the move tool selected. This tip is great for lining up multiple text strings or shapes.
5. You can change the brush size by pressing the bracket keys repeatedly. This one is handy for quickly changing your brush size. Simply pressing either ] or [ and it will adjust the brush size by 10 units. Thanks to Ward at Mister Shape for this tip.
6. Pressing the shift key constrains proportions when you resize objects. Simple yet obviously not everybody knows this one. If you don’t hold shift, it stretches. Honestly, I think Adobe products should automatically hold proportions.
7. Using the erase or pen tool, you can press erase once and then holding down the shift key press somewhere else to draw a straight line: Simple yet effective and works with other tools like the pen tool.
8. Shift + Backspace fills a selection. Yup, another super-simple one. It’s the same as going to Edit… Fill…
9. Set your Units of Measurement to pixels. If your artwork is destined for on screen display you should set your Rulers to display units as pixels (it can display inches or whatever unit of measurement that you might want). Often times when I receive someone elses Photoshop file that has guides in it, I find the guides are not snapped to the edge of the pixel. This is because the guide was placed when the unit of measurement was something other than pixels.
10. Use the sharpen tool on photos. Especially if your photo is destined for web use (or email) and you just resized a big picture to small dimensions. It makes your photos crisp and makes everything and everybody clear. I wrote more about this in April.

Ok Todd and Tom, this is for you: Information about Resampling in Photoshop.

If you do not have enough pixel data to get the print size and resolution you need, then you’ll have to resample the image and Photoshop will create new pixels. This often results in poorer quality print results, so you need to judge which is the lesser of two evils: the loss in quality from reduced resolution or the loss in quality from resampling.

http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/photoshop/l/bllps502d.htm

That’s where Resampling comes in. To cut to the bottom line, “resampling” means “making things up,” or perhaps “guessing.” Granted Photoshop makes educated guesses, but especially when adding pixels to increase resolution, that’s what they are, guesses. If the camera didn’t capture it, or the scanner didn’t scan it, the information to fill in those new pixels has to come from somewhere, even if it is out of thin air. Unlike on TV, crime detectives can’t extract details from film that were never captured in the first place.

http://www.earthboundlight.com/phototips/resizing-resampling-photoshop.html

I’ve been using Photoshop since I first got my hands on a copy in 1996 (and yes, it was legit). Over the years I’ve learned so much about how to use it and so decided to share several of my tips that I’ve noticed some people around me don’t yet know.

1. Pressing the shift key constrains proportions when you resize objects. Simple yet obviously not everybody knows this one. If you don’t hold shift, it stretches. Honestly, I think Adobe products should automatically hold proportions.
2. Using the erase or pen tool, you can press erase once and then holding down the shift key press somewhere else to draw a straight line: Simple yet effective and works with other tools like the pen tool.
3. Shift + Backspace fills a selection. Yup, another super-simple one. It’s the same as going to Edit… Fill…
4. Set your Units of Measurement to pixels. If your artwork is destined for on screen display you should set your Rulers to display units as pixels (it can display inches or whatever unit of measurement that you might want). Often times when I receive someone elses Photoshop file that has guides in it, I find the guides are not snapped to the edge of the pixel. This is because the guide was placed when the unit of measurement was something other than pixels.
5. Use the sharpen tool on photos. Especially if your photo is destined for web use (or email) and you just resized a big picture to small dimensions. It makes your photos crisp and makes everything and everybody clear. I wrote more about this in April.

That wraps up my Photoshop tips for today. Thanks for attending class.

Two nice calendar systems for PHP (neither one is free but not too bad of a price):

Calendar Express 2 – Robust system with a full administration panel and multiple categories and different display options (weekly, monthly, yearly events view).

Easy PHP Calendar – Simpler than Calendar Express in its visual appearance and administration. I really like the way this system works. With some hacking around you can get it to display any number of months on a page and change colors and fonts. One plus, also, is that you can install WYSIWYG text editors (you do it yourself).

Know of any others? It’s tough to find a decent one.