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12 Adobe Photoshop Tutorials To Make Your Valentine’s Day Special

MoiN — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:46:19 +0000

Valentine’s day is near and to keep up the spirit, presenting 12 of the most awesome adobe photoshop tutorials that will surely make this day memorable. Also don’t forget to check out our previous articles on adobe photoshop tutorials

1. Create colorful background for Valentine’s Day

2. Grunge Valentine’s Design

3. Design a Sleek Valentine’s Day Card

4. Valentine’s Day Card

5. Create an abstract Valentine background with hearts

6. Creating a Simple Valentine’s Day e-Card

7. Valentines Day – Photoshop Style

8. Designing A Valentine Card From Scratch

9- Valentine’s day card

10- Valentine’s Day

11- Valentine’s Day Wallpaper

12- Valentine’s day hearts

I hope you enjoy. Also don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS Feeds to get more free tutorials in future.

Look Like Na’vi: Avatar Photoshop Tutorials

MoiN — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:03:39 +0000

Avatar was a great movie, no doubt. Almost everyone (who watched it) became a fan, just like me. A lot of people are discussing how cool those avatar looked, the special effects and everything. For those people (especially), presenting a list of Photoshop tutorials (including video tutorials) where you can learn to create yourself into Na’vi.

1. Na’vi Avatar Photo Manipulation (Tutorial)

2. Create Avatar movie poster (Tutorial)

3. Birth of an AVATAR (Video Tutorial)

4. Photoshop Tutorial – Na’vi Avatar Photo Manipulation

5. Avatar Movie Poster in Photoshop (Tutorial)

Collection of Tutorials That Every Beginner Photographer Should Bookmark

MoiN — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 11:26:02 +0000

Photography requires technique along-with your talent. You can’t just take a great picture without knowing the insides of a camera. Things like, composition, shutter speed, aperture, ISO etc matters a lot. Presenting today, a great collection of tutorials for beginners. I hope you like these.

1. A great collection of tutorials which includes, types of cameras, why you need a tripod, Basic Photography, Lighting, Working with different subjects, Photo Editing and What to do with your Photos afterwards. (Geofflawrence)

2. Superb resource, providing information on camera controls, photography lighting, composition (including the rule of thirds), and even color temperature. (About)

3. Another fantastic selection of some of digital photography tips and tutorials aimed more at the beginner photographer. (Digital Photography School)

4. Things To Consider Before Selecting A Digital Camera

Educational article on what you should be looking at before actually buying a digital camera.

5. Photography Exposure Elements – F-Stops and Shutter Speeds

How is an exposure made and what does the camera do to make sure an image is recorded? An excellent tutorial covering exposure elements, F-stops and shutter speeds.

6. An Introduction to Camera Lenses

7. 7 Beginner Tips For Sharper Photos

Sharper photos always look fantastic. Here are 7 beginner tips for taking sharper photos.

8. Top 10 Mistakes For Beginning Photographers

Another great article which focuses on common beginner mistakes.

I hope these tutorials can cover up as much information needed for beginner to start off their photography career. Also, if you think something’s missing or a tutorial which should be useful, don’t hesitate to add it in your comments.

12 Fantastic Flash Based Animations That You’ll Definitely Love

MoiN — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 18:51:57 +0000

Since macromedia flash came out, I became a big fan. Although, I wasn’t that good at it, was below average but I always loved the Animations, basically in form of flash websites. Today, the bars have been raised and the animators are doing extra-ordinary work. Presenting a list of 12 awesome animations that you’ll adore for sure.

1- BeerRun

2- Aladdin 3150

3- The Last Of The Dashkin

4- The PigPen

5- De_Dust 2 (Counter Strike)

6- TarBoy

If you haven’t watched Animator vs Animation, here is the series of Awesome flash animations (One of my favorite).

7- Animator Vs Animation

8- Animator Vs Animation 2

9- Deadly Bite

10- Waiting For The Bus

11- The Facebook Problem

12- Stamp On The Ground

Smashing Collection Of Tutorials For Converting PSD TO HTML

MoiN — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 04:46:47 +0000

For web designers, when handed a new project, the hard part comes when they have to code the given Photoshop mockups. Yes, there are people who have already mastered the coding skill but for the rest, it’s not that easy. Keeping in mind that, I’m presenting a great collection of tutorials / resources where one can learn to code PSD’s. I’m sure this will come in handy for most.

1- From PSD to HTML, Building a Set of Website Designs Step by Step (Tuts+)

2- 43 PSD to XHTML, CSS Tutorials Creating Web Layouts And Navigation (1stwebdesigner)

3- 30 Tutorials On Converting A PSD To XHTML And CSS (Creative Nerds)

4- 20+ Best Tutorials to Convert Psd to Html/CSS (Dzine Blog)

5- 14 Of The Best PSD to HTML CSS Guides (Designussion)

I did manage to find more but they were not offering anything new, too much repetition.

15 Extravagant Tutorials For The Photoshop Kings

MoiN — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 08:03:52 +0000

I’ll start off by saying “Happy New Year to everyone” and I hope everything goes well. Starting the new year off with one of my favorite things to do, learning Adobe Photoshop and these tutorials are a blessing in disguise. In the past, I’ve covered some nifty Tutorials that everyone loved, here’s a re-cap

Today, presenting another great list of useful adobe photoshop tutorials and I hope you like them. Also do subscribe to our RSS feeds, via your reader or email.

1- Design An Amazing 2010 Poster

2- Blend a Planet Transparently into a Photo Manipulation

3- How to Design a Print-Ready Flier with Photoshop and Illustrator

4- Minimalistic Poster Design in Photoshop

5- How to Design a Creative Colorful Icon in Photoshop

6- Human Statue Effect

7- How To Create Realistic Cat Fur

8- Creating An Amazing Natural Combination Scene

9- Create a Simple Autumn Scene

10- Design a Dante’s Inferno Game Inspired Dark Flaming Hell Scene

11- How To Design a 3D Wooden Box

12- Create a Horrific Ghost Scene using Photoshop

13- Create A Golden Foil Gift Box From Scratch

14- Create A Fantastic Ribbon For Iphone

15- How To Create a Sleek Audio Player Interface in Photoshop

How To Play HD Content on Your PS3 [Guide]

MoiN — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 22:27:23 +0000

Looking to play HD content (Movies etc) on Your PS3? Here’s an awesome guide written by AudioBoxer which lets you play HD Files (.MKV), tackling it with NO/minimal quality loss. Normally HD movies are in GB’s but you don’t have to worry about that, PS3 can support drives up to 350GB and you can keep your favorite movies in it easily.

To play HD Content on your PS3, you’ll be needed

PS3 (PlayStation 3)
PC
Java SE Runtime Environment (Download version x64 if you are on 64bit, install this before PS3MS)
PS3 Media Server (works on Linux/Windows/Mac)

Setting Up PS3 Media Server

The first screen you will see is the status screen.

If working correctly PS3 Media Server will detect your PS3. For this to happen both your PC and PS3 must be turned on, and connected to your router or modem.

If there is a problem you will see this screen. The most common cause for this is a firewall on your PC blocking either the PS3 Media Server application or JAVA. Both have to be whitelisted within your firewall application.

The traces tab will act as your debug log, it is helpful to read it if you are experiencing the second image above, as it may give clues as to why your PS3 and PC aren’t talking to each other.

The first useful thing to notice here is you can install PS3 MS as a Windows Service. This will enable your media sharing every time you turn your PS3 on. You could always just add a shortcut to the PS3MS exe under your startup folder though.

Ignore the network settings unless you’re having issues getting your PC to talk to your PS3, you can force an IP for the server here if you need to manually open a port on your router.

Enable the HTTPV2 engine, and prevent OS from sleeping while streaming so your power saving features don’t kick in and put your PC in standby whilst you’re watching a movie.

Turn on thumbnails generation, use mplayer for video thumbnails and also DVD ISOs thumbnails. The Thumbnail seeking position can be set to whatever time you want. This creates a thumbnail from the actual video.

Audio thumbails can be gathered from various sources, the drop down box lists the likes of Amazon.

Protip – PS3 Media Server supports custom thumbnails from your hard drive if you’d rather use something else other than a snapshot from the video. If you save an image as ‘folder.png’ in the same folder as your video file it will use that. An example:

On PC

On PS3

The PSD file with the template for the cover art I use can be downloaded here. Credits to Neowin member Boz for creating the template.

Navigation/Parsing settings contains various visual tweaks you can accustom yourself to. The #Video Settings# and #Transcode# folder hold very useful settings depending on your streaming needs, browse these folders on your PS3 to see. For example:

#Transcode Folder#

When enabled this folder will let you customize your file playback. If you have dual audio options or subtitles to choose from, you can go into this folder and select what you want.

If however for example all your movies are in english/don’t need subtitles you can hide the #Transcode Folder# to clean up your menus.

The Shared folders section is where your movies are located.

Protip – With HD movies taking up 10′s of GB of space at times, many of us may have our movies spanned across multiple drives. When it comes to browsing your files this can be a pain, as they aren’t all shown in the one location under PS3 MS and you may forget what drive has what movies. There is a very easy and efficient solution, Linkshell Extension.

Install Linkshell Extension for your operating system. Afterwards you will notice new entries on your context menu called ‘Pick Link Source’

This is used to specify what file or folder you want to create a virtual link to. Look at this scenario below:

Here we have two movies, but both these movies are on separate drives. In order to play them both back through PS3 Media Server, we’d have to add both locations to our Shared Folders section and browse them on our PS3 separately.

What we can do now is create one centralised folder, say C:\Movies. We would right click on one of our two movie folders above and hit ‘Pick Link Source’. We would then navigate to our C:\Movies folder and right click, go to ‘Drop As’, then ‘Symbolic Link Clone’.

Do this for both folders and you’ll have this scenario

We have now created two virtual shortcuts to our actual movies within C:\Movies. Since they are shortcuts as you can see they occupy ’0kb’. This can be done with folders or files.

If you’re now wondering why we didn’t just create an ‘everyday’ windows right click, paste shortcut, it’s because such shortcuts won’t work in PS3MS.

On your PS3 you will have your ‘Movies’ folder browsable as normal:

And inside:

Both movies in the one place, even although they are physically stored on two different drives.

The ‘Transcoding Settings’ tab is where we get into the real meat of things, and it’s crucial to set things up correctly here.

First of all, under common transcode settings:

Leave the transcode buffer size at 400 (it’s in relation to your ram). Only change this to a lower amount if you have a low amount of ram, say 1GB, or even 512mb.

Number of cores relates to your CPU, PS3MS should automatically detect this, but in case it doesn’t manually enter how many cores you are running on.

Chapters support will add a feature under the #Transcode# folder that allows you to see virtual chapters created for the interval minute setting you supply.

Number of audio channels relates to the sound setup hooked up to your PS3, self explanatory. Leave the bitrate at 640.

Keep DTS audio in stream is a selling point of PS3 MS. If you have a 5.1 sound system and have encoded a movie with the DTS soundtrack intact, check this box to play DTS through your PS3. Your PS3 must have the volume normalized though, and tracks set to 1+2. If not you’ll just hear static…

These settings can be accessed from pressing ‘Triangle’ during video playback.

Also do note, under video info, ‘Select’ during playback, the audio will report itself as PCM 2.0, 1.5Mpbs

This is just part of the trick to getting DTS working through streamed media, ignore it and instead pay attention to your receiver, you will notice your ‘DTS’ light is lit up and you are hearing audio through all 5 speakers.

Next setting to pay attention to is ‘Remux when audio track is AC3′. This should be ticked if you have a 5.1 sound system as any movies/tv shows you have that include a 5.1 AC3 soundtrack will have the audio passed through untouched. If you don’t have a 5.1 sound system don’t check this, unless your AC3 is 2.0, as you’ll need to let PS3 MS downmix any 5.1 audio tracks to 2.0 for your TV.

Under video quality settings we look at the bandwidth for transcoding. By default these settings are fine if you’re using a wired network. If you’re on wireless, select one of the lower settings from the drop down menu.

Next under video files engines, mencoder:

Turn on ‘Enhanced multicore support for H264 HD content’ if you have a processor with two or more cores.

Turn on ‘Switch to tsMuxer when H264 video is PS3 compatible and there’s no configured subs’. This will enable HD content to be remuxed if it doesn’t need transcoded, it’s crucial to turn this on.

The rest of the settings can be left on default for now.

There is a readme and FAQ/Help section within PS3MS with lots of more useful info, this guide is a quick run through the main features. There are other advanced capabilities such as plugins, two exist right now, an IMDB plugin, and a LastFM plugin.

They are pretty self explanatory to use but I shall include some more detail in the guide later.

If everything is setup correctly you should now be enjoying your movies.

Note: I’d like to state that there is no copyright breach, since it was much useful (specially for PS3 lovers), I’ve asked Audioboxer if I can share this here so it can reach more and more people.

23 Brilliant Adobe Photoshop Tutorials That You Shouldn’t Miss

MoiN — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 19:01:02 +0000

I’m confronting much useful Adobe Photoshop tutorails on almost daily basis. Trying most of them and am getting good at creating things which I thought I won’t be able to. My skill levels with the help of these tutorials has definitely increased and I’m getting more and more addictive to Photoshop. In the past I’ve compiled great adobe photoshop tutorials in couple of posts (49 Tutorials in total) which a lot of people loved and I’m grateful for that, If you missed, here’s the list;

16 Exciting Adobe Photoshop Tutorials To Boost Your Creativity

33 Tutorials to Unleash the Photoshop Beast in You

Today, I’m presenting another list of some awesome and useful adobe photoshop tutorials and I hope you like them. Also do subscribe to our RSS feeds, via your reader or email.

1- Create an Abstract Style, Vibrant Jumping Man Scene (Tutorial)

2- Create A Vibrant Space Nebula (Tutorial)

3- How to Use Texture and Lighting to Create Rounded Artwork (Tutorial)

4- Super Cool Retro Poster in 10 Steps in Photoshop (Tutorial)

5- How to Create a Dark Emotional Photo Manipulation (Tutorial)

6- Creating a Texas Rangers Desktop Wallpaper (Tutorial)

7- Create a Grunge WordPress Theme (Tutorial) – Tip: And Have it sliced in HTML/CSS – See post.

8- Create a Distant Desert City Scene with Energy Ray Blast (Tutorial)

9- FireFish (Firefox Inspired Mascot) Photoshop Tutorial (Tutorial)

10- Design a 3D Box Icon in Photoshop (Tutorial)

11- Create a Rebellious Skateboarder Using Digital Painting Techniques in Photoshop (Tutorial)

12- Create a wood background (Tutorial)

13- Super Cool Watercolor Effect in 10 steps (Tutorial)

14- Design the Mac OS X Leopard Folder (Tutorial)

15- Design a Contemporary Poster (Tutorial)

16- Futuristic Collage (Tutorial)

17- Dazzling Dance Photo Manipulation (Tutorial)

18- Draw a Classy 3D Poker Chip in Photoshop (Tutorial)

19- How to Create a Fantasy Landscape Photo Manipulation (Tutorial)

20- Creating A Customized Product & Label (Tutorial)

21- Adding Grunge Photo Edges (Tutorial)

22- Make Smashing Glass Photo Effects (Tutorial)

23- Create An Amazing Sparkling Text Effect (Tutorial)

I hope you like these tutorials as much as I did. Hopefully, I’ll be posting another updated version of Adobe Photoshop tutorials in the upcoming days so do subscribe to our feeds if you haven’t already.

Un-Wanted Vacations – Courtesy Acer’s Lame Customer Service

MoiN — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 14:56:31 +0000

Almost couple of weeks back, I was struck by a virus (Through a friend’s Portable Harddisk) and it crashed my Vista. Unfortunately, the recovery CD’s didn’t work as well which was strange since I never had a chance to used them and they were scratch less. Anyway, I was having some other issues as well so I thought I should send my laptop to the company on weekend and get it back on monday with all the problems fixed (hardware related as well, battery etc).

I told them that I have some important data is one of my drives so please make sure that it doesn’t get deleted. On monday, I called the company and the person in charge of warranties said that you have to back up your data yourself since they’re not responsible for it + they have to wipe out everything, format, do new partitions etc. The best they can do is give me the hard disk so I can take care of it. Now I never had a chance to buy the device which connects the laptop’s harddisk to another PC through USB for scenarios like this.

I called some friends to check if they have one and luckily one of my friends at Shophive said yes. I called the company and told them that I’ll come by in the evening to pick up the hard disk. So I took my car out, went there and the guy who had my laptop wasn’t there. After calling him, he said he’s out and forgot to take the HD out, you can pick it up tomorrow. Even if I’m not there, you’ll get it. So another day lost.

The next day, I went there again and he was out of office. I called him on the spot and he said “Oh, I forgot”, I told him to ask anyone else in his office to take it out and give it to me since it’s more than a week now. After some talks, I finally got the hard disk. I went to shophive, borrowed the device and copied the data in my brother’s laptop. The next day (Saturday) – I went to Acer’s office, gave the hard disk and asked if I can get it back tonight? – The answer was “No” since they had to leave early. Another week lost. On Monday, I went there and he said, it’s all done. Windows etc re-installed, everything’s new. I was a bit happy, asked him if he mange to fix my hardware issues? (Headphone pin was stuck in the audio knob + battery time wasn’t good). Guess what, he said “I forgot”!

So two weeks, 1 windows installation. I was enraged but couldn’t do anything. I took my laptop back home so I can start work and guess what, The drive with my data (which I thought would be formatted) was un-touched. Right now, I’m clueless, I don’t know what to say or do except, when will they take things seriously?

Good news, I’m back and will be posting regularly.