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 program we all know and love – Photoshop! Enjoy, and I’ll post back later this week with the series of home improvement projects I’ve been working on so much lately.
Author: Jason
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 should be forthcoming within another day or two as well. It’s been a week-long process, but I am almost done (just as well after all the electrical, plumbing, painting, and drywall work)… more news on that later. For now, just enjoy the vid, and as always feel free to leave feedback here or via email: jason <at> canonblogger <dot> com :
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 that should be forthcoming in 48 hours.
In Photo news, I was reading Scott Kelby’s blog the other day when he mentioned the website Pixel Perfect where Bert Monroy demonstrates various techniques using Photoshop. The production quality is professional and just goes to show how far I have to go to gain that kind of quality in delivery and recording. Such is the difference of an amateur tutorial versus an established and professional photo professional and Adobe evangelist. Perhaps some day…
Anyway, Bert Monroy did a fantastic tutorial on how to create a smoking gun entirely inside of Photoshop. Great technique and it’s a highly recommended 5 minutes toward learning PS techniqes. Check it out here.
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 and listeners, I was able to get another podcast out, which means there will likely be two this week (I may even get an extra “in the can” for next week”!) So…first up is a technique for creating reflections of objects or selections inside of Photoshop. Great for making web graphics, outputting to holiday greeting cards, and for presentations in many venues. Check it out at the link or the embedded version to the blog:
Visit here: Reflections in Photoshop
or watch below:
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 be functional within about an hour. (6:30 or thereabouts)…apologies for the technical mishap.
Flash Version is here
Windows Version is here
Or, stay on the blog and view the WMV file natively! Any way you like it…enjoy!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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 you know where to look. Props specifically go out to Marti Jeffers, Alistair, Wes, and Flo for contributing such great ideas and positive energies to the discussion! I would highly recommend joining this community as it is quite a remarkable collection of people that share sometimes similar and other times divergent views on a number of topics. The site is here
I would also like to specifically give a more formal reply to the article suggested by Marti, titled The Myth of Talent, by site contributor and instructor, Craig Tanner. Because it is a lengthy reply and more of a white paper on the subject of talent, I composed it as its own PDF file, and posted as it’s own page here on Canon Blogger. Feel free to read/download as you prefer here
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 leading into fall/autumn and Thanksgiving. So…another day delay on the podcast, but will definitely be out tomorrow. Until then…happy shooting!
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 – the subject: Photoshop selection methods. Should be a fun subject to explore and I’ll be showing three different techniques to use in concert with one another for obtaining the best selections you can.
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 over the first ten seconds, a new musical intro is also in place (yup, I’ve been busy…new vocals, new musicals, and new tutorials!) So, without further ado, here’s today’s tutorial:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download