Computer & Technology Videos
Adobe Photoshop CS3: Top 5 Standout New Features
Upon first digging into Adobe Photoshop CS3, a few features have really popped out at me as incredibly useful. I would like to offer a brief overview of some of these new ways of attacking your creative challenges using the latest version of Adobe’s flagship app. PsCS3 will run you about $649 to buy it outright if you do not own any previous versions. If you own Photoshop 7, CS, or CS2, you are eligible for upgrade pricing – looks like $199 for the upgrade. Check Adobe’s store on their website for more info. For more information about what comes in the different versions of CS3, and what your suite configuration options are, see my previous post.
My current favorite five new PsCS3 features in order are:
1. Nondestructive Smart Filters
2. Quick Selection Tool & Refine Edge
3. Photomerge with advanced alignment and blending
4. Automatic layer alignment and blending
5. Vanishing Point with adjustable angle
Feature Overviews:
* Nondestructive Smart Filters
Adobe has finally given us non-linear, nondestructive filters. Can I just say “HOORAY!” In the past, you applied filters and effects in a linear order: one filter would alter your image, and the second filter would alter your now altered image, and a third filter would alter the altered altered image. The problem with that workflow is that if you decide you want to slightly tweak the second filter, you’d have to either undo back to that point (losing your subsequent edits), or use the history palette to step directly “back in time” to the point before you added the second filter, add your “revised” second filter and then add your third manually. All too often, you don’t quite remember what exact parameters you had set on that third one – or worse, your real world project involved applying 20 filters instead of the 3 in my example and changing the second filter would mean redoing the 18 that follow it. What a drag. Because of this issue, people developed many work arounds (often involving saving off multiple “partially completed” versions of files all over your hard drive with iterative file names, hoping that if you needed to go back to a certain point in time you’d be able to figure out where you needed to be), and while these workarounds were clever and well-conceived in many cases, there was a perfect, real solution, waiting to happen.
The real solution to all this is what we have been given in CS3: Nondestructive Smart Filters. In this new version, each filter and effect that you apply to a layer, remains live and continually re-editable, in real time, and the parameters that you adjust will all cascade down through whatever subsequent filters or effects you might have added to your layer. These are savable, movable, copy and pastable, and most importantly scalable.
* Quick Selection tool & Refine Edge
A design mentor of mine once told me “Photoshop is all about the selection. You select something, and then you do something with the selection. Nothing more, nothing less. Remember that, and you’ll never go wrong using this app.” Almost 10 years later, I must say she was absolutely correct. Using Photoshop is all about “the selection.” There are more tools in Photoshop for selecting than for any other single task.
As in just about every version of Photoshop that has ever been released, CS3 has made even greater strides in the area of “making your selection” than comes to memory in recent years. The new Quick Selection Tool used in combination with the Refine Edge palette is about the most helpful and clean way of selecting the edges of an object in your image that I have ever seen. This new revised Quick Selection tool is so smooth. You basically set the parameters of your Quick Selection tool – as if it were a brush – and paint the general area of your image edges (like trying to select just a kid and his soccer ball out of the photo of the big game) and Photoshop is watching what you do, and interpreting what you consider to be the general edges of what you are wanting to select and it figures out what’s kid and ball and what’s grass and goal posts and sky and crowd and selects just what you want it to. It’s VERY fast and clean. Then, you can invoke the Refine Edge palette, and you have seemingly infinite control over exactly how the edges of that selection behave. Check out the palette to the right to get an idea of what you could do to “refine” that edge. With radius, feathering, smoothing, and various display settings, I believe this new combo will cut down on my masking and selecting time in a quantifiable way.
* Photomerge with advanced alignment and blending
Ever tried to stitch together a series of images that you took, that you intended to “put together” into a panorama? Even with some of the stand alone tools that have been available over the years—even those for doing quicktime VR’s—are clunky and difficult to use – with mixed results at times. I have always wanted something built into Photoshop to let me do these “photo merges” – I never expected that Photoshop would actually be able to automatically do it for me. This feature floored me. The technologies involved in my number four choice “Automatic layer alignment and blending” are at work here in this feature as well, and the new auto layer alignment features in CS3 are far-reaching and crop up again and again in different areas of the application. It’s really one of the revolutionary things about this new version.
All of the things that have made making panoramas a difficult task in the past are all done automatically. The primary among these being 1. those times when you have to actually distort, rotate, skew or transform one of your elements because the perspective is screwy, 2. those times when the sun or lighting or a window made the white balance, color space or over all wash of brightness and contrast different from one image to the next (especially when doing 360’s) and of course 3. actually finding and aligning those overlapping areas of consecutive elements. Photoshop CS3 does these all for you and with surprisingly amazing results. It’s not just about the typical “panorama” either… I saw a demo of someone standing “too close” to a building, and taking pictures zoomed all the way out, of the front door, windows and window-boxes, front brick walk way, tilting upward and taking a picture of the balcony and roof line of the second floor – in other words, many elements that were WAY out of whack in terms of perspective, lighting and color space, and these 4 or 5 images were distorted, tweaked, rotated, matched, blended, lighting and color density matched… and I was amazed in like 5 seconds, there was this “wide angle” almost “fisheye” photomerge of the front of the building, from brick walkway to roof-line, and it looked incredible.
* Automatic layer alignment and blending
Another powerful application of this new alignment and blending technology is with a series or stack of images of the same subject. Let’s say you wanted to take a picture of a statue in a park somewhere, or a huge fountain, or the front of a monument or building. There are always people walking through the frame – if you can’t close down the area and still need a picture of the statue, in the park, in it’s beautiful setting, but with no people or birds or random elements – what are you to do? In the past, it was a painstaking process of shooting a bunch of images, selecting the “closest” one to your vision of a nice, clean, tourist-less frame, and begin the hours and hours of painting, cloning, healing, brushing etc., to remove all of your “randoms.” There are artists who are very good at this process, but I’m fairly certain they would agree that if there was a way to not have to spend all that time, they’d take it. Well, it’s here. Photoshop CS3 can take your stack of images and by analyzing all of them, figure out which things are permanent (things that appear in all the images like that building in the distance, the big tree, the sidewalk, and which parts of the image are obscured in one of the frames but not all of them, are healed automatically by borrowing pixels from other images in the stack and building an advanced composite of all the images and doing 90% or more of the work for you. There’s even a set of “fuzziness” sliders letting you say “eleminate things that are in X% of the images in the stack or less.” This is so impressive to see in action. You have to try it on some of your own images. It’s really hard to believe that it’s this easy to do this sort of process now. This is one of those new areas that I’m sure we’ll see artists finding incredibly creative ways to utilize this feature. Again, this one floored me when I first saw it.
* Vanishing Point with adjustable angle
One of the most powerful new features of Adobe CS2 was the vanishing point feature. One limitation it had was that you only had one set of right angles to work with in the vanishing point interface. Adobe took it one exponential step further by adding multiple, adjustable angle perspective planes to this vanishing point feature. What this enables you to do is copy, paste and clone in far more complex image planes than just the “clone parts of a building in perspective” job that the first iteration of this feature offered (impressive and powerful, but not very flexible). One of the big examples Adobe is pushing with this feature is to simulate 3D packaging and work on multiple planes at various angles in the same image. Like an open box for a new product, or even for experimenting with your final package art by seeing it in its real-world context. Again I think this feature has so many far reaching implications for inventors, prototypers, 3D modelers, visual effects artists… and can give Photoshop artists the ability to render full blown mockups of product packaging art for clients in a whole new way – getting us to sign-off, green-light and on to the next project at hand much more quickly. I like that a lot.
There are numerous new features in the application, especially when you dig down deep into the Photoshop Extended editions (sounds like a Peter Jackson DVD…) and as the week progresses here, I’d like to look into some of what PsCS3 Extended has to offer. The versions of PsCS3 that are available are the Film & Video, Medical & Science, AEC (Architecture, Engineering & Construction), and Manufacturing editions.
Best Spyware Removal Tools
It’s important that you retain your PC or laptop shielded from the ever changing adware, spyware, scumware and malware that’s out there on the Internet. If these infect your pc then you’ll lose necessary documents or ruin your pc and programs. Fortunately there are some of the simplest adware spyware, scumware and malware remover options available for low purchase prices.
Usually it suggests that that someone sends you pretend or bogus emails with bad links in them. These links invite you to click on their bogus sites (i.e. not government sites at all, or not your money establishment) and submit some of your personal (confidential) information: maybe your complete name, social security range, checking account range etc.
Some folks tend to go away spyware unchecked and un-removed inside their system, thinking that nothing wants to be done regarding it. This is usually wrong because it will lead to far worse cases such as identity theft and theft of different important information. Spyware typically prices the user a heap of your time not only by slowing down the PC but also displaying many pop up advertisements that distract the user. Even, people tend to lay our a fortune of time looking for solutions to spyware problems online.
These identity thieves send thousands of fake emails every day. Treasury Department, reported receiving thousands of complaints concerning IRS-related phishing schemes. Most involve hoax emails telling recipients that they need a pending tax refund and are below investigation.
Initial point of protection is that if you receive suspicious email do not click on the provided links and underneath no circumstance provide personal and sensitive data in an exceedingly return email. Never ever click on the link as clicking on the link authorizes illegal downloads.
Do You Really Need to Get Spyware Remover Software Downloads? Some individuals wish to take a look at removing spyware on their PCs manually but usually don’t end up with very sensible results. Some even finish up deleting the wrong entries and damaging their pc permanently.
For more information visit http://no-anti-spyware.blogspot.com/
Backup My Hard Drive – The Most Cost-Effective System To Preserve Your Files
I need to backup my hard drive. What are each of my options which are practical for me?
Fortunately, I have multiple options at my disposal, depending upon my lifestyle, my computer usage habits, whether I work or I go to school, how much and what type of data storage requirements I need, whether I access my files frequently while on the go from multiple different systems, a single laptop, a PC at home, or a workstation at the office.
I can make use of a USB drive to back up my hard drive. It’s simple. It connects directly into your computer’s USB port and becomes a “removal data drive” where you can save your files onto. And you can carry it with you, wherever you go. It can fit on your keychain, in your pocket, fit inside your purse, your book bag, or your briefcase. These can store several dozen GB of data at once.
I can use an external hard disk to backup my drive. It connects using USB, just like a hard disk, but it’s bigger and more bulky, taking up more space. It could store several hundred gigabytes of data, however. it is not as easy to take along with you everywhere you go, nevertheless it can get the job done just as well.
I can backup my hard drive to recordable DVDs. You cannot house as much data on these as you can on USB drives, however it is a great way to create a permanent archive of your data for simplified storage. Look for these to become obsolete in the future, however.
I am able to do it online across the Internet, to a remote data backup management center. I basically need to install a simple backup client agent onto my system, and it takes care of the rest. It quietly works in the background, archiving up my files in real-time, 24×7, to the remote backup center. And whenever I have to restore my files, I can access it via a virtual network drive that is created in “My Computer”.
The other, more traditional solutions for to business backup solutions have limitations. They are a lot more expensive. You have to front the costs of purchasing backup media, paying for offsite backup media storage, transporting your backup media to a secure location. (If you keep your backups in your office, then you are are exposed to the risk of catastrophic loss of business continuity, if something were to physically happen to your primary place of business.) You have to hire people to accomplish the routine tasks associated with backing up your systems every night. You also need to pay the license fees for the backup software solution that you want to make use of.
So the long and short of it is that an effective backup solution can cost you thousands of dollars in terms of manpower, software licensing, hardware, and licensing fees. It makes much more sense to utilize an Internet-based business backup solution. Your costs are are virtually nothing in comparison, since all you need to pay is one yearly fee per machine. The software, the manpower, the media, the data transfer mechanism, are all taken care of for you in the background automatically using technology that reliably replicates your files to a secure backup server across the Internet. And the files are completely secure by virtue of the fact that it is encrypted. Even if someone else were to intercept your data, they would not be able to view it, because it is encrypted.
Are you taking the necessary steps in the event disaster strikes and you lose all of your data using techniques to backup my hard drive? The good news is, there is an easy solution: You can protect your data online on demand on autopilot with solutions to backup my hard drive.
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Laptops & Laptops Bags – Advice For Buyers
Laptop computers have come a long way in a short time. Despite only having been sold in high-street stores for a decade or two, they can now be found everywhere, and often outsell desktop computers. Their small size, portability and convenience being the basis of their success.
If you are a laptop owner, or you are thinking about purchasing one, then you might find the below facts and advice interesting reading…
- Alan Kay, a Xerox engineer, first came up with the concept of the laptop computer in 1968. However, it was not until 1973 that a prototype of a laptop was first built. In 1975, IBM opened up laptops to consumers with the IBM 1500 series. While these computers were not particularly small and lacked basic features by modern standards, they provided the basis from which the modern laptop evolved.
- Laptops these days have features that seemed like an impossibility when laptops were first manufactured. With such a wide range of good laptops on the market, those buying one have to carefully consider what exactly they will be using it for. Everything from the type of CPU to the size of the hard disk should be considered.
- For those using them for more basic tasks like web surfing and email, even the most basic of laptops will fulfill their needs. For those using them for multitasking and gaming, a mid to high range laptop will be needed.
- With their components being so small and tightly packed together, they cannot be easily upgraded and changed as desktop computers either. While companies like HP and Dell offer many customization options prior to you making a purchase, bear in mind that any changes will likely be difficult and expensive after you have received the laptop.
- While the first thing many people look at is the bags appearance, it has important functions that need to be considered. First and foremost is the protection the bag provides against drops and water. Other important functions to consider are ease of access and the number of compartments. People carry a lot of things nowadays. The bag needs to have enough easy-to-access compartments to carry all the gear needed.
- Those who need to keep their hands free usually opt for backpack laptop bags that keep the laptop secure in the bag while offering various compartments and other features depending on the bag. Those looking to save space and money tend to go for laptop sleeves, which are simple covers that may not have any pockets at all, but which protect the laptop from sudden jolts or the elements.
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If looking for information on laptop computers and laptop bags, see 15.4 Laptop Bag to find out about laptops, laptop cases and the history of laptops.
