Dr. Snow Leopard or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Upgrade

Snow Leopard

Raise your hand if you were excited about Snow Leopard coming out last Friday? I admit, I was intrigued, and went ahead and picked up a copy at my local Apple Store. But before I even got to open the package, I started reading reports that people had problems with older applications not being compatible, and even newer applications needing updates and patches just to be compatible. A personal computer having problems isn’t that big a deal. Maybe you’re inconvenienced because you can’t sync the latest songs to your iPhone, or can’t use Tweetdeck or who know’s what else.

But what if this is your work computer? What if your entire business depends on this computer? What if Snow Leopard creates incompatibilities that wouldn’t just inconvenience you, it would prevent you from working? Think I’m kidding? Adobe CS3 application users have already expressed concerns, and you would think CS4 users are safer. Maybe not.

If only there was a way to test out Snow Leopard on your system, without jeopardizing your current setup. Well, there is, and it’s not very complicated. So if you’re an expert level user, I won’t be sharing anything too mind blowing. However, for the novice to intermediate user, this may just make your day. Read on for more. [Read more →]

Morning Shizzy: Curves Flash Presentation

curvesSo I got up early, and decided to put together a Flash presentation on curves. To be honest, it’s one of those things that I always sorta understood, but explaining it can be very difficult. I should have tried something easier, like dunking a basketball (I’m 5’5) or finding a cure for some disease.

But it’s there. And in order to explain it, I used Lightroom. Yes, I used Lightroom to explain Photoshop curves. It makes sense if you watch the presentation. I also had to make this more like a video, with full motion captures in order to show the effect of curves on an image.

So, continue on to read about the making of the curves presentation, as well as the link to the presentation. [Read more →]

Web Photo Galleries (Video)

Processing your images is only half the battle. Once your done with the images, you need to get them in front of people. Whether it’s a client who wants proofs, an editor who wants to see your work, or just your mom wanting to see pictures of the kids, there’s a lot of good reasons to put up a web gallery.

To me a gallery is a vehicle for your images. If the images are good, and the pages are easily navigable, you don’t need to bling it out to make it work. So in this video, we create a web gallery in a matter of minutes. It’s so easy, even I was surprised at how quickly I finished the video. Click through to check it out!

adobe photoshop web gallery

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PShizzy B/W Tutorial

This is an oldie but a goodie. It requires no plugins, just Photoshop and Adobe Camera Raw. I’ve edited it to work better in the form of a blog. For now it will be a simple how to in the post, but if it’s popular, I may make a video of it. Here it is:

I’ve received quite a few comments on my black and white conversion, and I finally decided it would be best to post my own personal workflow on the process. My method by no means tries to be scientific nor accurate, only pleasing to my own eyes. I did not invent anything here, I picked up some info from various books and over time, found the following method to give me the most pleasing results. Hopefully you will find some use in the following. [Read more →]

Action Jackson

So in my first video on actions, I walked us through the creation of a simple b/w action. We even tested it and it ran perfectly on the next file we opened. But if anyone actually created an action like the one in the video, you would know that it wouldn’t work on folders. So how do we get it to run on a batch folder?

batch actions on folders in photoshop

By reading the rest of this post! [Read more →]

Lights, Camera, ACTIONS! The Video

actions in photoshop

Lawrence Lightner recently offered me eternal gratitude for a walk through on actions. So I made a flash video. I figure he now owes me his eternal soul. The rest of you have no such burden. Well, not really. . .

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