category: digital photography and image editing
A quick way to mask almost anything with close to a solid color, say blue sky behind tree-covered hills, for an isolated adjustment, is to drop a color with Photoshops Blend If sliders.
He said on 06.29.05 @ 04:13 PM CST [entry continued] on printer friendly page
category: people, trends
Microsoft is allowing the Chinese government to censor blogs on its new Chinese-language web portal. Read the story.
I can understand how the prospect of the enormous Chinese market would make it easy for most businesses to turn a blind eye to unattractive government or business policies, but censoring blogs seems incredible. Much of the reason blogs came into being was to give public voices to individuals. I don't see the point of blogs if there is a long list of forbidden words, particularly important words such as democracy and rights.
She said on 06.20.05 @ 02:26 PM CST [entry page] is printer friendly
category: digital photography and image editing
Photoshop's Unsharp Mask (USM) filter creates the illusion of focus in an image by finding the contrasting edges and adding a dark halo on one side of each edge and a light halo on the other side. The width of these halos in controlled by the Radius slider, and the brightness of the halos by the Amount slider. Threshold adjusts the level of contrast required between pixels before an area is treated as an edge, and is intended to reduce sharpening grain or noise. Threshold isn't perfect and can create rough transitions between sharpened and unsharpened areas. This problem is discussed in (link) Alternative to an Edge Mask and in (link) Sharpening with an Edge Mask.
He said on 06.15.05 @ 04:23 PM CST [entry continued] on printer friendly page
category: writing
If you are writing for your business's web site, it's critical to connect with your readers. The higher level pages of your site should be directed at answering readers' questions. Your site should tell readers what they want to know. If site visitors can find the information they want quickly, your organization wins precious good will.
She said on 06.09.05 @ 01:05 PM CST [entry page] is printer friendly
category: digital photography and image editing
With digital cameras commonly producing 6 to 12 mega-pixel images, adjustment layers with their attendant layer masks are more important than ever. A single layer 6 mega-pixel image in native Photoshop format takes 14 MB of space on your hard drive or removable media. If you duplicate the background layer once to apply a blend mode, you double that size to 28 Mb. A 12 mega-pixel image requires 27 MB to store and 55 MB with a duped background layer. Don't even think about the RAM.
An adjustment layer, on the other hand, with an entire 6 mega-pixel image inverted and used as the layer mask takes only 6 MB of additional hard drive space. Further, an adjustment layer with current settings accepted and no mask uses only a few hundred K of space, and can be used with a blend mode just like a duplicate layer. It's just like Apply Image to darken, lighten, or boost color in a layer, but non-destructive and cheap on space. Adjustment Layers and their Layer Masks are here to stay.
With that said, let's get on to the quick reference.
He said on 06.06.05 @ 02:02 PM CST [entry continued] on printer friendly page
category: spamming, trends
There are ups and downs to using disposable email addresses. A large part of the decision about whether using disposable email addresses is worth the hassle depends on how you use email and the internet.
If you use email primarily to communicate with a fairly closed circle, friends and family, then they probably aren't worth the time. If you use your email address when shopping online or registering on lots of web sites, then they may be worth it.
It also depends on how much spam bothers you. I have one email address that I use to register for reading material online and posting in bulletin boards. The same email address is also an easy to harvest link on a blog. I just did the math, estimating how much time I spend daily handling spam, multiplying and dividing accordingly, and I estimate I spend between one and two hours a month dealing with spam. Yes, my time is valuable, but not so valuable that I am thoroughly upset by a couple of hours a month.
She said on 06.01.05 @ 01:27 PM CST [entry page] is printer friendly
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