Changing Colours in Photoshop

Replace Color tool. To see this tool at work, select Image -> Adjustments -> Replace Color. Apply it to a duplicate of the background layer.

Read more: http://digital-photography-school.com/changing-color-in-photoshop

Another Method:
Hidden under the default Brush tool is the Colour Replacement Brush.

Fiddling with this brush will allow finer control to replace a colour under the crosshair but within the circle.

Read more about the Colour Replacement Tool here: http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-editing/color-replacement-tool/

Inspect CSS Elements in Safari

I enabled the following “Advanced” Safari CSS Inspect Element trick so long ago, I forgot I had done it. Of course on my own machines, I enabled this once, and haven’t had to since. In the school MacLab though, students wanting to edit/inspect CSS will need to re-enable the Safari Develop menu each time they log in. C’est la vie.

After enabling the Develop menu, a right-click on any element of a web page should cause the Inspect Element contextual menu to appear.

There you go, infinite design possibility enabled.

Make a Mouse-over Button in Flash CS4

Need a button to switch frames or scenes?

  1. Open Flash CS4
  2. Draw a shape and select it. Next, right click on the object and name it My_btn. Make sure that it is a button symbol type.
  3. Click on your new symbol. Then in the properties panel, click where it says “< Instance Name >” and type My_btn.
  4. Go to the Library Panel and double-click on My_btn. This should open up a new window where you can edit your button. Notice that the timeline has changed now. Now, the timeline says “Up” “Over” “Down” “Hit”. This is where you edit how the button reacts to the mouse.
  5. Leave the “Up” event the same and copy the “Up” event frame and paste the frame in the “Over”, “Down”, and “Hit” spots. Now, go to the “Over” event and change the color of your button to anything that looks good to you.
  6. Choose Edit>Edit Document to return to the document
  7. Test the button by choosing Control>Test Movie It should be when you roll over the button with your mouse that it changes color and when you click on the button, it changes to your “Hit” color.

Now its time to make a button that is clickable:

  1. Now it is time for the code part. This code will make the button change positions in the timeline.
  2. Go to frame one and press F9(right click the keyframe->Actions or Window->Actions) to open the actions panel and put the following code:

    stop();
    import flash.events.MouseEvent;
    My_btn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, CursorClick);
    function CursorClick(event:MouseEvent):void{
    gotoAndStop("2");
    }
  3. Create a new keyframe and draw something on frame two.
  4. Test your video and have fun!

Tips if you have errors:
1. note the symbol name “My_btn” in the library, properties instance, and where it appears in the script
2. note the frame # in the lines with a gotoAndStop command
3. be comfortable switching from editing a document and editing a symbol – note the differences in the timeline

Challenge:
Add a similar button to frame 2 that will return you to frame 1.

Try the following script in place of the one above and notice the differences in its behaviour:

stop();
import flash.events.MouseEvent;
My_btn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, CursorClick);
My_btn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_OUT, CursorOff);
function CursorClick(event:MouseEvent):void{
gotoAndStop("2");
}
function CursorOff(event:MouseEvent):void{
gotoAndStop(1);
}

Example button navigation between frames in the same scene:
My_Story.fla
My_Story
[swf]https://comtech.snowotherway.org/files/2011/10/My_Story.swf, 400, 300[/swf]

Example button navigation between scenes:
control-movie-clip-3.fla
control-movie-clip-3
[swf]https://comtech.snowotherway.org/files/2011/10/control-movie-clip-3.swf, 400, 300[/swf]

Example button to start/stop an animated soccer ball:
enter-frame-3.fla
enter-frame-3
[swf]https://comtech.snowotherway.org/files/2011/10/enter-frame-3.swf, 400, 300[/swf]

Looking for help to embed swf objects in your blog? Look for and activate the WP-SWFObject plugin.

Combine 2 Images PhotoShop Tutorial Vid

[youtube video=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UWUB7QfeW8]

An in-depth, beginner Adobe Photoshop CS4 tutorial covering how to blend two images with faces into one image. The example takes the eyes and smiles from one image and merges them into a second image. Tools used: layers, layer mask, brush, move, align layers.

Example Photography Assignments

Inspiration needed? Try these assignments . . .
from Digital Photography School
from About.com
from photoassignments.net
from Goshen College
from Eisenhower Middle School
from Masters of Photography
from The Photo Forum
from The World of Eliot Porter
from The Digital Story
from Corporate Photography
from Bethel High School

Mac Lab Equipped, Software Installed, Resources Readied

Installed hardware:
25 new iMacs, Promethean Board and projector, MacPro server, MacBook Pro, 5 Canon Rebel XSI with Sigma 200 lenses, 5 Canon FS10 digital video cameras, tripods, monopods, Pelican cases, SD readers, and an m-audio keyboard.

Installed Software:
Adobe Master Suite CS3(CS4 arrives n November, 2008): InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat Pro, Flash Professional, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Contribute, After Effects, Adobe Premiere Pro, Soundbooth etc.

Apple: iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand, Quicktime, iTunes, iPhoto, PhotoBooth etc.

Microsoft Office: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.

Online Services:
STJ Google Docs
STJ iBlogs built from Wordpres Multi-User
STJ Forums built from PunBB
STJ Gallery built from Menalto’s Gallery2
Adobe lesson plans
Student ePortfolios in Acrobat PDFs
Exemplars by Adobe Students

Next? I’ll be meeting with students, individually and small groups to set up Introductory level Student Learning Guides for at least three of the following courses:

Students will be keeping a “Learning (b)Log” to chronicle new learning in ComTech. The blog will also be evaluated for credit towards Information Highway 2 INF2200. Students must have at least one credit in Keyboarding (minimum goal of 30 WPM) before attempting the remaining courses.

Comtech Computers are almost here

I’m excited. “Mac-cited”. In July my proposal for ComTech lab equipment was approved and purchases began, finally, for this project. I’ve been tracking orders from UPS, Purolator, FedEx like a kid listening to the radio for reports from the armed forces about Santa’s arrival on Christmas eve. I’ve been to the office to look at every parcel dropped off at the school for the last week only to trudge back to the lab empty handed. When I arrive home, without a word spoken, my wife knows why.

My data projector and ceiling mount arrived today, but it’ll be a while before they are installed.

I’m most excited about the MacPro Server, it seems an eternity since I’ve managed any significant server (since AppleShare 4->6 on a Mac II->G3 circa 2001 was replaced by Redhat 8 – managed by central office ITs). The server’s primary function will be file sharing with the 25 iMacs and accounts for students I teach in the Comtech courses. I’ll be using it to chew through digital video and images, group projects, collaborations multi-user documents with Adobe Master suite, – should be suhweet gazing into the Apple cinema, too. Oh, and a 66 key M-Audio keyboard with Bose Companion 3 speakers – kids on break in their vehicles will come a’knocking on my door to turn it down.

Some specs:

1 MacPro Server: 
Two 3.2GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeo
4GB (4x1GB) RAM
ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB
4x1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb
One 16x SuperDrive
MAC OS X SERVER (UNLIMITED)

1  APPLE CIN HD DISPLAY 23″ FLAT PANEL

25 iMacs:
2.4GHZ INTEL CORE 2 DUO
2GB 800MHZ DDR2 SDRAM – 2x1GB
250GB SERIAL ATA DRIVE

BOSE Companion 3 speakers

I’ll use my new MacBook Pro to present project ideas, tutorials, instruction. I can manage from home/road the school’s web domains and especially iblogs via WPMU(as more of a CMS, really) which sports a blog for every student I teach. I have a 2007 Macbook(personal), but the Macbook Pro should demonstrate anything Adobe Master can do with speed.

The SLR and Video cameras from Canon should be here from Long’s, I phoned Jason on his first day back from holidays… what a kid I am.

Today I made a pile of old Blueberry iMacs, Indigo iMacs and iMac SEs, to redistribute/sell/trash. The Rev C 266 iMac(9 years old) has been running OS X on 256MB RAM on a partitioned drive for several years – a marvel. I’ll find a reason to keep it. Maybe I can scavenge an SE to take home for my kids.(3, 5, and 8 year-old boys still love Webkinz. They still play DVDs, too.)

Managing a iMac lab for the last 10 years has had it’s ups and downs, but the best source for support has always been the software/manuals from Mike Bombich. Panther(10.3) worked effortlessly, and even if a machine borked once in a while, cloning a new working drive with every piece of lab software intact and active, took  a couple clicks, 3 lines in Terminal, and the patience to wait for the disk to copy. I could swap out drives from a troubled iMac with ease and even had a collection of old pre-cloned drives ready to go in the event of a drive failure, but that was rare. One lost its monitor pmu, one was fried by lightening induced power surge, one had the prongs of the ethernet port vandalized. 7 eMacs just came back from a warranty repair for the bizarre “bulging caps” plague (I was successful talking to Apple’s repair service for laptops near Boca Raton about their “out of warranty period warranty extension”).

Over the last few years our school networking(Cat6, fiber, switches, wirless) has become increasingly stable so I will deploy using Netrestore. Given that each iMac has 250GB, copying bootable disk images(even if by trial and error at first) should be a snap. Space was never a luxury on the 6-20 GB iMacs these behemoths are replacing.

What is “back to school” look like for me? Checking my iblog logs, email via MobileMe, uploading iPhoto pics to the school Galley2, managing the online store, and marking – oh the marking – on my new MacBook pro, with some Johny Winter in iTunes.

My wife, can start using the home iMac more than I do. She accepted my “friend request” in Facebook today. I’ve been in Facebook for 2 years, but I’ve logged in less than 10 times in that span. How do I gracefully reject 12 other friends’ invites to play Bingo that are 10-20 weeks old? I finally put the summer photos from Kodak EasyShare into iPhoto. Maybe she can push them to her Facebook page as I seem not to find the time or the interest to do so.

I’m listening to “Winter Kills” by Yaz now, major flashbacks. Time to go. UPS says the 25 iMacs are in transit from Calgary on time to arrive tomorrow. I’m gonna find a movie to watch, maybe Vantage Point is still on the PVR.

But the VP has a new iPhone. Wonder if he can get a GPS fix on the FedEx van at the staff meeting tomorrow? Out.