You can bypass the Open and New document dialogs in Word using shortcut keystrokes. To start a new blank document from inside the document you are working on now, press Ctrl + N. To open a document that already exists to reference or edit it press Ctrl + O and browse to locate and select the document to open and click Open.
Labels: how to, Microsoft Office, new window, tip, trevor office, trevor payne, Word
Categories:office, trevor tip
Lightroom has a range of HTML Templates you can use to create a reasonable looking gallery in a very short time.
To make your web gallery in Lightroom start by placing your images in a Collection. This makes it easier for you to work with the images and you can save the gallery so you can edit it in future if needed.
Select your Collection and switch to the Web module. From the Layout Style options, you can select Lightroom HTML gallery or, easier still, from the Template Browser panel on the left of the screen, select a gallery that is HTML based. If you look in the preview area the HTML gallery templates all have the letters HTML in their bottom left corner. Select a template to use.
From the toolbar (press T if it isn’t visible), choose All Filmstrip Photos if you have a Collection selected and this will add all the images to your gallery. What you see on the screen in the editing area is a live version of your web gallery. You can click on any image to view it as it will look on the web.
Open the Site Info panel and type a Site Title, a Collection Title and a Collection Description. If you don’t want to use all of these simply delete the placeholder text for those items you don’t want to use and the space they take up in the template will be freed for use for your images.
For the Contact Info, type your contact name if desired and then complete the Web Or Mail Link and this will be linked automatically to the contact name in the web gallery.
You can add an identity plate to the gallery, if desired, it will sit above the Site Title. You can link it back to your site if desired by completing the Web or Mail Link box.
The Color Palette options let you change the colors for the various elements in the website template.
In the Appearance panel you can set the thumbnail image grid size – it defaults to 3 x 3 and cannot be any smaller but it can be considerably larger. If you want to show cell numbers over the images you can do so – this is useful when you need to give viewers an easy way to identify images they like. Images are numbered sequentially and if you have multiple pages the images on the second page continue sequentially from the numbering from the first page.
You can control the size of the full size image on the Image Page by adjusting the Size slider. You can also add Photo Borders to the images in the Image Pages. Note that the Appearance panel is divided into Common Settings, Grid Pages and Image Pages allowing you to make change that effect the entire gallery, only the grid pages or only the image pages.
In the Image Info panel you can select to add labels to your images. These appear on the Image Page only. You can select a Title which appears above the image and a Caption which appears below the image. For each you can source the text from the image metadata and there is no reason why you can’t set the Title to be the Caption metadata and the Caption to be your Equipment metadata, for example.
In Output Settings select the quality of the larger size JPG images – 0 is low quality and 100 is high quality. If you want to include Metadata with the image select what to include – your choices are Copyright Only or All.
Also add a Watermark if desired. If you select to add a watermark, you’ll see it on the image page and the index pages so you can check to see that it’s what you want.
Select whether or not to sharpen the images – this sharpening is only applied as the images are output so you won’t see it on the screen. If you’re unsure what to use, enable Sharpening and set it to Standard.
When you’re done, click Create Saved Web Gallery – this is a new option in Lightroom 4 and it appears to the top right of the main editing area. Type a name for your web gallery and click Create. Doing this ensures that the gallery is saved and once you have done this, Lightroom will track your changes from now on.
In future you can come back to the web gallery by clicking the special collection that Lightroom creates for you.
If you want to upload your gallery to the web later on, click Export to export it to disk. Otherwise you can upload it direct to your website by selecting the Upload Settings panel and configure your FTP server. For this, you’ll need your server details, user name and password. You’ll also need the server path although you can click Browse to browse your server to find it if desired. Type a subfolder in which to place the gallery – you’ll need to do this if you plan to have multiple galleries in the server folder you are using. Each gallery needs to be placed in a different subfolder or it will overwrite the previously uploaded gallery.
When you have everything configured click Upload to render the gallery images, create the necessary html code and upload it all automatically to your server.
The HTML galleries in Lightroom aren’t the best looking galleries in town but having a gallery accessible to almost any device is definitely and incentive to use them in place of Flash galleries.
Labels: .html, appearance, collection, flash, gallery, identity plate, Lightroom, size, template, Web, without
Categories:photoshop
These handy tips will help you tame any light condition to capture great photos:
In the early morning and late evening the light can be quite spectacular and you can capture not only sunrises and sunsets but also interesting coloured lighting effects on trees, buildings and your subject’s face.
When the sun is down low look for opportunities to photograph into the sun and capture objects between you and the sun in silhouette. Look for subjects that have interesting shapes and where the skies behind them are well lit and colourful.
Look for light sources that are more interesting and varied than your flash. Place the subject close to a window to capture natural light or use reflected light, a skylight or even a lamp. Lighting a subject from the side is often more interesting than using the flash straight on.
In the intense sun of midday look for interesting shadows and plays of light and dark on buildings and other surfaces. Although the harsh sun of midday is the worst time to photograph it doesn’t mean you can’t get great shots.
Invest in a quality Polarizing filter for your camera. This filter cuts the glare and reflections when shooting in bright sun and at the beach or in the snow. It gives you bright blue skies and crisper more saturated colours.
Labels: lighting, Photography, polarize, shadows., silhouettes, sky, time, tips
Categories:photography
Original photo by: Falk Schaaf
Need an exact copy of a layer? Select the layer – click the layer in the Layer palette – not the thumbnail and press Ctrl + J on a PC and Command + J on a Mac. The new layer will appear above the original layer and will have “copy” added to the original layer name.
Labels: Adobe, duplicate layer, how to, layer, Photoshop, tip, trevor adobe, trevor payne
Categories:photoshop, trevor tip
Angle of your object not right? You can rotate it by selecting the object, hover just outside one of the bounding boxes corners. Your cursor will change to a curved double headed arrow and when it does you can rotate the object by clicking and dragging it until you get the perfect rotation..
Labels: Adobe, how to, Illustrator, Rotate, tip, trevor adobe, trevor payne
Categories:photoshop, trevor tip
Navigating the Ribbon in Microsoft Office applications using the mouse can be tedious. You can navigate the Ribbon using the keyboard by pressing Alt. This displays what Microsoft calls KeyTips which are letters and numbers overlaid over each available option. Press the letter or number that corresponds to the command to select.
Labels: how to, Ribbon microsoft office, tip, trevor office, trevor payne
Categories:office, trevor tip
From now to early January is a time for celebration and whether you celebrate Christmas, Kwaanza or Hanukkah, chances are that your house will be filled with fun and laughter and a decoration or two at least.
This fun time of the year is ripe for photographing opportunities and Christmas itself is one of the most popular topics for photography. I love to photograph this time of the year and there is lots to photograph – everything from the cards you receive to the tree, decorations, gifts and even carolers who serenade you with seasonal songs.
When photographing indoors, for best results, make sure you have plenty of light. I like to use light from not only the Christmas tree itself but also from lamp shades as they cast a very soft and yellow light that warms the image.
Where possible, use a tripod and the night setting on your camera. If you don’t have moving objects or kids to think about, then switch to night mode, turn the flash off and take a long exposure. The light will be softer and the image will have a quality you simply can’t capture with the flash.
If you’re using a flash, remember its effective distance is around 3 yards so make sure anything you want to light is in this range.
Labels: christmas, hanukkah, holiday, kwaanza, Photography, seasonal, tree
Categories:photography
Photoshop Levels offers is a simple way to fix dull, lifeless images. Learn how to apply a Levels Adjustment layer to an image, how to read the histogram chart and how to use it to fix your image in seconds.
Transcript:
Hello, I’m Helen Bradley. Welcome to this video tutorial. Today I’m going to show you a quick fix for a dull or muddy looking image. This is an image that lacks tonal range. It lacks contrast and we’re going to give it a punch and we’re going to do it quickly and easily. In this video tutorial I’m going to show you how you’re going to fix an image that looks a bit like this. This image is what I would call muddy. It actually lacks tonal contrast. There no blacks in this image. We’ve got some light pixels around the sky area but there are no blacks. And the result is that the image looks a bit foggy, a little muddy, a little lacking in tonal range, lacking in contrast and the color is a little bit flat as well. And this is the fix that we can apply to the image extremely quickly and Photoshop will actually tell us how to make the fix. It will tell us what’s wrong with the image and how to fix it. So let’s have a look and see how we’ll do this.
To start off with, with the image open in Photoshop I’m going to choose Window and then Layers because I want to see this layer’s palette. Now we’re going to choose an adjustment layer. It’s exactly the same as making an adjustment except this time it is editable, and we would like to get you started using adjustment layers because it gives you a little bit more power in Photoshop. So we’re going to choose Layer, New Adjustment Layer. And the one that we’re going to use is called levels. So let’s just click on Levels and see what we get. We get offered to add a new layer so I’ll click Ok to say yes. And then we get this dialogue here. Now this might look a little bit confusing but it’s actually Photoshop telling us what’s wrong with the image and giving us a chance to fix it. This is the pixels in the image. It’s a histogram. And what Photoshop has gone and done is it’s had a look at every single pixel in the image, how light or dark it is, and it’s counted up how many really dark ones it has and how many middle tone ones and how many light ones. And it’s done that for all the 255 tonal ranges in this image. So we got from 0 to 255. And it’s telling us how many pixels are in each of those ranges of tone. And this is black and this is white. So you see that we’ve got a few pixels very, very white and then a lot of pixels in that sort of light white area which is of course all around in the sky.
But see here, this is the problem in this image. There are no blacks. There’s nothing in this black area of the histogram. And so levels is not only telling us that but it’s also giving us a chance to fix it. So what we can do is we can drag on this slider here, the one under the chart. I want you to ignore these ones all the way at the bottom. It’s these under the chart that you’re interested in. And when you see the chart doesn’t make it all the way to either end of this histogram you’re just going to drag in until it does. And look what happens to the image as we do that. We’re just going to drag in to give ourselves some black pixels in the image, and then we can adjust this mid tone point as well. We’ll go to the right to darken the image or to the left to lighten the image. And you just need to choose for your image where the best point for that is. And we could come in a little bit here on the whites, perhaps. And certainly if the chart didn’t reach the edge then we would drag in on those whites. So you just need to read your chart and then just drag these little sliders into position. And when you’re done you can just close that dialog.
And there’s our fix. This is the before and this is the after. Photoshop showed us what was wrong with the image and gave us the chance of fixing it. Let’s have a look at another image that also has a similar problem.
This was captured in London on the London I through a fair bit of Perspex glass I should imagine. And also given that London tends towards being a little bit cloudy and gray I think that’s probably not helped this image either. So again, with the layer’s palette visible we’re going to add an adjustment layer, Layer, New Adjustment Layer, Levels, click Ok. Here’s our levels dialog, not unsurprising that we have no black pixels in this image. And in this image we have practically no white ones either. This one is a little bit different. So if we want to perk up the whites we can just bring in this slider here to lighten the whites and stop them being gray and make them white, things like the clock face here and some of the areas around here, this white building probably here. And now let’s drag in on the black slider to get some blacks and then we could adjust the mid tone if we wanted to darken the image or to lighten it and again, it’s to your taste. When you’re done, click the Close button. This is how the image started out and this is how it looks now. And that fix will take you 30 seconds.
Now the benefit of using adjustment layers, if I double click on this you’ll see that it opens up again. And if I think that I haven’t darkened it enough I can darken it up now and close it. So I’m not bound into this fix. I can remove it if I want to or I can double click it to adjust it and just improved it a little bit if I think I haven’t got it perfectly right.
I’m Helen Bradley. Thank you for joining me for this video tutorial. If you liked the video please click the Like button. Consider subscribing to my YouTube channel to be advised when new videos are released. And visit my website at projectwoman.com for more tips, tricks and tutorials on Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Lightroom and other applications.
Labels: adjustment layer, dark, dull, fix, image, level, levels tool, light, mid, muddy, photshop
Develop module and the Wheel
In the Lightroom Develop module you might have used the + and – keys to adjust sliders to fix your images. If you do this, whenever you pause to see how the change looks when applied to the image, Lightroom writes the change value in the history even if you’re not done. If you readjust the same slider a few times, each time you adjust it a new history entry is made.
By contrast, you can use the scroll wheel to adjust the slider. Begin by clicking on the pin on the slider and then rolling the scroll wheel up to drag it to the right or down to drag it to the left. Not until you let go and go to the next tool will the change be written to the History. This means that you can experiment with different values rolling your mouse wheel left and right as you please – and until you move away from that control nothing is recorded. Your history list will be a whole lot neater and you have a much easier way to adjust the sliders.
Spot removal and the wheel
When you have the Spot Removal Tool, Red Eye Tool or the Adjustment Brush Tool selected you can size the brush to the desired size using the mouse scroll wheel.
To see this at work click any of these three tools to target it and then hold your mouse over the image. Roll with the scroll wheel to adjust the brush size. If you have the Adjustment Brush targeted then hold the Shift key as you roll with the scroll wheel to adjust the feathering on the brush.
Move with the Wheel
If you’re have used the Zoom feature to zoom into the image then rolling the mouse scroll wheel will move the zoomed image up or down in the work area. To scroll to the left or right use the Shift key with the mouse wheel.
A caveat…
It seems that some Mac users have experienced difficulty with the scroll wheel on various machines so your mileage with this technique may vary. On a Windows 7 machine, with Lightroom 4 and a standard two button mouse with a scroll wheel, everything worked as explained and it’s a whole lot easier than dragging sliders around to make your changes.
Thanks to Frank Schophuizen for his gracious contribution to this post.
Labels: Develop Module, History, Lightroom, move, scroll wheel, slider, spot removal
Categories:photoshop
When you need to quickly translate one of your documents to another language, Google Docs can instantly create a new, translated copy in any of Google’s supported translate languages.
To do this, open your document, and click Tools > Translate document…. A dialogue will open up in which you select the language you want to translate to, as well as the name of the new translated document. Click “Translate” and a new tab will open with your translated document.
Keep in mind that, although it is improving constantly, Google’s translate feature will still only provide a rough translation. While understandable, it will be grammatically imperfect, and therefore it should not be used for official translations.
Labels: copy, document, google docs, translate
