When you’re photographing a person in front of a snow scene on a sunny day the lightness of the snow in the background of the shot will fool the camera’s automatic sensors into exposing incorrectly for the person who is standing in front of you. In a similar manner to taking photographs on the beach in the height of summer use the camera’s fill or force flash when shooting in these circumstances. The flash will light the person in the foreground and you’ll have both the person and their background nicely exposed.
Thursday, February 15th, 2007
Creating Access Lookups
You’re already used to using Lookup lists in many of the programs you use. You use a lookup or dropdown list to select from a series of entries that the programmer has provided for you to choose from. When you create a database in Access, you get to be the programmer and you can create your own lists.
So, whenever you have a list of options that can be used to fill a field in an Access database you can create a lookup field to manage it. Then, whenever data is entered into the table all the user has to do is to select an option from a dropdown list – this makes the dataentry process much faster and more accuate too. Here’s how to create one:
- Start by creating a table that contains the details you want to allow your user to select from. You will need two fields in the table – one for a unique ID and another for the data. For example, for a list of states, include an ID field and a list of the states. Save your table.
- Open the main data table that you want to access the states information from. In the field for the State details, from the data type list choose Lookup Wizard. When the dialog opens choose ‘I want the lookup column to look up the values in a table or query’ and click Next. Select the table containing the data – in this case it would be the States table you create in step 1.
- Click Next and, from the Available fields list choose the field containing the names of the states as you want them to appear in the dropdown list and move it to the Selected Fields list. Click Next. In the sort area choose the field containing the data and set it to be sorted Ascending.
- Click Next and adjust the column width to the desired amount. Click Next, type a field name and click Finish and save the results. When you next enter data into the table you will find that the field with the lookup has a dropdown list that displays the data so you can choose an item from it.
Labels: Access, database, field, lookup list
Categories:Uncategorized
Wednesday, February 14th, 2007
5 Hot ways to make grayscale images in Photoshop
There are lots of differnt ways to convert a photo into a grayscale image and each of them offers different benefits such as speed or the ability to customise the results.
Here are five great ways (and one cool extra tip) for making a grayscale image in Photoshop:
(Hot tip) Before you convert an image to black and white, adjust it to ensure there is a good tonal range in the image. Choose Image, Adjustments, Levels and make sure the markers are under the ends of the chart. Adjust the midtones slider (the middle one), until you have a good result. An image with good contrast and a pleasing tonal range will give better results in the steps that follow.
Grayscale – Version 1
The simplest method of converting to Grayscale is to choose Image, Mode, Grayscale. When you do this, you create a grayscale image and color cannot be added back into it unless you convert it back to a color mode. To do this, choose Image, Mode, RGB Color if you plan to do more work with the image. Convert to CMYK color mode only if you intend to send the image for commercial printing.
Grayscale – Version 2
A RGB color image is made up of three color channels Red, Green and Blue. These channels are grayscale images displaying the relative amount of that color in the image at any point. To see the channels, display the Channels palette and click on the channel to view, hiding the others. If you like the grayscale representation of a particular channel display it, hide the rest, and choose Image, Mode, Grayscale and you’ll be asked if you want to discard the remainder of the channels – this turns the current channel into the grayscale image. Answer Yes to do so. To work on the image again in color, choose Image, Mode, RGB Color.
Grayscale – Version 3
Another method of converting an image into grayscale image but which retains the RGB color mode is to choose Image, Adjustments, Hue/Saturation. If you select the Master channel and then drag the Saturation slider to the far left, you’ll remove the color from the image by desaturating it. However, because it is still RGB Color you can add color back without needing to alter the mode.
Grayscale – Version 4
The Channel mixer gives you the opportunity to tweak the final grayscale representation by using more or less of the colors from the image. Choose Image, Adjustments, Channel Mixer and click the Monochrome checkbox. Now adjust the Red, Green and Blue sliders until you get a result you like. Ideally, you should ensure that your percentages add up to 100% although this isn’t a hard and fast rule.
Grayscale – Version 5
One situation you may encounter is where you want to convert a single layer into grayscale but leave the other layers in the image in color. In this case, choose the layer to convert to black and white and choose Layer, New Adjustment Layer, Hue/Saturation and enable the Use previous layer to create clipping mask checkbox and click Ok. Move the Saturation slider to the far left and click Ok.
So, there you have it – more ways to convert an image to black and white than you ever thought possible?
Labels: black and white, channel mixer, channels, color modes, Hue/Saturation, Photoshop
Categories:Uncategorized
Tuesday, February 13th, 2007
Make room for graphics in Publisher
When you’re working on a Publisher document, chances are you may not have all the final images in hand. If you’re waiting on graphics, you can add a placeholder for each image to your Publisher file so you can allocate the space for the images and so everything else can be finalized in the meantime.
To do this, click Picture Frame and choose Empty Picture Frame then drag a frame into your document. Size it to the size required. Later, when the image comes in, you can add it to your placeholder by right clicking the placeholder and choose Change Picture, From File and locate the file to use.
Labels: image, Microsoft Publisher, picture frame, placeholder
Categories:Uncategorized
Monday, February 12th, 2007
Create a winning smile in GIMP
Shiny white teeth look great but, let’s face it, not all of us have the benefit of expensive orthodontics. Luckily, armed with some graphics software you can give yourself or your best friend a professional whitening job in seconds.
To whiten teeth, in GIMP, click your favourite selection tool and make a selection around the teeth. Take care to select all the tooth area but avoid including any of the gum line or lips. You may find the “Select contiguous regions tool” is the best to use. Set a feather by choosing Select, Feather and set a feather value of 1 or 2 if the image is large.
Choose Tools, Color Tools, Hue-Saturation and click the option button for the Yellows so you’ll adjust only the yellow coloring in the selected area. Reduce the intensity of the yellow by dragging the Saturation slider a little to the left. Check the Green and Red channels to see if altering their saturation has an effect and repeat as needed. Click on the Master button and drag the Lightness slider to the right to lighten the entire selection.
Labels: gimp, Hue/Saturation, selection tool, whiten teeth
Categories:Uncategorized
Sunday, February 11th, 2007
Create an Outlook sticky note
I love sticky notes but not stuck all over my computer monitor. My computer desktop, that’s another thing – Sticky notes there look so cute and they’re so useful because they’re right there where I can see them.
Outlook has a great sticky note feature. Simply type a quick reminder using an Outlook Note and you can ‘stick’ it on your desktop. Click the Notes icon in Outlook or choose File, New, Note and type the text for your note. Make the first line explanatory of the note’s contents as this becomes its name so it’s the first thing you see. When you’re done, click the Note’s Close button to finish.
Now drag and drop the Note onto your desktop – it will stay there and remain accessible even when Outlook isn’t open. To view the Note’s contents, simply double click it.
Labels: desktop, Outlook, Sticky note, windows
Categories:Uncategorized
Sunday, February 11th, 2007
Viewer for Publisher Files
I wish! You wish! We wish.. but no go..
We’d all love to see one of these but, unfortunately Microsoft hasn’t deigned to give us one. There are, however some options you can use. If you can ask the person who created the PUB file to open and save it in a different format you can then view that – for example it can be saved as a Tiff format file.
If you have a PUB file but no access to Publisher, try one of the free online PDF file conversion tools that can handle Publisher files. I like PDFOnline, it handles PUB files up to 2Mb in size and all you need to do is to browse to upload the file to their server, type a name for the PDF file they’ll send you in return and type your email address. In minutes you’ll have a PDF version that you can read using Adobe’s free Acrobat Reader software.
If you’re wanting to share your Publisher files with others who don’t own publisher then try a program like the free PDF converter PrimoPDF which installs as a printer driver allowing you to create your own PDFs as easily as printing from Publisher.
Perhaps best of all is your option to download and install the trial version of Microsoft Publisher 2007. It works for a limited time to allow you to open, read and edit Publisher documents. After the trial period is over, you can only open, view and print existing Publisher documents – pretty much what a viewer program would do in my book!
Labels: conversion, Microsoft Publisher, PDF, PUB, viewer
Categories:Uncategorized
Saturday, February 10th, 2007
My Photoshop Articles
In the past few month’s I’ve written some cool articles for InformIT on Photoshop, here are a few of them:
Misunderstood Photoshop: Blend If
Here I explore Blend If, a smart Photoshop blending tool that can be used to knock out an object from its background or to blend two images. The article also includes a video tutorial so you can easily follow along.
Misunderstood Photoshop: The History Brush
Photoshop’s History Brush is great for fixing those little “oops” moments when you’ve messed up an image, but it also lets you use previous states of the image to create new effects. Helen Bradley shows why the History Brush should be a valued member of your Photoshop toolkit in this article and video tutorial.
Create Art: Make Your Own Photo Background
If the background of your picture is getting more attention than the subjects in the foreground, try Helen Bradley’s Photoshop trick for making the background more attractive and a lot less distracting.
Enjoy!
Labels: InformIT, Photoshop articles
Categories:Uncategorized
Thursday, February 8th, 2007
Posting to an Outlook folder
Try this scenario: you’re working in Outlook and you want to add a note to your inbox – perhaps instead of emailing your work address someone emails your home email address and you want to keep your work emails up to date so you want to note the conversation in your inbox. Here’s how to do it, using a Post:
- Click the folder to post into so you have it open.
- Choose File, New, Post in this folder and type your note – in my scenario it would be details from the email but it could, conceivably, be anything.
- Click the Post button on the toolbar and the note will be saved into the folder – you’ll know it isn’t an email because it has a special icon but it behaves like one so you can open and view it.
I love Posts. They’re are a handy way of recording information in an email folder when it’s there that you’d expect to find it.
Labels: emails, folders, notes, Outlook, Post in this folder
Categories:Uncategorized