The Nikon D3000 is a entry level DSLR and the kit-lenses you get with it are not the best lenses in the world – but with the new lens correction introduced in Photoshop CS5, Camera Raw 6.1 and in the forthcomming Lightroom 3 will help you get better pictures even if you are just entering in the semi-pro digital photography.
Since Adobe and no other user has yet supplied Lens Profiles for this “cheap” lenses I’ve made them on a rainy sunday. So just download them and put them in the according folders to enjoy them.
To install them place them in one of the following folders.
a. For Windows XP:
C:\Documents and Settings\(User Name)\Application Data\Adobe\CameraRaw\LensProfiles\1.0
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\CameraRaw\LensProfiles\1.0
b. For Windows Vista or Windows 7:
C:\Users\(User Name)\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\CameraRaw\LensProfiles\1.0
C:\ProgramData\Adobe\CameraRaw\LensProfiles\1.0
c. For Mac:
/Users/(User Name)/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CameraRaw/LensProfiles/1.0
This is not a rumor, but an idea. With the launch of the iPad and the other e-book readers launched on the market there is a new opportunity for content creators and advertisers to force the reader to view advertising.
Advertising in printed magazine
We all learned that advertising in print magazine has to be eye catching because we have 2 seconds of eye contact on average. If you cannot catch the eye of the reader you have lost the opportunity to deliver the message. The reader has also learned (just like on websites) to recognize advertising and ignore them.
The e-book magazine
There are several ways to deliver a magazine on the new e-book readers and iPads. You can have a PDF, a e-pub version and the most common way will be an App. Since the App comes from the publisher they can force you to view advertising in various ways:
Embed the advertising in the layout
Just like print magazines – not so effective
Show advertising every time you start read in the App
Like most video advertising for video content on the internet
Interrupt your reading experience with commercial breaks
Like on TV, every 20 Minutes you are interrupted and you have to watch an ad for a certain amount of time
This advertising possibilities are an revenue channel for the publishers and even when they will not start right away with them you will see them further down the road. I can immagine that it will go the same evolution as cable companies went through.
So what do you think, will the advertising have a bad impact on your reading experience?
Next up in the series of font alternatives for popular fonts is Thesis – or better known as TheSans, TheSerif, TheMix, TheSans Mono. I’ve found 7 interesting alternatives – from huge and expensive to very big and resonable priced. …click here to continue…
I’ve looked around the web for the correct size of the wallpaper and a way to control what content is visible on a specific home screen. In fact the wallpaper is not scrolled 480 pixels when you change homescreen. After various experiments I’ve come up with a photoshop file where the guides are ready for you to design your own wallpaper for your nexus one. It’s for for you to download. Enjoy.
BTW: After I’ve done all the experimenting I’ve seen that simple math would have resolved it earlier. The whole wallpaper is 960 pixels wide and dividing it by 8 it gives you 120 pixel. This is the exact amount the Nexus One slides the background when you change homescreen.
I just wanted to share the settings I use to convert video for the Nexus One with Handbrake (the freeware video converter). The Nexus One has a wonderful screen and it would be a shame to not use it for video podcasts. But some podcasts (the Nasa Edge for example) encode their 720p video in a way the Google phone does not recognize.
I included the screenshots of the important settings and if you want to set them in a quick way just select the ipod classic preset und change the settings to 800 pixel width, Anamorphic none and the Avg Bitrate to 1500 kbps and the Audio to 2 channel AAC and you are done. Enjoy.
Google launched a couple of weeks ago a new version of it’s image management software Picasa. You already read about the new version everywhere – Facial recognition. This feature was formely only available on the web albums. Now I think that many of you already tried out the new version and this amazing feature and you might think that it’s a nice feature for private users, but not for the corporate use. Actually there are a few interesting uses after you did the preparational steps – Use the facial recognition to tag the images of your co-workers, employes, clients, … – first assign the right names and when you are done, you can add iptc-keywords according to the person shown:
Use this tagged pictures and upload them to your DAM (digital asset management) – finding a picture of your boss have never been easier.
Now it’s easy to tag photos people you don’t know. Trainees can go through your library as humans are quite goog in recognizing faces
If an employe hast left the firm you can easily group the fotos containing him an block them so that they are no longer used (works great for ex girlfriends too).
Easy celebration cards. Many firms celebrate their emplyees if they stay for many years. Why not make personalized greetings cards where you show the evolution of a person through his pictures.
These are just a few examples from my own daily work – but you can come up with more, don’t you?
Sometimes the biggest time savers are in front of your eyes the whole time but you can’t see them. Mostly because this great features are so part of the system that nobody actually talks about them anymore.
One of this hidden features is the incorporated calculator in Adobe Creative Suite. It’s not documented that every value field can actually do some basic calculations and transformations. So if you want to expand a rectangle by 5 pt you just select the rectangle, add a “+ 5 pt” in the width field in your toolbar and hit Enter. You can even use different units to do the calculations – cool isn’t it.
The operations you can do is addition, subtraction, multiply and divide. But remember you can make only one operation at a time. Another cool way to use this feature is for font sizes. If you know are doing a poster for example and you know that you need the font to be 5 cm in height you can enter it right away, no need to transform centimeters in points.
There is much talking about the Facebook usernames but none about the Feedburner feed dresses. You could get nice feed dresses in Feedburner right from the start and you might think there is nothing new to know about them. You’re right, nothing new but some time ago I found some trick to get the feed address you like even when it’s already taken.
There is a undocumented feature when you choose your Feedburner feed address – the address supports the forward dash “/”. This means, that you can have a Feedburner Feed with this address http://feeds.feedburner.com/frankie/blog/allitems and the best part about this URL is, that the feed address http://feeds.feedburner.com/frankie was already taken by someone else.
You can use this feature to make your feeds (say for your category or comment feeds) or to get nice looking feed URLs relevant to your business and to reinforce your brand.
BTW: I always suggest that if you are using Feedburner you should also use the MyBrand feature which let’s you use your domain name instead of feedburner.com. It’s wise to let your visitors subscribe to the RSS Feed with your domain in the URL because if for some reason in the feature you want to drop Feedburner or Feedburner closes down you will not lose your subscribers.
I’ve moved my email accounts to Google Appz a few weeks ago and I’m quite glad with it. The search is great and I looked for a way to search my Inbox directly from the Firefox search box without another addon. After looking around I’ve found a way through the Opensearch capability of firefox. Since it’s handy I wanted to share it with you even when it’s not strictly design related .
Just make a text document with the the extension .xml in the Program Files/Mozilla Firefox/searchplugins directory (on Windows) /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS?/Search/Plugins/ for Mac, cut and paste the following lines of code and replace the highlighted parts (Shortname, Description, yourdomain.com) with your details.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/">
<ShortName>My Gmail</ShortName>
<Description>My Emails on Google Appz</Description>
<Url type="text/html" template="https://mail.google.com/a/yourdomain.com/#search/{searchTerms}"/>
</OpenSearchDescription>
After saving the file (eg. mygmail.xml) restart Firefox and you will see the new search engine in the drop down box.
Everyone of you uses email, but did anyone of you learn how to write emails? In the old days of the ground mail there we learned how to write a business letter. There are books on how to write business letters with templates for any occasion. Writing a business letter is time consuming and the time it takes to get to the recipient seems endless nowadays. So the email took over. Faster to write, faster to send, faster to receive a response. What get lost? Not only the form. I cannot actually know how my email is displayed and and on what device. But the worst is, that many times we cripple the message because we are such in a hurry when writing the email.
I write every email like I would write an ad. I’m no copywriter, but I do fine enough. And I try to structure it, especially if I write to a person for the first time, following this advertising rules:
Who I am (for first contact)
Reason Why
Unique selling proposition
Call to action
Who I am
Introduce yourself in one sentence – if I get an email from an unknown person I want first of all know who he is.
Reason Why
Right after the introduction tell the people why you are writing them. Studies show that if you give a reason why your are asking for something people will be more likely to comply. You must give a reason why they should continue reading and make them know that it matters to them. How many times I get calls where a graphic designer asks me to send him a logo in a printable format. The first thing I ask is: “What do you need it for?”
Unique selling proposition
This is maybe the trickiest part, because you have to think always in a way that you are selling something – even if you ask them to do something for you. In fact if you ask them to do something for you (send you something, give you a backlink) you are actually selling them this favour they will do to you. You must therefore find a benefit for them and possibly one that doesn’t sound bland. Or it can be a straight “if you do this x for me, I can do this y for you”. Don’t try to sell “x” and pay “x” back (say backlink for backlink) – it doesn’t work. Your a genius if you can write this part in a way that the receiver thinks he profits from doing what you ask him to do.
Call to action
I sometimes wonder how many times I get emails where after reading them I think: “Ok, and what should I do next?” No, really. Check if your email has a call to action in the end where you distinctively tell the reader what you expect him to do. This applies also to “informative” emails, where you just want to inform someone about a specific topic – include in the end a phrase like “Please keep this email in your records for further reference” or “You can delete this message after reading”. Very popular call to action phrases for emails, where the request is actually clear from the central part or where you respond to a request “If you have any further questions, feel free to contact me.”
And now an example
A classic example – you are making a brochure for an event and your client gives you a list of sponsors. You have to include all the logos of the sponsors and you have none. The agreement between your client and the sponsors are usually made at management level and therefore the marketing department doesn’t know anything about it. Not all firms have printable logos at hand so the email must include the right information about what you need and that they might better forward the request to their graphic designer or advertising agency.
Dear Sirs,
my name is Frank Neulichedl and I write you on behalf of
Mr. Smith from ThisIsAfirm ltd. I am currently designing
the brochure for the annual spring concert in Holland Park
and I've been told that your firm is one of the sponsors.
I would therefore include your logo in the brochure and would
ask you to send me a high resolution digital version of the
logo suitable for print in order to display your commitment
in the best way.
Suitable file formats are Adobe Illustrator (.eps, .ai)
or high resolution images .jpg .tif (File size larger
than 500 KBytes).
If you do not have a suitable format at hand please forward
this request to your graphic designer or advertising agency.
Feel free to contact me for any further questions.
Yours faithfully
Frank Neulichedl
...
For further reference on this subject I’ve found a nice resource here:
Better writing – tips, useful phrases and sample letters
What is the job of an art director anyway. How is it like? And how to learn to do the things the right way in real life. I will present you here some insights and some tutorials about becomming an art director, not just a graphic designer. Tips & Tricks you won't learn in any school and normally you will have to figure them out yourself. So go ahead and start your lessons.
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One of this hidden features is the incorporated calculator in Adobe Creative Suite. It’s not documented that every value field can actually do some basic calculations and transformations. So if you want to expand a rectangle by 5 pt you just select the rectangle, add a “+ 5 pt” in the width field in your toolbar and hit Enter. You can even use different units to do the calculations – cool isn’t it.
The operations you can do is addition, subtraction, multiply and divide. But remember you can make only one operation at a time. 
Another cool way to use this feature is for 
.
