Archive for March, 2010
Look at what you can do with CSS3
Posted in Web, on March 31st, 2010 by Carlos.
This image created over at Neography was actually generated in a web browser using @font-face and text-transform techniques that are available in CSS3. If you’re using a modern browser (i.e. not IE), than you can take a look at the page yourself. I wonder if we’ll one day code our posters rather than use software like InDesign to lay them out? [Neography via Smashing Magazine Tweet]
Can You Call in Sick When You Work from Home (and for yourself)?
Posted in Business, on March 31st, 2010 by Carlos.
How do you call in sick when you are your own boss? Are you actually able to hit the pause button and rest up as you should, or does the proximity of your working quarters beckon you do get just one more thing done before you rest a little more?
I decided to write this post as I feel the onset of a cold coming on… a few wrong moves at this point and the days ahead can be worse than they need to be. But even still, I’ve been doing work almost as per usual… replying to emails, laying out a brochure, etc. I’m by no means incapacitated, but I have to wonder that if I worked elsewhere would I be making the trip into work? I was always a strong believer that you shouldn’t go to work when you’re sick – mostly so you don’t spread it around to your peers. However, when your peers are two cats who are immune to your common (human) cold virus that excuse jumps out the window.
So why is it so difficult to take some time to rest and step back? Perhaps that entrepreneur gene is stronger than that cold virus? I do find it hard to not just waltz (or crawl) into my office to do some work and prevent from falling behind on my to-do list. Thinking back over the past 2 years of self-employment, I’m not sure if I ever didn’t just work one day because I was sick… sure there were days I did much less because I felt like my sinuses were going to explode, but to stop altogether… I don’t know. It seems like stubbornness prevails, though it shouldn’t. Sigh… back to work. 
For you work-from-homers – do you have similar experiences?
Testing Your Websites in IE Just a Got a Little Simpler with SuperPreview
Posted in Web, on March 30th, 2010 by Carlos.
Testing your website layouts in Internet Explorer 6 and 7 have always been and continue to be the bane of any web designers existence, especially if you as a Mac user. I personally run Windows through Parallels so that I can test for Internet Explorer. I actually had 3 versions of Windows installed at one point – one for IE 6, one for IE 7 and another for IE 8 – I wanted to be sure that I was getting as accurate of a representation of my site in the various browsers as possible. That didn’t last long, and I sought out other solutions which did get me down to running one installation of Windows 7 with IE 8 installed, accompanied by IETester that let me test against legacy IE versions. But even that wasn’t all that great, and IETester seemed to be buggy.
Microsoft has come to the rescue (can you call it a true rescue if they’re the ones that created the mess in the first place?) with Expression Web’s SuperPreview, now downloadable as a free version. Yes, it is still a Windows app, but it gives you side by side views of your site in different versions of IE and even identifies the different tags and elements on your page so you can do some easier debugging. It looks like if you actually by Expression Web from Microsoft you can also have the ability to compare with FireFox. I hope this makes IE testing slightly less painful. [Microsoft via IT Shala via Make Design]
Good Read on Self Branding
Posted in Business, on March 30th, 2010 by Carlos.
Here’s a good read from My Ink Blog on how self-employed folks need to think carefully about their own brands. It makes many interesting points regarding the separation between your true personality and the brand persona you may have created for yourself, and how that affects your communications over social media. I could relate quite well which is why I created a social media brand, Keys That Click, that is separate from my professional business persona. Same person – different audiences. Check it out. [My Ink Blog]
p.s. If you missed it, I posted an article on branding yourself a few months back.
Photos of the Offices of 6 Social Media Giants
Posted in Tech, on March 29th, 2010 by Carlos.
Jealousy factor… climbing. The Facebook office looks to be my fav based off these photos. [TechXav]
Snow Leopard-ier… Apple releases Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.3
Posted in Software, on March 29th, 2010 by Carlos.
For all you Mac users… Apple has just pushed the latest version of OS X Snow Leopard coming in at version 10.6.3. It’s the usual slew of reliability and security fixes and there’s nothing in the release notes that seems all that exciting to be honest. In case things go funky on your install, you should first make sure you’re all backed up in case you need to revert back to 10.6.2. [Apple via TUAW]
Designers Toolbox – Die lines, contracts and more!
Posted in Design, on March 26th, 2010 by Carlos.
Here’s a great resource site for you designers out there. Designers Toolbox includes both free and paid resources that you will no doubt find useful.
Perhaps one of the coolest things offered on this site (and it looks free so far from what I’ve been seeing) are die lines for various brochure sizes/foldings, as well as size templates for postcards, business cards, DVDs, etc. It’s nice to have these things all together on one site.
Paid resources include country maps (something that I always find myself needing from time to time), and contracts and forms. The contracts and forms are templates that you can customize for projects and clients you are working with.
The site is definitely worth checking out! [Designers Toolbox via 1stwebdesigner]
Keys Software Must Haves: Default Folder X – Speed up your workflow
Posted in Software, on March 25th, 2010 by Carlos.
I’ve found that working in Photoshop, and most other applications for that matter on my Mac – opening files from one location and saving them to another results in far too many clicks and wasted time. And it’s not always enough to have favourite folders setup, because I’m usually working in several different folders on any given day, that won’t be a ‘favourite’ on the next day.
Default Folder X is a nifty app that adds an overlay to your Save and Open dialog boxes given you a host of options to navigate your computer. From this overlay (pictured below), you can can browse your favourite folders, your recent folders, and folders that you currently have open in Finder. I find I always go back to the Recent folder drop down to navigate back and forth between the folders that I’m currently using.
OS X has a recent folder drop down, but I have found that it doesn’t update correctly all the time. It also doesn’t specify the difference between folders that are named the same. For example, most of my InDesign files are saved in Drafts folders under a specific project name. It doesn’t help me when several folders all named “Drafts” show up in the OS X’s recent folders listing. Default Folder X will show you the Drafts folder, but then append the parent folder in brackets like this: Drafts (Client X Product Brochure). These little details do wind up being time savers.
Other features of Default Folder X is the ability to add Spotlight keywords to your files when you’re saving them. It’s not a feature I use myself, but I’m sure it would be handy for those Spotlight lovers out there. You also will have a Default Folder X icon in your taskbar if you so choose, giving you direct access to commonly used folders, as well as preferences for the application itself.
The app runs unintrusively and doesn’t even throw an app icon on your dock. You’ll only notice it’s there when you’re opening or closing a file in your other applications.
Once you’re using Default Folder X, you’ll find it truly speeds up your workflow. It’s one of those things that make you think of why Apple didn’t include something like this in the first place. Give it a shot and I think you’ll be hooked!
Default Folder X is available from St. Claire Software for $34.95 USD. A free trial version is also available. [St. Claire Software]
Lightroom 3 beta 2 Now Available – Brings with it Tethered Shooting!
Posted in Photography, on March 24th, 2010 by Carlos.
Impeccable timing. I saw this right after posting my photography tip. Adobe has released its second beta for Lightroom 3. Lightroom, is a powerful tool to manage and manipulate your photography. Here are the list of features they’ve introduced in the latest build:
- Improved performance throughout the application for faster importing and loading of images
- Native tethered shooting support for select Nikon and Canon DSLR cameras
- Luminance noise reduction has been added to the previous color noise reduction improvements available in the first public beta for outstanding overall high ISO quality
- Support for importing and managing video files from DSLR cameras for better overall photographic workflow control
- Improvements to the import experience in the first beta to reflect public feedback
- Improved watermarking functionality from the first beta to reflect public feedback
I’m certainly most interested in “Native tethered shooting support for select Nikon and Canon DSLR cameras”, explained here from an excerpt grabbed from the announcement page:
“You don’t need to be a professional photographer in a studio environment to appreciate the instant feedback provided by a tethered workflow. Any time you need quick access to an image immediately after capture, simply plug in your Nikon or Canon DSLR via USB or Firewire and start a tethered session to view key camera settings, control the shutter release or apply various metadata and develop settings to incoming images. No need for intermediate software or “watched” folders, Lightroom will handle the communication with your camera and safely transfer images to the folder you specify. For this first implementation we’ve certified a limited number of Nikon and Canon DSLR models and look forward to adding additional Nikon and Canon camera models going forward.”
I’ve been using Nikon’s sub-standard Camera Control Pro 2 (ridiculously priced at $224.99 CAD), to tether my Nikon to my laptop when doing a photoshoot. Sure I had it save directly to a folder that I set Lightroom to automatically import as mentioned in the excerpt, but I can now cut-out the middle-man and tether straight into Lightroom. Looking forward to the official release of this one! [Adobe via TUAW]
Keys Photography Tip: Don’t Chuck that Photo – It Still has Potential!
Posted in Photography, on March 24th, 2010 by Carlos.
As a new segment for Keys That Click, I’ll throw in some photography tips every now and then. Given I’m a photo enthusiast (and semi-pro, as technically I do get paid for some of my photography) I figure I’d share some tips that I’ve found useful.
In my not-so-many-years of photography, one of the most important things I’ve learned is that there’s no such thing as a bad photo. Well, perhaps it starts bad, but if you give it some time and a heavy dose of Photoshop or Lightroom, you can wind up transforming it into something great. In fact, many of my own favourite photographs come from photos that I nearly deleted on first inspection.
Here are a few before and after examples of photos that I’ve transformed quite a bit.
You can see that sometimes there is a drastic difference between the original photo and the tweaked one. There is no exact science on how to achieve these results, but there are some things you can try to add more interest to seemingly dull shots. Here are some tips you can use:
- Be creative with your cropping. Sometimes it’s just as easy as cropping an image to give it new life. Throw the image on an angle, or crop out something or someone you don’t want in the shot.
- Set the exposure. More often then not, exposure is something that isn’t always as bang-on as you’d like it to be. For this reason, I’ll purposely under-expose my photos so that I can fix them up after the fact. It’s easy to adjust exposure on an under exposed shot, than it is on an over-exposed shot. Adjust your exposure to achieve the proper balance of your lights and darks.
- Shoot in RAW. If your camera has the ability, shoot in RAW format. There is much more colour and light information stored in RAW photos, then you would in a JPG, making the adjustments much more natural looking.
- Explore the hue/saturation/luminance in your photo. Bring out certain colours, or change them altogether to make your photo pop.
- Focus the attention on a particular area of the photograph. Whether you use focus to achieve this, or my favourite, vignetting, you can really help to lead the eye in the right direction.
- Go nuts. Just try anything and everything. I find Lightroom, with its non-descrtuctive changes, to be a phenomenal tool for this. You can literally spend hours on your photograph adjusting things.
Well there you have it! Hopefully this will inspire you to do some more photography, or go back and find some hidden gems in your existing collection!
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