David Appleyard of AppStorm has rounded up his favorite 50 Mac applications for digital photographers. The list includes a range from free open source applications, up through some fairly expensive industry standard apps. If you are looking to explore more post production with your images, this is a great place to start exploring available applications.
Tags: Applications, digital photography, Free, HDR, NEF, open source, Programs, RAW, roundup
Formed in 2007 in Lyon, France, the Toast Concept design group looks more like a fun-seeking and fun-loving collective than an actual company. Officially a graphic design and motion graphics firm, Toast Concept made a big splash in the industry when they formed, taking on Sony Music, Land Rover, and Nike as their first clients. The majority of their work is still, however, not part of their professional portfolio. They have developed their brand through art, entering graphic design and motion graphics contests from Paris to Melbourne, spreading their non-professional work around, getting their name out there, and even designing a few toys - everywhere Toast Concept turns up, their signature of a toaster in a thought bubble follows. Toast Concept, now only in its second year of life, is truly the next design firm to watch.
Written by Pat Ortali, Multimedia Consultant III at Washington College’s Multimedia Production Center
Sporting one of Nikon’s famous NIKKOR lenses (18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G VR AF-S DX) and a 12.3 megapixel sensor, the Nikon D5000 steps beyond the realm of your average DSLR camera. It has everything you would hope for from a Nikon - nearly two dozen auto-exposure modes, startlingly accurate auto-focus, tracking, and light metering, the ability to shoot four frames per second, and in-camera image editing - but it holds a new surprise too - the capacity to shoot 720p HD movies. Now, this isn’t something new to the DSLR world, Canon released a comparable camera right after the Nikon D90 was released. This is Nikon’s hard-hitting response, and at around 1000 bucks, it’s a steal too.
Written by Pat Ortali, Multimedia Consultant III at Washington College’s Multimedia Production Center
Beginning the week of January 26th, Instructional Technology will be offering professional support for campus technologies, multimedia and more via Open FLEX Lab Hours in both the Beck Instructional Lab and the MultimediaProduction Center. Beck’s Open Lab Hours (FLEX Lab) will remain the same and the MPC will be opening its doors for the campus community. If you need help with a computer related task or project, stop by to receive one-on-one help from the Instructional Technology staff of experts.
Open Lab Hours for Spring 2009 will be:
Beck:
Mondays 1:30 pm - 4:30 pm
MPC:
Tuesdays 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Wednesdays 11:00 am - 1:00 pm
If you have questions about any of the Open FLEX Lab Hours, please contact Nancy Cross, Brian Palmer or Nick Smerker. To find out who will be available during which hours, visit: mellon.washcoll.edu/staffprofiles.html
Tags: Help, JIT Training, Just-in-time, live support, MPC lab
Do you utilize YouTube to host videos you create and want to share with the world at the best quality? Has someone else created a YouTube video, but you are only interested in a portion of it for your blog or website? Here are 2 tips that help ensure your audience has a better YouTube expereince:
Tip 1. Forcing the browser to use the High Quality version of the video
You may notice just under the lower right coner of the video window, some videos have an option to “Watch In High Quality”. By default, these videos will play as a 320×240 FLV file at 320Kb/s. Check out this sample:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBGeNeofk0A
The user could click on this link to “Watch in High Quality” which will reload the video and play the MP4 version , which is 480×360 at 512Kb/s. By adding &fmt=18 to the end of the URL, you’ll make the URL you share with others bring them right to the high quality version. Here’s the same video in the High Quality view:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBGeNeofk0A&fmt=18
What else are you gaining besides increased video resolution? The video is compressed with H.264 compression, so you get better video even at the same data rate. You also go from a low fidelity mono audio feed to stereo @ 44.1Khz sample rate.
&fmt=6 increases the resolution from 320×240 to 448×336, Flash 7 video @ 900Kbps; audio @ 44.1KHz 96Kbps Mono CBR.
&fmt=18 increases the resolution to 480×360, H.264 video @ 512Kbps; audio @ 44.1KHz 128Kbps Stereo. Note, the bandwidth may be lower, but it’s utilizing a more efficient compression codec.
UPDATE: &fmt=22 increaes the resolution to 720p HD video if the source was uploaded at a high enough resolution.
Tip 2. Advancing the video to a specific playback point.
If you evern wanted to link to a video in YouTube that was lengthy, but had a very interesting part partway through, there is a hack to allow you to begin playback at a precise time. You can specify the minutes and seconds of the start time like this:
add #t=53s to the end of the URL to start at 53 seconds into it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBGeNeofk0A#t=53s
add #t=1m57s to the end of the video URL to start playback at 1 minute 57 seconds:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBGeNeofk0A#t=1m57s
Think of this as bookmarking your video clips! Now you can link to a video, and have an index of the segments included, which link right to that precise moment!
Tags: 720p, high quality, tips & tricks, video bookmarking, video tutorial, YouTube Hacks
Having a variety of brushes in Photoshop gives you more options, and having them very high resolution will allow you to create designs that can be printed and used in large format. Here are 75 collections of free brushes for you to choose from!
Tags: Brushes, creative inspiration, CS3, CS4, Design, High Rez, Photoshop, Resolution
Here are 10 bits of code that you can include in your PHP development to do some cool stuff. Why program it from scratch when you can use these?!
Tags: code, PHP, programming, Web Development
Interested in experimenting with long exposure photography and painting with light? This tutorial shows some tips and examples of what you can do with your DSLR, a tripod, and a few light sources.
Tags: light art, long exposures, painting with light, Photography
Soundsnap is the best platform to find and share free sound effects and loops- legally. It is a collection of original sounds made or recorded by its users, and not songs or sound FX found on commercial libraries or sample CD’s.
It was originally started by a small group of sound people from all over the world. Our common belief is that sounds and samples should be free for everyone to use in their projects, commercial or not.
Tags: free samples, legal, royalty free, sound effects
