Photoshop Philadelphia WAS Yesterday!

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:36:59 +0000

Last night we got together and held our first “official” meeting for Photoshop Philadelphia. We had about 20 people show up, which was about twice as many as I expected so I was very pleased with turn out. We are going to blow that number out of the water next month as well as hold an even better meeting. This time ’round allowed us to get acclimated to the environment and learn the “lay of the land” if you will.

I am going to send out an email with links and information as promised during the meeting. I will also include a brief overview of the things we covered and maybe even a PSD for you guys to play with.

- We will have the official Photoshop Philly site launched by the Feb. meeting.

-We will be giving away super cool prizes at the Feb. meeting.

-We may even have our first design challenge ready by then. Compete in that and you will have a chance to win some big prizes.

All things considered the night went great, better than expected and I am super excited about next month’s meeting. I’ll keep you guys posted.

More to come…

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December/January Newsletter is out! (Link to Last Month’s Newsletter)

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 20:55:52 +0000

That’s right the latest newsletter has been released and if you missed it sign up now so you don’t miss any more! Sign up here! It is super easy to sign up, just name and email address, no big deal to get signed up.

Now here is a link to last month’s (November-December) newsletter: Download the November-December Newsletter now!

Here is a little preview thumbnail of the pages in the November-December Newsletter:

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Rollip.com: Free Image Filtering

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 19:00:27 +0000

Rollip.com: Free Image Filtering

I am going to run over how to use Rollip and then give you my thoughts about the service and the site overall. The fellas from Rollip have given me about 15 free account with 30 free credits a piece, I will have the link at the bottom of this blog post you can visit and grab the free credits. The accounts setup via the link below are a first-come first-serve basis so get down there and get yourself setup.

Because they have set me up nice I am going to try to say some nice things, but there are a couple things I don’t really like about the site and service and I will let you guys know what I think about it. Give me your thoughts in the comments section below!

What is Rollip.com?

Rollip.com is a site where you can upload your own photo(s) and process them using one of a bunch of different filters. You can then download a smaller version of your image which is filtered.

If you want the full size image filtered you can choose to have that happen (you get the smaller image as a preview for free, no credits, no money spent) as well. Once you choose to have the image processed you will get the link to the image as and Rollip will also email a link to you as well. Simply choose to download your image and you will have your full sized image filtered. When you filter full sized images it takes one credit.

That is a basic overview of what Rollip is/does. Let’s take a look at running through this real quick. It is a VERY self-explanatory setup they have, very easy to figure out, but we’ll cover it nonetheless.

How Can I Get Started?

Step 1:

Go to Rollip.com and select the “Sign Up” button (or use the link at the bottom of this post for the 30 free credits!) and fill out the two fields and that’s it! You are set to go process images!

Step 2:

Now that you’ve logged in you will see a bunch of large images, each one with a different filter. Use the arrows above to scroll through and check out the filters and then select the one you want.

Step 3:

The next step is uploading the photo you want to process! Simply grab the image and upload it, Rollip will process it with the filter you selected automatically and give you a smaller image as a preview for free, you can even download this filtered image here.

Step 4:

At this point if you like the image you can go ahead and download it by right clicking and saving it to where ever you want it to go. If you like the image, however, you can select that big “Process High-Quality” button and it will work it’s magic and process the image for one credit.

Step 5:

Last thing to do is just select the download link! See I told you it was easy!

My Thoughts:

Now the hard stuff, what do I think of the service? Remember I am going to try to be nice because the guys were really nice and they hooked us up with those free accounts so here goes.

One thought you are going to have is when you first see this site and the filters is “Well I can just make all this stuff in Photoshop…right?” and you are right, but the fact of the matter is most folks don’t have the time or know-how to duplicate the vast majority of what is happening here (Most of YOU guys don’t have the time, ya’ll the skills…right? ).

I do wish there was a way to tweak the effects because there is really no clue as to what you are going to get until you wait for an image to upload and process, which, for larger images, can take a little while depending on the internet connection. Being able to tweak color and tone, sharpness and more after applying the effect would be really great, also being able to combine multiple effects would rock!

There are a lot of really great effects here, but some I don’t really view as effects you would use in much of a “professional” way, but that is a pretty subjective way to look at it. If you go into it with a relatively open mind you should be able to find uses for these filters.

It would have been nice to know how much each image “cost” in credits to process full-size, I may have missed something, but I didn’t see it anywhere. I also was not sure how to buy more credits. Both of those things seem like pretty basic things that should be taken care of from a user experience stand point, but other than those two little things navigation of the site was easy and uploading and processing the photos was not only easy, but it worked flawlessly each and every time I tried which was really great!

That’s pretty well it, other than a few little things on the site’s actual design (I am not going to go into a full-fledged critique here) and maybe a few other things, if I were to spend more time sniffing around, I think the site is nice, easy to use, and I will definitely at least use up my free credits, and, if I can figure out how to buy more, would probably even be back for more.

That’s all for now guys, leave a comment and give me your thoughts.

Here is the link I promised at the beginning of this blog post: http://www.rollip.com/pro?coupon=tutvid

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Latest News!

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 16:10:18 +0000

Latest News!

Well I seem to have survived this crazy snow storm here in the North East, after a day of shoveling snow (although the guys that come and plow my sidewalks and driveway etc are great) everything has settled down and we have ice everywhere, which while very beautiful is also quite lethal, and very hard to remove from your car windshield as well. Anyway as I settle into this great week I am hoping to get a whole bunch of material out there for you guys as long as I can finish up some of these projects I have on my plate, that’s right, I’m working right through X-mas and all the holiday stuff, but I am really looking forward to it and the end result will be worth it 100%. Hope you guys enjoy your week and whatever time you get off!

Sickness Gone:

Lately not too much has been happening on Tutvid.com and those of you that are subscribed to the newsletter know that it is a little late (again J). I have been pretty sick over the past week, which is very NOT like me, I hardly ever get sick let alone stay sick for such a long time, but I guess it happens. Over the past few days I seem to have kicked the sickness and have been feeling great and getting a ton of catch up work done and more site updates will be happening, more tutorials coming very soon, and the new newsletter will be out within a very short while.

Re-Making Older Tutorials:

I would kind of like some of your feedback on this, just let me know what you think about it. I was thinking about re-making all of my older tutorials and updating them for the newer versions of the various programs. With the updated tutorials I would have the wide screen and better video/sound quality and hopefully even be able to explain the stuff a bit better than I could back then. I have plans on doing a bunch of 101 type tutorials and a lot of my older stuff was pretty basic stuff so I think it would only be natural to do it both to compliment a novice and revamp all those older tutorials. Just a passing thought I had and really want to do, but I don’t want to kill a bunch of time if there is something you guys would like to see more. NOTE: I would still be working on more advanced tutorials and hopefully getting these basic tutorials out would push me to get more of these advanced tutorials out.

Photoshop Philadelphia Meetup:

Well we have officially setup our first meetup and laid it out. Check out: http://tutvid.com/photoshopPhilly/ which is our first virtual newsletter. That contains all the details we have nailed down so far, it should give you a decent idea of what we expect to happen and where it all will be going down. I am hoping to get a simple site up for the group so folks can RSVP, but until then go ahead and follow us on Twitter, become a fan of the facebook page and keep track of what we have planned. There is some great stuff coming up!

Thanks guys!

Thank you guys for all the great feedback I have been getting via email, Twitter, the blog, YouTube, and pretty well anywhere you can get a hold of me. I have received a ton of great ideas and inspiration for the new site as well as a ton of things folks would like to see. Thanks for taking the time to send me your thoughts and if you have anything else, I am always open for ideas. Also have a great end of the year and new year!

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Add Dramatic Color to Photographs: Photoshop Tutorial!

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 18:33:59 +0000

Add Dramatic Color to Photographs: Photoshop Tutorial!

This is a tutorial that should really help some of you photographers out there. We will start with a base RAW file from an 8 megapixel low-end Canon digital camera and we will open it with Photoshop and use the Camera Raw editor to make these changes. Learn all about using the Camera RAW editor and what the different sliders do and why/how you can use them to create really bold effects to your photographs.

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