Yep, that’s right. I just upgraded to the latest version of WordPress. At the beginning I was scared as hell (back-upped every single file i had) that my most important plug-ins wouldn’t work and the design go nuts, but guess what! Everything worked perfectly! Although there was a little bug with my categories which caused every one of them to me renamed as » » (nothing…). Anyway this was a good thing for me since I some day was going to change them all to something more concrete than it was.

Using wordpress after the update was like a dream. Since i was a little bit sceptical to updating I still had the old and boring blue theme on my wordpress-admin. Not only did the WordPress interface change colors and appearance but it also it seemed much more intuitive with more options. Anyway, I haven’t really tried it out too much, but I can definetley recommend it to anyone who still haven’t upgraded or if you would like to just try wordpress. A very good blogging platform and I don’t think I will use any other in the future since wordpress always delivers great updates and usability.

To download the latest wordpress, simply go to wordpress.org and look for a big red button

If you’re unsure on how to update, use this easy guide wordpress made for you.

I can also mention to you that the design on Ps graphiX is getting a little facelift at the moment. I’m fixing some colors to match better and improve the interface a little AND (offtopic) I just watched the God Father for the first time… great movie

The first thing you have to do, if you haven’t already, is to download inkscape. You can get the latest version at inkscape.org (there’s a link up to the right).

Then you must find yourself a portrait you want to add this cool effect to. I have chosen a stock image of a cool man with a red thing on his head as you can see below. I found the image on sxc.hu where there are a lot of great photos you can use for this and my other tutorials.

Then, in Photoshop, you will have to use the pen tool to draw around the face/what you want to shop in the portrait. A little tips when doing this, is to lower the opacity so that a color doesn’t fill the image.

And when you have closed the path, Ctrl+Click the layer thumbnail as shown below:

Now you should have a selection around the face/the part we are going to use. So, select the layer where the person is, and press Ctrl+J (which will duplicate that part of the image that is selected into another layer). Hide the background layer and the shape, and you will have something like this:

Now it’s time to save it. And you are going to save it as a .png image so the background stays transparent.

And now it’s time to start up inkscape! To open our portrait in inkscape, you can either go to File>Open and find your picture, or just drag your picture from the explorer and into inkscape. And now the fun begins

First, click on the portrait to make sure it is selected, then go to Path>Trace Bitmap… as shown (click for larger view):

Then, some options will appear in a box. The things you must select, is  Brightness cutoff, Smooth and Remove background. After that, the options basically depends on what image you are using and how you want it to look, so just play around and find out how YOU want it.

Anyway, here is what options i used (click to enlarge):

After you have clicked ok, you will see that your portrait have a new layer above the original. Now, just drag it away and delete the original layer (press delete on the keyboard wile it is selected) and drag you beautiful black vector thing back into the document so that it is ready to be saved.

But to save it in a way that Photoshop can open it as a vector, you must save it as Encapsulated Postscript (*.eps). You’ll find it in File>Save As… and then just find the format you are going to save it as in the dropdown menu in the lower right corner.

Now you can just shut down Inkscape if you want, and move over to Photoshop. Then, in Photoshop of course, got to File>Open… and find your portrait which you saved in *.eps format.

When you do this Photosohp asks you what size you want it to be. Here you can literally make it any size you want since it’s vector, but after that it becomes pixel art.

Now you can practically do anything you want with the portrait and there are endless possibilities.  Just use your photoshop skills and make a cool background, change colors and mess with the portrait or whatever you might want to!

Here is some of my art made with just this technique and some photoshoping in the end (click for larger) (and btw, comment if you like the tut !):

If you are a vector art lover and don’t know how to host it then now it’s not a big deal. Now you can host own personal domain name and photo gallery at cheap price with the help of web hosting service provider. When ever you want to update or add vector portraits in your site you need a web server login. The host providers also provide different tools like seo, marketing and web development tools to make your work easy. As vector portrait site has a huge size, therefore; form hosting provider you need dedicated hosting plans to give speedy and fast internet access to your vector portrait site and it is more reliable if you are using dsl for hosting purposes.

Here you can learn how to change the normal .psd thumbnail to a thumbnail (small picture) of the actuall ducument! It’ also pretty easy, and work with Photoshop CS and above. In earlier versions, I think this was standard, but I don’t know.

Actually, it all started when I was at a photo/art shop and was going to print something I had made on my own computer. When I got there, I saw that she had a thumbnail view of my .psd document! I really wondered how this was possible, but didn’t think much about it. I was (and still are) a bit newbie at photoshop.

So recently, I did a little research about this and found out that you just had to download and add some files. On the bottom of this page I have added the files needed, and here comes a little tutorial on how to do it:

1. Extract the .zip (obviously)
2. Copy psicon.dll to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Shell. If the Shell folder doesn’t exist, just make a new folder and call it «Shell» inside the Adobe folder.
3. Run Adobe.reg
4. Finished! View your.psd documents as thumbnails and see the document before you open it!

FAQ

Q: Help! How on earth do I go to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Shell?????

A: Take it easy! Just (in windows) press start>Run… and paste C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Shell. If it doesn’t work, erase \Shell and make a folder called Shell.

Q: I’m lost this doesn’t work!!! I’ve done everything you wrote here, but it doesn’t work here!!! Help me!!!!

A: Well, I’m not sure that this answer fixes your problem, but to get the thumbnail view, it’s important to have internet explorer in either thumbnails view or filmstrip view. Here’s a picture of it:

Finally… (PS: let me know if you like it by commenting )

As the world is changing at a fast pace, people are able to get education online. There are many sites which are providing different training courses like 350-018 training course which gives full unlimited access package to pass this exam easily. There are many other training courses as well like 70-297, 642-845 for which all the helping material are present online. For good exam training or Courses like 640-816, never trust braindumps Courses always go for study guide. The study guide of 156-215, like many others, has many questions and answers to pass the exam. Remember any free 70-528 exam or any other exam source is not going to give you any edge, so don’t rely on free study guides always look for the best.

(click to enlarge)

As you can see, these are equal to my rss icons that i posted a while ago. In that post, a person who called him-/herself «finnagin bell» commented that it would be cool to make these as email icons. Wouldn’t take me much time to do, so i thought why not?

So here they are. As with the rss icons, these are in png (invisible background!) format and they come with the original photoshop file.

And yes, I know it has been too long since last time I updated, but I just didn’t feel like doing it. But now I have some great ideas and they might come soon… how I chose define «soon» is another thing.

Anyway, here is the download link:

I remember before when I was using google blogger. I really wanted a new blog, still have the same posts, and have my own domain. Then I slightly discovered wordpress and was amazed over all the sites who was using it. Of course I just noticed the ones that had a link to wordpress in their footer, but thatwas good enough for me. I bought a domain at one.com (recommended!) and installed wordpress. At the beginning I just edited some themes and wrote some posts just to get to know the system.

But now I know that wordpress can be really professional and more people than you should think use it and some of them try to hide it.

One easy way to see if a page uses wordpress, is to add something to the url of the blog.

An example is skullcandys blogg (they are a campany making headphones and mp3 players. If you enter skullcandy.com and go to their blog which is at «http://www.skullcandy.com/blog/ «. Just add «wp-admin» after the final «/» and you can see what all of us other wordpress user know as the screen we use when we log in!

Heres the link for you if you want: http://www.skullcandy.com/blog/wp-admin. It will redirect you to the login screen.

And there is much more sites out there I know use wordpress but hides is, but it’s just sad that I don’t remember anyone at the moment, but if you know of any sites like this, post them in the comments form and I’ll make a little list here! I’ll also add links as I see more sites like this.

Yep, that’s right! Every element of the outcome is in vector and you can resize it to any size you want and it will still look great. Vector silhouettes are cool and often used in other artworks. Just google it and you will find many cool pictures. Even apple uses it in their commercials. It’s actually the first hits when you google «Ipod commercials» in pictures. I will also tell you some tips I have figured out while using the pen tool. So what are you waiting for? Let’s learn this cool technique!

First you will need a picture of a person (or another thing if you’d like). The picture should show the entire picture (or object) so that the silhouette won’t be cut off or something like that.

Below you can see the stock image I used (click to enlarge). The image can be found here.

We are going to use the pen tool, so if you aren’t familiar with it, just play around with it a bit (click and drag and just click…) and see how it works. It might take some practice, but you can do so much with it, so it’s worth learning!

OK, with the pen tool start drawing around the person. One very important thing is that you have the option showed below selected. It is standard I guess, but if this isn’t selected, you might have to do it all over again!

One thing you might notice, is these holes in his arms. I used to panic before when i saw these, but when you have drawn the person, I’ll show you a way to get rid of this. So don’t think of it yet.

And here are some handy tips when drawing with the pen tool. The most obvious is that you should zoom in a bit first. But what do you do when you want to move around the image? I usually hold spacebar while dragging around with the mouse.

To get a better view of the image you are painting around, hit F on the keyboard until you have a view that you like.

Another thing that is almost a must, is to lower the opacity of the shape layer to 0% wile drawing so you always know where to draw

So here’s what I have now after drawing around the person (click to enlarge):

You might notice that I didn’t add his headset thing in the shape… I just didn’t want to have them there. And now we are going to remove those parts that we don’t need/want. First you got to have the shape selected. When you have the shape selected, you should see a gray line on the outside. And now use these options with the pen tool:

This will make the pen tool remove the parts we draw around. So lets lower the opacity and start draw around the holes! BUT this only works if you have the shape selected (click the shape in the layers palette, not the layer) as I mentioned before!

Here is what you should have now (click to enlarge):

Wohoo! Now you have a pretty basic vector silhouette and you can actually resize it without losing quality! But isn’t it a bit ugly with that background? Lets make the background in one color and in vector.

It’s easy. Just draw something like a square around the picture under the silhouette. And then you should have what I have below. Of course you can change the color if you want to. (do I have to say it…? CLICK TO ENLARGE!)

But why stop there? With the technique I showed you, you can add his cap, shorts or t-shirt!

But I went a bit further and drew a simple iPod! I’m not a pro or anything, but I just tried to draw an iPod and this is what i got after my first try (contest: guess what should stand here!)!

You might also see that I’ve added a little reflection from my reflection tutorial.

Here is another example something I made with this technique (click to enlarge ):

Ok, the iPod thing wasn’t actually going to be in this tutorial, but it is cool and fits good. But I hope you have learned a bit about making vector silhouettes and liked my tutorial.

Wondering on something or want to say that you liked the tutorial? Use the comment form!

(click to enlarge)

Many of the other blogs like mine have it, so why shouldn’t I? I’m now introducing to you the first freebie in Ps graphiX history (about three weeks i guess)!

I have made you a rss icon! But it is more then a rss icon (well… almost). THe format is png, so that the background is absolute transparent, it’s made by me and the pack contains the final .psd* document along with the icons in four different colors.

This means that you can customize it yourself and maybe learn something from the .psd* document. Although the file is large (in dimension) it looks almost better when it is small, so go ahead and download it and use it on your web page! Cause you got to admit that many of the rss icons out there are a bit ugly (compared to this )

Here’s the pack:

Many online companies try to maximize the value of their business products by doing a cheap domain name registration, making vertically integrated services and secondary services such web banner advertising services. They plan sponsorships and other promotional activities with the help of cheap web hosting services; geared towards their target market by site sponsors, better web design, marketing activities and product launches. The web host provider will also provide dedicated servers which will increase the speed, promotional activities and increase their presence in the market while providing a return benefit to the sponsor.

In his post, there was a link to wikipedia and I immediately clicked it. It didn’t tell me much at the beginning, but at the bottom there where MANY links which contained more information. One boring thing is that it stood so much on all of the pages, but here is what I figured out after 5 minutes of reading:

It was something about organizing and search monitors. Also taking use of more advanced technology and internett was going to be smarter.

Well, I guess that If you want to know more, I’ll give you some links:

• Web 3.0 on wikipedia
• «How to define web 3.0″
• «See also» on wikipedia, much more links there

And except from this, there is more in my previous post

I figured out that the theme I have now was too dark and had a bit too little space. These things are taken care of and another thing is that it’s much easier to subscribe on my feed (today it’s at the very bottom of the page).

I’m also thinking about adding Ps graphiX v1 theme for download if anyone is interrested.

So I guess you have something to look forward to! And of course I’ll continue writing photoshop tutorials, but I’ll also write a bit more about other things.

See you later in another theme