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Archive for the ‘Tutorials’ Category

PS Basic Text Scan

24 Aug

Alrighty, this is a simple one. No need for the cup of tea. All you may need to know are your tools and a simple understanding of animating in PS. View this tut, if you wish to get familiar with animating in PS.

  1. Open Photoshop.

  2. Create a new document of your dimensions with a black or white background. Depends on the output you want.

  3. Type some sort of text using black ink.

  4. Create a new layer. Name it ‘scanner’. This layer will contain the gradient that will give you the scanning effect.

  5. On your ‘gradient’ tool bar, select ‘Reflected Gradient’.

    Gradient Tool Bar

  6. Now press [D] to reset your colours. If you chose a black background, make sure your foreground is set to white and if a white background, your foreground set to black. Make a stroke across your
    new layer, ‘scanner’.

  7. Make sure your scanner layer is on top the text layer. By now you should have 3 layers, your background of white or black, your text layer and your ‘scanner’ layer.

  8. Select your ‘scanner’ layer in the layers palette. Simultaneously, press [Ctrl+G].

    Have a look at your layers palette.

    Layers Pal

  9. Go to Image Ready by simultaneously pressing [Shift+Ctrl+M].

  10. Now all you need to do is move your ‘scanner’ layer bit by bit. Every time you move it, you add a frame. You do this until you have made a transition across the entire text. It would help if you are already familiar with Image Ready, here’s a quick tutorial.

Here’s the silly little thing I did. I used some font style called tribalz by marioz. So don’t think I got fancy and used a pic. Sure you did better!

Scanner

You’re all set. You can try adding this little effect to your banner sigs.

Feel free to make something much cooler than mine! Happy camping!!!

 
 

Cleaning Up Bad Photos

24 Aug

Do you have a photo which you really like, however the quality of it just sucks? This tutorial shows you how to make an old photo look like new! It’s very basic and you only need one tool. The smudge
tool. Ofcourse there are far more advanced method in doing this technique that creates far better results. However, this little trick can do the job just fine.

Here are the before and after pics:

BeforeAfter

Not bad huh?

  1. First, like always you need to pull out your image.

  2. Duplicate the layer [Ctrl+J]. This allows you to lways review the original making note of original picture definitions.

  3. Select your Smudge tool [D] [Smudge Tool]. Give it a strength of about 10% or less. If your photo is small, it’s
    best to use a small brush tip, this prevents excessive smudging in unwanted areas.

  4. Gently make strokes in the direction or the streamline of the photo or shape. For instance:

    Stroke Guidlines

  5. The black arrows signify the direction of the strokes. The red one suggests a circular motion. This is because if you were to stroke the forehead in any one motion, you may get harsh lines and may also flatten
    the forhead. Thus, stroking in a circular motion for areas like these are always best.

  6. Continue to stroke your image in appropriate directions until you feel comfortable with the quality. Make sure to keep looking back at the original image where necessary. Also, don’t be afraid to duplicate
    layers, this saves you from starting from the beggining in the event that you have made a drastic mistake.

Hope you enjoyed this one.

 
 

Cutout Under-Painting

24 Aug

Sometimes, you may want to give your photos a painted look. This tutorial is a very simple one and is merely to demonstrate the use of two Artistic filters, Cutout and Underpainting.

  1. Open a picture you like. This is mine:

    Dominica!!!

  2. Duplicate your pic [Ctrl+J] and name it cutout.

  3. Go to Filter>Artistic>Cutout. Use the settings below:

    Cutout Settings

  4. Duplicate the original layer once more, name it underpainting, and drag it to the top of cutout layer.

  5. Go to Filter>Artistic>Underpainting. Use the below settings.

    Underpainting Settings

  6. Hit [OK]. Select your underpainting layer and go to Blending Options menu (Right Click>Blending Options).

  7. In Blending Options: Custom>Blending Options>General Blending for blend modes choose Overlay or perhaps something else you like. Leave everything else as is and hit [OK].

You’re done. Mine came out like so:

Painting Dominica!!!

 
 

PS Basic Animating

24 Aug

Sometimes, you want to make your image come ‘alive’! Roar! Okay, I’ll stop being weird now.
The colours give the image a nice bang, however you’re looking for a big
bang! So what do you do? You animate it! No, not like those fancy movies,
but enough to give yourself and your audience a smile. Again this is an
Adobe Photoshop talk. Photoshop’s little bro for creating animated .gifs
is Image Ready. Enough chit chat. Let’s hop to it and create some mobile
images.

Okay let’s do something simple.

  1. Create a new psd document, try 100*100px.

  2. Create three new layers; Call them R, G & B.

  3. Fill each layer with a new colour using the Paint Bucket Tool [Paint Bucket: Used for colouring mass selections of a canvas.].
    That is, you can colour layer R red, layer G green and layer B blue.
    Your layers palette may look like so:

    Your layers pallette

  4. Open Image Ready [Ctrl+Shift+M]. The document now loads within Image
    Ready. To create the animation, what we need to do is reveal and hide
    layers while creating frames for the visible layers.

  5. Hide two of your layers by clicking the ‘eye’ in the layers palette.

    Marked in green signifies hidden layers.

  6. After which, add the frame by clicking the duplicate Frame button
    [Duplicate Frame: Makes current visible layers 'part' of the animation by making a frame of them]in
    your Animation window. (If this window is not visible go to Window>Animation)

  7. Hide and add other layers until you have an animation of all three
    layers. Depending on how you added frames, your animation should look
    like so:

    Your simple RGB animation.

  8. Save your document by going to File>Save Optimized As.. You’re done!

    N.B. To adjust the speed of your animation, change the
    time of the frames in the Animation Window. Each frame has it’s own time.
    Thus if you wanted to give all three frames a speed of 0.2 secs, you would left click on your first frame+Shift+click your last frame, then
    left click one of the little arrows in the time area. From the pop up
    menu select the speed of 0.2 or some other time you desire.

    I just demonstrated a basic animation. What if you wanted
    your frame to fade in and out of play, like so:

    Tweening the frames

To do this you must tween between the frames. This allows a much softer transition between frames.

  1. Okay, select two frames adjacent each other. Like so:

    Select adjacent frames

  2. Select the tween button [Tween Button].
    The Tween dialog appears. Copy the settings below.

    Tween dialog : Copy the settings

  3. Hit [OK]. Now, you can choose to change the time settings of the new ‘tween’ frames. I chose to do so and changed
    the new frames to a time of ‘no delay’ or 0 seconds.

  4. Now select, the remaining two adjacent frames to tween them. Like so:

    Select adjacent frame to tween them.

  5. Click your tween button again and click [OK]. You’re done! Save your document by going to File>Save Optimized As.

 

 
 

Pic in the Text

24 Aug

Another very simple tutorial. However, this effect, if you don’t know how to do it already, can be quite useful when creating your fantastic designs! So let’s get it started!

  1. First, create a new Photoshop document. Any size you wish. I chose 300*300 px.

  2. Get the pic you wish to put into the text and get your favourite font out. Got them? Good! Now for the fun easy breezy part!

  3. Select the text tool and type anything you wish.

  4. Copy [Ctrl+C] and paste [Ctrl+V] the image that is to be placed within the text onto your newly created photoshop document. Your layers palette should have at least 2-3 layers:

    1. Image Layer – the image that will be shaped into text (step 2)
    2. Text Layer – layer with the typography (step 3)
    3. Background layer (Optional)
  5.  

    Now, Ctrl+left click on your text layer. You should now have a selection like so:

    Pic In the Text [Image1]

  6. Go to Select>Inverse [Shift+Ctrl+I] and..

  7. Now, being careful not to deselect your selection, click on your image layer to highlight it.

  8. After which, you will now hit the backspace button. You’re done. You no longer need your text layer. So you may discard it.

  9. You can now add blending options to your ‘text image’.

    Here’s mine with a Drop Shadow and Bevel modes added (double left click your text image layer to open up the goodies/blending options menu, once there, play with all the options and be amazed ).

    Pic In the Text [Image2]

If you wanted to only add the image to a letter, you would just need to: grab your ‘Magic Wand tool’ [ wand_tool] and with your text layer selected, hold down the Shift key and click on your letter of choice (it’s best to zoom (Z) if your text is small). Holding down the Shift key allows you to add selections with the previously selected ones.
So keep holding down the Shift key until you have all your desired letters selected! Then just repeat steps 6-8 or optionally to step 9.

Thanks for doing this tutorial with me. Enjoy.

 
 

Play Head Wait

24 Aug

When I had just begun using Director I thought the only way to get a vid to play full length was to stretch its frames ’til the end in the Score layer. This was very tedious and I wondered to myself how much do I have to stretch the movie frames ’til I reach the end. Surely, I knew there was another way. Thankfully, there is and I’ve brought this simple tutorial to you to avoid silly notions, like my initial one. ;) This tutorials presents you code which allows the play head to wait until the entire digital video has played. After which, the play head will jump to the next frame of marker specified.

Open your Director movie add the following code/script to your quicktime movie.


property thisSprite
property thisMember
property  thisDuration
on beginsprite me
--define what you're dealing with (channel)
thisSprite = me.spriteNum
thisMember = sprite(thisSprite).member.name
thisDuration = member(thisMember).duration
end
on exitFrame me
if sprite(thisSprite).movieTime >=thisDuration then
--video is done playing; now go to place specified  in brackets
_movie.go("gohere")
end if
end

You can see that the code above has three properties.

thisSprite is a representation of the channel in which the sprite (vid) was placed. thisSprite can be seen as a variable which holds the channel number of the sprite in its memory
cell. It’s not ‘needed’, you could have had these lines instead:

thisMember = sprite(me.spriteNum).member.name
if sprite(me.spriteNum).movieTime>= thisDuration then

As you can see, me.spriteNum replaces where thisSprite once was. thisSprite is a property or variable that holds the value of me.spriteNum.

thisMember represents a cast member within the cast member library

This line : sprite(me.spriteNum).member.name represents the member name as well as its properties (file type). It could have been replaced with the following:

member(“quicktimevid”)

thisMember = member("quicktimevid")

The difference between lines 1 in snippet 2 and 3, is that snippet 2 makes use of the dot operator and one needs not know the name/label of the file or member.

thisDuration represents the duration or play time of the digital video.

In snippet 2, code line labeled 2 is where the main decision is made based on certain conditions. All line 2 states is: if quicktime video play time is equal to its total duration then
In this case, once the statement is true, the next statement is executed.

Alrighty, the code has been briefly explained. I now request that you download this document. Check out the structure and observe what the code does.

Please note the defined behavior movie controller in the Behavior Channel. It is very important. Without it, the play head would skip to the next frame without playing the full movie and the code we spoke of above would never ‘work’. Try removing it to see what happens. Goes right through, huh? The markers label where the play head should jump to after the digital movie has been played in its entirety. Notice, that I defined two markers. You can actually see the ‘jump’ by my doing so as after the movie is played the play head skips all the frames between movie controller behavior and t marker. The obedient play head didn’t even stop to show off what’s happening with marker d. If you wanted the play head to move to another marker, say d marker, simply change this line:

_movie.go(“t”)

Replace t with d. That’s all it takes. Simple huh?

Happy camping!!

 
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Javacript Rotating Images With Rotating Links

24 Aug

So you got some neat images and would like to rotate them for your web project, not only would you like to rotate these images, but you’d also like different images, to link to different sources. Let’s find out how that’s done, now!

Quick preview

It is assumed that the reader has a basic understanding of HTML/JS. However, for revision purposes, here’s a quick explaination of some of the elements used in the following set of code snippets. One may skip to here.

<a> – Defines a HTML link, for this tutorial, we will define a HTML link and include two other mandatory attributes: href/value (link address), name/value (element call name).

<img> – Defines an HTML image, for this tutorial it is imperative that attributes src/value (image location) and id/value (element unique identifier) are defined. For the purpose of W3C validation, it is required that alt/value (alternative text) attribute is also defined.

“A function contains code that will be executed by an event or by a call to the function.” This tutorial will include JS functions.

getElementById() is a JS function and it does exactly as it name suggests, in the code line: document.getElementById("myimg").src

document refers to the HTML document/page, so document.getElementById("myimg") searches in the document for any element/tag with an id myimg. In the following HTML snippet, the <img> tag contains such an attribute, so the function will perform an action on that element. Since we would like to change the source/location of the image, we will include .src which further retrieves the src/value attribute of the element (in this case <img>) that the action will be performed on. We must then add a value to this call, the value in this case is the image location which is a string of characters and must be opened and closed with web standard single quotes (for your own good, don’t use any fancy pancy characters – MS Notepad will produce non-fancy characters).

document.getElementById("mylink").href — This inturn retrieves from the HTML document an element (<a>) with a name/id mylink, then again will select the element’s href attribute. That way, we can change the url/link location of the element.

setTimeout("Action to be performed", miliseconds); Another JS function, that performs an action on a given time. In this tutorial, we want to change the image and its link location every 5 seconds (there are 1000 milliseconds in second) so we will call (the Action to be performed) a function (imgOne() etc..) to do so, which will inturn do the same and the beat goes on, in programming jargon, this process is looped. ;)

Here’s the HTML.

<a href="http://jesus-themessiah.com" id="mylink"><img src="images/mysite.gif" alt="Rotating Images" id="myimg"></a>

Here’s the javascript. Copy/paste it in a .js file or between your page head tags between the

<script type="text/javascript">
<!--
//-->
</script>

..tags. Hope that made sense.

if (window.addEventListener) {
window.addEventListener('load', imgOne, false);
} else if (window.attachEvent) {
window.attachEvent('onload', imgOne);
}

seconds = "5";

function imgOne()
{
document.getElementById("myimg").src = 'images/mysite.gif';
document.getElementById("mylink").href = 'http://jesus-themessiah.com';
setTimeout("imgTwo()", seconds * 1000);
}
function imgTwo()
{

document.getElementById("myimg").src = 'images/mysite2.gif';
document.getElementById("mylink").href = 'http://thebruneysite.com';
setTimeout("imgThree()", seconds * 1000);
}
function imgThree()
{

document.getElementById("myimg").src = 'images/anothersite.gif';
document.getElementById("mylink").href = 'http://touchinglives.org';
setTimeout("imgOne()", seconds * 1000);
}

According to the above JS, myimg refers to the id attribute in the above html code snippet <img> tag.  mylink refers to the id attribute in the html (above code snippet) <a> tag.

imgOne(), imgTwo() and imgThree() are functions, on <body> tag load, coded as onload="function();", you may choose to call any function, but for the purpose of this tutorial we’ve called imgOne() first. So within the html <body> tag, we’ll do <body onload="imgOne();"> After 5 seconds, the next function [imgTwo()] is called, and then after another 5, the following function [imgThree()] is called. This process is repeated. If you’d like to add more images, simply add a new function, say imgFour() and edit accordingly. In order for the process to be looped, your last funtion should re-call function one. You’ll see in the code above, function imgThree() re-calls imgOne() on line 18: setTimeout("imgOne()", seconds * 1000);

Thats pretty much it!

• Please note that if your site <body> tag contains other ‘to be loaded’ functions, they may prevent the script from ‘working’. Try removing your other functions from the <body> tag to see if this is the case, if it is so, you may want to first call the imgOne() function. If this disables your other functions within onload, then add the following code at the very top of your rotator script:

if (window.addEventListener) {
window.addEventListener('load', imgOne, false);
} else if (window.attachEvent) {
window.attachEvent('onload', imgOne);
}
seconds = "5";
//.....

Another option would be to simply place one function within onload that would call all your other site functions. For instance: onload=”AllFunctions();”.

function AllFunctions() {
function imgOne()
{
//.....
}
function imgTwo()
{
//.....
}
function imgThree()
{
//.....
}
function OtherFunctions()
{
//.....
}
}//end AllFunctions

If you do not want your images to automatically start loading, then onclick=”imgOne();”, onmouseover=”imgOne();” etc are also available for use.

This script works in IE5+. :) Also works with my best friend Firefox and other smart browsers like Google Chrome and Safari.

Hope you enjoyed this one.

Cheers.

Download file.

 
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Custom Controls for WMV Videos

24 Aug

Adobe Director doesn’t offer a video controller for *.wmv videos like it does for *.mov videos. So we have to create our own controls.

All you need to do is add the needed codes to your sprites, that is your text, image or buttons that may control (pause, stop, play, rewind) the video.

The following stops the video from play and sets the playtime of the video to 0. Thus the video will begin from the start when the play ‘button’ is again.

on mouseUp me
sprite("video").stop()
end

This begins playtime for the video.

on mouseUp me
sprite("video").play()
end

The following pauses the video and the playtime is not reset. Thus, once the play ‘button’ is used again the video will continue to play where it was paused.

on mouseUp me
sprite("video").pause()
end

This resets the playtime of the video and thus the video once again re-starts.

on mouseUp me
sprite("video").rewind()
end

For all codes above, one needed not use the mouseUp handlers. If you wanted a video to begin playing/to stop/to rewind or to pause once the cursor is in a particular region, then you could have used the
handler:

on mouseWithin me

Also, do note that you didn’t have to use the sprite name video as in the line sprite(“video”)... You could simply use the channel number in which the movie sprite
is located.

 
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Text Style Rollover!!!

24 Aug

In Macromedia Director, I mean Adobe, there are two main forms of text which you can add to your movies and even add various interactivity to these text types. These are regular and field text. Briefly, regular
text allows for paragraph formatting, kerning, line spacing and other functions found within the Text Inspector menu. On the other hand field text

“is standard text controlled by your system software, the same as the text you see in dialog boxes

and menu bars. Director does not anti-alias field text or support paragraph formatting and tabs for fields”

Basically, regular text has the advantage of the features offered by the Text inspeactor allowing for various formatting. However, it is best suited for large types. On the contrary, field text
is best suited to create the smallest possible text cast members that don’t need to be anti-aliased.

To add regular text, simply:

1. Left click on your text tool within Director, it resembles an ‘A’. Then left click again onto your stage. You may now edit the text to your liking.

or

2. Go to Insert>Media Element>Text

To create rollover on the regular text add the following script piece(s) to the cast member.

on mouseEnter
member("text").fontStyle = [#bold,#italic,#underline] --style change
member("text").forecolor = 3 --changes the colour of text
member("text").fontSize = 20
end
on mouseLeave
member("text").fontStyle = [#plain]
member("text").forecolor = 50 --changes text to some other colour
member("text").fontSize = 14 --changes size of font
end

or..

on mouseWithin me
member("text").fontStyle = [#bold,#italic,#underline]--style change
member("text").forecolor = 3 --changes the colour of text
member("text").fontSize = 20
end
on mouseLeave
member("text").fontStyle = [#plain]
member("text").forecolor = 50 --changes text to some other colour
member("text").fontSize = 14
--changes size of font
end

That’s it!

 
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CSS-Floating DIVs

24 Aug

This tutorial is related to CSS layout techniques. If you seek something like this, then this tutorial might be useful to you.

<div class="box_container">
<div class="box_header">Simple Div-ing</div>
<div class="box_content">
<div class="panel1s">
<div class="panel1_sub">
Your body text here.
</div><!--End panel1_sub -->
</div><!--End panel1 -->
<div class="panel2s">
<div class="panel2_sub">
Your body text here.
</div><!--End panel2_sub -->
</div><!--End pane2s -->
<div class="panel3s">
<div class="panel3_sub">
Your body text here.
</div><!--End panel3_sub -->
</div><!--End panel3s -->
</div><!--End box_content -->
<div class="box_footer"> © You!</div>
</div> <!--End of box_container-->

Here’s the CSS styling

*{/*This is optional, I like to remove all browser default settings and then add my own later.*/
margin:0; padding:0;
}
.box_container{  /*Once you give this a defined width, you can also add  margin: auto auto; to centre the container*/
width: 400px;
color: #fff;
font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size:12px;
}
.box_header{
background:#003333;
text-align: center;
}
.panel1s, .panel2s, .panel3s{
float: left;
width: 133px;
margin:auto auto;
}
.panel1s{
background: #336600;
}
.panel2s{
background:#FF6600;
}
.panel3s{
background: #663399;
width: 134px; /*Over writes previous 133px width so that the panel meets the edge of the box_container*/
}
.panel1_sub, .panel2_sub, .panel3_sub{
padding: .3em .3em;
width: 100px;
margin:auto auto;
}
.box_footer{
/* clear: both; drops the div below the floating ones. You could have just used clear: left; but this only clears divs floating to the left, which is what we need, but if you added a div to float right, then you wouldn't have to worry about editing the code. clear:both; clears the DIV in question from all previously floating divs.*/
clear:both;
background:#000033;
text-indent: 10px;
}

You would have noticed that I added .panel#s_sub divs to the .panel#s and none for the .box_header and .box_footer, you are allowed to add more sub/nested divs. I only did for demonstration purposes, sub/nested divs allows you to format inside text and the like without messing with the
main structure. In the example, I gave the .panel#_sub paddings, which would keep the text and any other elements away from the edges.

If you wanted to keep spacing between your panels, then you could have just given your .panel2s, and .panel3s margin-left (or margin-right) settings. Whenever you add margins, you must also consider your widths of your floating divs, any panel that breaks beyond the container will drop. Let’s say you added a margin-left: 40px; to .panel2s, then this would push .panel3s to the edge, once .panel3s passes the boundering width of the .box_container, it will no longer float next to it’s previous brother, en otras palabras, .panel3s will drop! So therefore, the wrapping container, in this tutorial .box_container, should have a width large enough to contain its child DIVs/panels.

The limits are endless with what you can do. Hopefully this tutorial gives you ideas on how to take things further. Of course, your own site would have larger widths, the demonstrated one is just small to fit neatly in this page. :)

For additional info, it is important that you give your main container (in this tutorial it’s .box_container) a fixed width, because if a user toggles with the window size, making the window size smaller than the size of your panel containers, then you will notice that the panels will drop, and you’ll lose your float:left; effect. So do remember, that floating divs need fixed width properties, and by fixed I mean don’t use width: auto or width: xxx%, use px units or so.

Download file.

Cheers.

 
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