Hello December, Welcome Christmas!

 It's been while since I last posted on my blog due to busy schedules and a lot of thoughts just floating around. Now that I've got my fingers set on the keyboard, it's time to start writing and what better than to write about the most emotion holiday of the year - Christmas!

Christmas Tree (Year 2007)

Just had an emotional viewing  of Coca-Cola's Where Will Happiness Strike Next: The OFW Project and reminded me immediately of how I miss my family. They're only 4 hours away by bus from where I am but having them right in front of your eyes and be able to hug and kiss them is very rewarding. The video is a work of art and some of it could be scripted but Coca-Cola still did a great job.

Christmas for most Filipinos is all about being with your loved ones on this special day of love and sharing and starts during the "ber" months. Back when I was young, people used to start hanging decorations on the start of September, the first "ber" month but as of today most people start setting up Christmas decorations during December. A reason could be the poor economy which results in increased prices for food and in-turn consumer goods and products including the Christmas decorations.

Back at home, our Christmas tree was put up by my mother and sister but I have yet to see how it looks like for I have not gone home for a couple of months now. When we got older, my mother made it a tradition to decorate our Christmas tree and put gifts around them although the gifts or should I say boxes are empty, they're also part of the decorations. Anyway, this made the tree a lot more beautiful to look at.

To feel the spirit of Christmas, I also downloaded a compilation of Christmas songs most of which I have never heard but still convey a message about the spirit of Christmas. I know Christians celebrate it because of Christ's birth but almost all cultures in the world celebrate it because it is the time of the year where love emanates from all sorts of people.

Copyright 2011 Notes on Hobbies | Hello December, Welcome Christmas!

Photoshop Interface – Palettes and Menus

There are a lot of palettes in Photoshop and what you are seeing right now is my Essentials workspace. A workspace is the lay-out/set-up of your interface which is also very customizable as you’ll learn later on. A palette for example is the history and character palettes which you can view right at the top using the Window Menu. Again, just like your tools, if you don’t know what an icon stands for, just put your mouse on top of that icon to know its name.

You can also expand or collapse palettes using the black or gray double arrows at the top of that palette’s window just like in your toolbox. Also, the common thing about palettes is the palette menu found at the top-right corner of the palette. Function keys can also be used as a shortcut for some of the palettes. For example, hitting F7 would bring access to the layers palette. Hitting F7 again would hide the layers palette. Other functions include the F8 which brings up the info palette and F5 for the brushes palette. You don’t have to memorize all of them, just keep a few of the handy ones especially the palettes you use more often like the layers and history palettes.

We now go to our Menus Tab. I’ve had a brief discussion of the Photoshop Menu in this post: http://notes-on-hobbies.blogspot.com/2011/09/photoshop-basics-photoshop-interface.html but I’ll give a brief discussion of it here. Here you have the Image Menu where you have the image size command and also a quick look at the Adjustment sub-menu where you have your color correction tools and the most favorite of most Photo Editors, the Filters Menu. This is where you can apply special effects to your image at a click of a button. The usual Edit Menu where you can cut or copy your selection and some transform commands which gives you the option to rotate and warp your image.

And here is the File Menu. In the File Menu, you can create a new file, open files or images and save them – just like the usual File Menu in other programs. Now we’ll go to creating a New Document. On the File Menu, you can either click New or press Ctrl+N on the keyboard to go to the New Dialog Box. You can use this New Dialog Box to create a blank image or start from scratch if you don’t have an image to edit. At the top is where you can give your new image a name. I’ll name this new document – Imagery. You can set the width and height of your image and where you can also have the option to change the measuring unit you are going to use. For now we’ll use inches. Set it to 5 by 5 inches and leave it as a low resolution file with 72 pixels per inch. Set the color mode to RGB and click on OK.

The same thing with web browsers like Firefox and Google Chrome, Photoshop also has tabs which allow you to switch between opened files. Way down here at the bottom is the zoom field. There are two ways in which you can change the zoom level of your work. You can either type directly the zoom level you want like zoom to 50% view or zoom in to 150% or you can press and hold Ctrl on your keyboard and press the (+) plus or (-) minus sign. To the right of the zoom field is the info area. By holding the alt key on the keyboard and clicking here, you’ll get an info pop-up box stating the width, height, channels, and resolution of the image. Again, just hold the alt key and click on the area.

If you want to work on your images a bit closer, you may want to try pressing F key to expand the image screen to full for a better viewing experience. If you hit F one more time, a message will pop-up informing you about full screen mode and its features. Just click on Full Screen and your image will be isolated on the screen.

The cool thing about the full screen mode is if you remember the different shortcut buttons to get to the different panels, tools and so on, they will still work. For example, if I press V, I can instantly access the move tool, P for pen tool and B for brush tool. Hitting F again will take you back to the default view. I’m much more used to having all the tools and panels around but if you like, you can use the full screen mode with the gray background by pressing F then hitting the tab key to remove all the panels and use only what you need and when you need it.

For example, when you want to look at your layers, you can just press F7 and the layers palette will appear. When you are back at the default view, you can press shift+tab and the palettes will disappear but the options and applications bar will remain at the top. Shift+tab will get the palettes back again.

Copyright 2011 Notes on Hobbies | Photoshop Interface – Palettes and Menus

Photoshop Interface - Toolbox

Photoshop Interface - Toolbox To start off this tutorial on Photoshop's Toolbox, I've opened up a file for you here so you will see the true Photoshop interface when there's a picture open. I've got my Coca-Cola Can Glass Collection here (http://notes-on-hobbies.blogspot.com/2011/07/complete-6-coca-cola-can-glass.html).

The default location of the toolbox is at the left-most side of Photoshop but you can move this anywhere you see fit. There are many tools in Photoshop and if you're a beginner or seeing Photoshop's interface for the first time you may get overwhelmed but don't worry, with constant use and practice you'll be editing your photos without the help of tutorials or guides.

As I put my mouse on top of one of these tools, a tool tip will pop up. The tool tip helps you in identifying the name of that tool and also, if you can see the letter inside the parenthesis, for example in the Marquee Tool, the letter M is inside the parenthesis. This is the keyboard shortcut for that tool and you can press M on the keyboard to easily switch to the Marquee tool. Other tools also have shortcut letters like the eye-dropper tool – letter I and the eraser tool – letter E.

Shortcut keys are important for fast and convenient editing. For example, I want to select a portion of the picture I just press M to use the Rectangular Marquee tool and select an area on the picture. However, I want to switch to the move tool so I press V which is the shortcut for the move tool. So now I can move to another side of the image or move the image. There are a lot of tools but don’t be discouraged, just familiarize yourself with them and in time, you’ll be using the shortcuts with no problem.

If you noticed, most of the tools have a small black arrow at the lower right. This means that this tool has a fly-out menu which contains other tools under a certain tool category. For example if we click and hold the left mouse button on the Lasso tool, a fly-out menu shows two additional tools – the polygonal lasso tool and the magnetic lasso tool.

To easily access these tools, you can press and hold shift plus the shortcut letter of that tool and you can easily switch from any of the tools in that category. So if I press shift and M, I can switch from any of the Marquee tools and this applies to all the tools. Another way to switch from one tool to another in the same category is to press and hold alt then click the icon of the tool. This will make the tools rotate from one sub-tool to another.

For the last part of this tutorial, we have the color area at the bottom of the toolbox. The default colors for this are black for the foreground and white for the background. The foreground and background colors are important in other aspects of Photoshop but for now the basic is that the foreground color is the color that will show when you start brushing on your canvas. For example you use red for the foreground color; you can then start brushing red onto the image. To quickly get back to the default, just press the letter D on your keyboard.

In previous versions of Photoshop, the toolbox used to be shown in two columns. To do this you can press the two white arrows at the top of the toolbox and you can easily switch from one to a two-column toolbox. Another way to do this is to double-click on the gray bar at the top of the toolbox. You can also press and hold this to drag the toolbox anywhere you like.

Copyright 2011 Notes on Hobbies | Photoshop Interface - Toolbox

Attack of the QWERTY Phones

 Attack of the QWERTY Phones...

Copyright 2011 Notes on Hobbies | Attack of the QWERTY Phones

I am Missing Photoshop

It's been a while since I've done a lot of editing in Photoshop and missing it makes me do these.

Copyright 2011 Notes on Hobbies | I am Missing Photoshop

How to Download Torrents

Torrents nowadays are very popular especially for those who are downloading TV series'. Torrents are much more convenient for those with slow connections because with torrents, you can stop, pause, and start what you are downloading at any time. The case with direct downloads is if your connection is interrupted, you will be disconnected and you have start downloading again from the first byte of information.

To get started, first you need to have a BitTorrent Client and I recommend to you one of my favorites - Utorrent which is available at utorrent.com. Once at their website, just click the Free Download button and your download should begin automatically. Install the software by running the download file, no hard task here - easy to install.

After installing, your only one step away from downloading your favorite TV series'. The next thing you need to do is find yourself a website that offers free download of torrent files. I can recommend two websites:

1. http://thepiratebay.org

2. http://isohunt.com

From there, you can search for the title of your TV show or look at the Top 100 torrents, they usually have the highest number of seeders.

Copyright 2011 Notes on Hobbies | How to Download Torrents

Unigosyo - Uniload

Unigosyo is a Philippine formed company back in February 2011. This was made possible with the success of Uniload.biz - a business option offered back in October 2010 to give more Filipinos to involve themselves in entrepreneurship. If you are interested in owning your own business, then you might give Unigosyo a try. They actually offer a few business options but the most famous and cheapest to own is Uniload.

Uniload as you have read above was started back in the 20th of October 2010 and it was through Uniload that Unigosyo.com was made. It was founded by Rommell Tan through partnership with Load Central. Unigosyo offers entrepreneurs a cellphone loading system that can load all networks including all online games and Facebook. This is a good system for loading and has its many advantages.

To join or become an entrepreneur of Uniload, you need to be registered first either as a dealer or retailer. As a dealer you need to pay Php 3,988 for registration in their system. A dealer has the capability to have many sub-dealers under him and giving him a Php 500 commission for every sub-dealer he recruits.  A dealer can also make many retailers under them. The dealer is the only one who can supply load wallet for the retailer under him.

A retailer is the one who loads the consumer. To become a retailer, you need to pay a dealer Php 500 - Php 200 is for the registration which will go to the dealer and Php 300 is for the initial load wallet. Once you are registered, you can now start loading your consumers. A recommended sim card to buy if you're a retailer is a SUN network sim card. For only Php 15, you can have load for about a month without worrying of expiry. This is because loading using your cellphone does not consume your load, you just need to have a maintaining balance of Php 1. If you're a retailer, it is also recommended to buy one of the MyPhone MyNegosyo ready cellphones so you can just type your customer's number and password instead of typing a long SMS with the corresponding codes for loading.

It's an easy to do business and you can even become your own boss.

Copyright 2011 Notes on Hobbies | Unigosyo - Uniload

Photoshop Basics - Photoshop Interface

For my first tutorial, I'm going to discuss about Photoshop's Interface. Photoshop, through the years, has evolved from a professional-only tool to a photo-editor even for a 12 year-old. Your first look at Photoshop may make want to stop looking from it or else you'll vomit but give it time and you'll see its true powers.

I'll be showing a screenshot of a Photoshop window and discuss what each number holds. By the way, I am using Adobe Photoshop CS5 for this tutorial.

Click image for larger view

1. Menu Bar

The Menu Bar displays 11 menus which when clicked will display a drop-down menu related to that button.

File - Let's you create new files, open files/images for editing, use Adobe Bridge™, save files, import/export, automate, and print your images.

Edit - Undo, Redo, Copy, Paste, Transform (resizing), and Preferences.

Image - In here you can change the color mode of your image/project, make the necessary adjustments, Auto adjust tone, contrast, and color; change image/canvas size, crop, and duplicate layers/images.

Layer - You can create new layer or other types of layers. All editing related to layers can also be found here like merging layers.

Select - This menu has everything to do with your current selection. You can also save your current selection and load them for later use. You can even manipulate your selection by increasing it by any amount of pixels that you like or even feather (smoother edges) your selection.

Filter - This menu probably is the most important and most convenient tool you need in Photoshop. Basically, this menu will give you options/presets of photo edits that you can do like making your pictures in cartoons. Using a combination of these filters can give you endless results.

Analysis - let's you analyze your image.

3D- is all about the settings for making your images look more 3-dimensional.

View- to make rulers, guides, and slices available. You an also zoom in or zoom out in the view menu.

Window - let's you look at the different sub-menus for each category like brushes, actions, and history.

Help - let's you update your version or know more about the product and of course - HELP.

2. Tool Bar

The tool bar let's you use shortcuts for the most commonly used tools in Photoshop. I'll leave a tutorial for an in-depth guide for this one.

3. Options Bar

The Options bar shows you the available choices you have for each tool. It typically lets you customize your tools. For example the brush size, types, and smoothness.


4. Workspace

The Workspace Menu lets you choose, customize, or save the interface of Photoshop. You can select which windows appear especially the ones you commonly use and lets you save those as a preset.

5 and 6. Windows

The image above contains the windows for the History and Layers, two of the very important and commonly used windows in Photoshop. I'll also leave a tutorial for the kinds of windows and their functions.

Now that you had a taste of what Photoshop has to offer, start exploring. You can never learn Photoshop in a day even if you spend the whole 24 hours studying it. It takes time, patience, and practice. If you managed to read the whole article up to this part then I think you've got what it takes to not really master Photoshop but to learn and apply it.


Copyright 2011 Notes on Hobbies | Photoshop Basics - Interface

This is what happens when you don't pay your rent

You think you can just walk right in without consequences?

Think again. You are already 6 months overdue.

SO STICK WITH IT!

Copyright 2011 Notes on Hobbies | This is what happens when you don't pay your rent

Photoshop Basics: The Tools of the Trade

As the 100th post in my blog,  I will be starting a new trend of Photoshop tutorials. Photoshop was first introduced to me by no other than my curiosity. I knew there were photo editors out there for the PC but I never knew about Photoshop until I met this picture while I was browsing for PC software installers to buy.

This picture made me curious about what Photoshop is capable of so that day, I bought myself a Photoshop installer. The actual CD is still with me and I've been using Photoshop since that day. I've made my first edits on my photos and got me into the business of photo editing real quick.

Although I have not used other photo-editing softwares, Photoshop has already satisfied my thirst for making impossible shots, possible. At first it was difficult but constant use and practice with a lot of video tutorials made me love using it. It will be more difficult especially if you don't have the passion for it. I think I had a great time learning Photoshop because of my passion for photography and photo editing.

I will make tutorials based on what I've learned throughout the years. There are a lot of tutorials out there and mine could be similar to them but mine will be according to the level of beginners. Some of the tutorials I read were complicated and I had a hard time understanding them. In my tutorials, I'll make sure you'll understand them in one reading.

First tutorial will be the tools used in Photoshop - what are they for and how to use them in a picture.

Copyright 2011 Notes on Hobbies | Photoshop Basics: The Tools of the Trade

E-BLUE SCORPION Full Auto PRO Gaming Mouse

I just bought my first gaming mouse a few days ago and already felt the difference after using it for almost 3 days. I usually buy my mouse from CD-R King where it is cheap but the difference between cheap and regular priced mouse is very noticeable especially when I do my photo editing. Although the mouse I bought was released back in August of 2009, it is still packed for gaming.

The mouse I bought is from E-BLUE called SCORPION, a Full Auto PRO Gaming Mouse. It's a big mouse at 126x63x40 mm, I am having a hard time adjusting as the previous mouse I've been using is smaller in every angle. The mouse is actually symmetrical which is advantageous for left-handed users.

APPEARANCE

The mouse has 7 buttons, 3 common and 4 with special functions. On the left of the mouse are two buttons useful for surfing the web. It is for back and forward browsing on web pages. On the right are two more buttons. One is for DPI switching which you can use depending on the game you're playing. The button below it is the Auto Fire button which in most cases is also called the 2x click, very useful in First-person/Shooter games. Then you have the traditional 3 buttons (left, right, and middle mouse buttons).

The mouse is in black, glossy finish with rubber handle on the sides for grip. There mouse has a 1.8 meter long cord. I find it quite short or maybe it's just me. The design looks a bit like Razer's gaming mouses but it still looks in fashion, the name itself (SCORPION) is stylish.

SPECIFICATIONS

SCORPION Game Mouse
Dimensions of mouse:	126x63x40mm
Length of cable:	1.8m
Weight:	1000g
Amount of keys:	7keys
Working mode:	optical
Resolution:	3200DPI
Travel distance:	250km
Button life:	5,000,000times
Rated voltage:	3V

I've used the mouse on my games and they are quite responsive and goes where I want it to. The 3200 dpi is very smooth and my editing of photos in Photoshop has improved especially in the use of the Lasso Tool.

Overall, the mouse is much better than your average and very cheap compare to other gaming mouse with same features. I bought this mouse at Octagon, SM City Iloilo for Php 750.00.

P.S.

I also found out that Concept Computers, Iloilo is now selling Razer Gaming Mouse. They have about 4 varieties - the Orochi, DeathAdder, and Goliathus with the latter as the cheapest at 1,700, the rest are above Php 2500.00 up to Php 4000.00 for the Orochi.

Copyright 2011 Notes on Hobbies | E-BLUE "SCORPION" Full Auto PRO Gaming Mouse

Medieval Castle Defense - Android Game of the Week

 I've recently been on the hunt for tower defense games for the Android and found 1 game that really challenged my strategy. It's easy at first so you can get the hang of the game and give your confidence a boost. As the stages go farther, the challenge becomes harder and harder. This is not just any mindless tower game where you can just put towers anywhere and win the game, this is about strategy and timing.

This game on Android is called Medieval Castle Defense. It is not just your usual tower defense game, it's a strategy game that can give your mind a bend. It's a game developed by KANAK, a Korean company. The game is fun and exciting up until the very end. You will first encounter a very easy stage and then as the stages move forward so does the difficulty. It will make your brains think as to what combination, placement, and timing of upgrades for your towers are necessary to complete the stage.

If you've finished the game, see what you can do more by doing the challenges in each world and finishing each stage perfectly. At times you may get stuck at a certain stage but never give-up, just adjust what towers you build and upgrade first and try different positions for them. It may take some time but trust me, when you finish the stage it will all be worth it.

See some screenshots below courtesy of the Android Market.

Download the game and challenge your self to a game of strategy and defense. It's for free and in complete edition already.

Copyright 2011 Notes on Hobbies | Medieval Castle Defense - Android Game of the Week