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Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 for Windows Review

Michael Kwan — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:06:57 +0000

When it comes to photo manipulation software, the first name that comes to mind for most people is Adobe PhotoShop. That may be the preferred solution for many people, but it is also one of the more expensive options in the market. For people who are looking for a more affordable alternative, Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 could be a good option.

The MSRP has this Corel software listed at about $80, but many online retailers (like Amazon) sell Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 for as little as $35. That’s a very small investment to get a much more robust photo editing package than Microsoft Paint.

Working in much the same way as PhotoShop Elements, Corel’s X2 is meant to be a comprehensive solution that can be used to view, sort, process, and edit images at will.

As expected, Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 comes with a series of standard utilities for cropping images, adjusting contrast, and doing other basic tasks, but it also has a series of unique tools for altering your photographs and digital images.

For example, the HDR (High Dynamic Range) Photo Merge tool lets you combine two or more bracketed exposures of the same scene to produce one “perfect” exposure. This way, you get a better balance between shadows and highlights.

Corel has also included a number of so-called “makeover tools” for red-eye removal, blemish removal, teeth whitening, virtual suntans, and even a “thinify” tool to make people look skinnier.

For the amateur photographer who needs to process a large number of images, going through these pictures one-by-one can be a very time-consuming task. That’s why Corel has included Express Lab.

This streamlined mode allows you to edit several photographs at the same time, applying changes to many pictures in the same time that it normally would take you to edit just one. These include cropping, rotating, brightness and saturation adjustment, and red-eye removal.

Other notable features and tools include perspective correction to “straighten” angled pictures, depth of field control, object removal (an automated version of the clone stamp in PhotoShop), and RAW image editing.

Is Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 enough to dethrone Adobe PhotoShop as the de-facto photo manipulation software for consumers and professionals alike? Probably not, but it’s more affordable price point coupled with a number of consumer-friendly quick tools certainly makes for an attractive option.

Camtasia for Mac Review

Michael Kwan — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 04:07:20 +0000

Have you ever seen those cool tutorial videos on YouTube where they walk you through a brand new software package or show you how an online tool works? Have you ever wanted to try your hand at screencasting too but don’t know where to start? One of the better solutions you may consider is Camtasia from Mac.

The original Camtasia software was made available for Windows users, but TechSmith has now created a version that will work for all the Apple fans in the audience. With Camtasia for Mac, you’ll be able to record and import all kinds of rich content, but the focus is on showing the contents on your computer screen as it happens. This is “like pointing a camcorder at your Mac, only much higher quality.” This goes well beyond the integrated screen recording tool in OS X 10.6, since it is a full capture and edit studio.

In addition to recording the exact contents of your computer screen, Camtasia will also allow you to use the audio from a quality microphone (or the built-in mic) and video captured from the iSight or a DV camera connected via firewire. It is also possible to import your existing logo images, title slides, music tracks, and other similar content.

If you have used Camtasia Studio for Windows, then you may find that Camtasia for Mac may be missing some features. The Mac version does not allow you to pause recording, add markers, integrate surveys, or add-in PowerPoint. A major feature missing from the Mac version is the ability to record just a region of the screen. This may come up in a future edition.

The editing interface will be a familiar one for people who have used video editing software. There is a multi-track timeline along the bottom, a left pane for audio and video effects, a center pane for previewing your movie, and a right pane for showing settings for your current object. These can all be adjusted, shifted, or eliminated as needed.

The SmartFocus technology will automatically zoom in to follow your actions while editing. This ensures the legibility of the text and the sharpness of the details. Other features include a series of embedded objects (like arrows and bubbles), a range of transitions, automatic uploads to YouTube, support for iPhone viewing, and a variety of filters. There is also the ability to highlight a single window by dimming the background.

Camtasia for Mac can be purchased for under $100, but there is a free 30-day trial available on the TechSmith website if you want to take it out for a test drive first. If you plan on doing any screencasting, it’s definitely worth checking out.

Enjoying the Brilliant Autumn Colors

Michael Kwan — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 04:32:21 +0000

Each season brings something unique. In the winter, you may have the opportunity to go outside and enjoy the snow. In the spring, you can get refreshed in the rain or gaze into the beautiful blossoms in the trees. In the summer, you can hit the beach and soak in the sun’s rays. What about the fall? That’s when you get the brilliant autumn leaves.

It is during the autumn that the leaves lose their green, changing to take on a wide range of reds, oranges, and yellows. This can make for some incredible landscapes, not to mention the finer details of each beautifully colored leaf. Before you grudgingly take on the task of raking the leaves, take a moment to appreciate their beauty.

The fall colors are only around for a few short weeks, but thanks to the magic of photography, we can enjoy their brilliant colors all year round.

PhotoShop Tutorials for Web Design and Layouts

Michael Kwan — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 03:30:19 +0000

You could be looking to make a particularly attractive website that can then serve as an online portfolio of your work. Maybe you want to design a snazzy new template or theme that can go with your WordPress blog. Perhaps you want to introduce an Apple-inspired navigational toolbar on your website and it would be great if you could make this from scratch.

Whatever the case, web design is more important today than ever, since it has become increasingly difficult to differentiate your website from someone else’s. This is just as much about artistic expression as it is about creating a user-friendly experience. You website should look good, but it should also be unique.

With that in mind, take some time to peruse the PhotoShop tutorials highlighted below. These can teach you how to use the photomanipulation software for the purposes of web design, graphic design, and the creation of website layouts.

Design a creative design studio layout

Design a Furniture layout or a Manufacturer layout

Create Appleâ€™s Navigation Bar in Photoshop from Scratch

Design a Transparent Website Layout in Photoshop

Create a Fun Illustrated Toy Site Design in Photoshop

Business Layout #6

Recreate tabloid style headers

Design Quick and Easy Colorful Photoshop Swirls

Create a cool web 2.0 navigation bar

Classy Glassy Navigation Buttons in Photoshop

Create a stuck in the ground icon

Create an Header using Vector Shapes in Photoshop

Awesome 3D Box Effect in Photoshop

How To Create A Advertisement Banner In Photoshop

How to Create a Large Header with a Simple Western Scene

Recreating pixilated and low resolution logo

Design a creative cosmetics layout with Photoshop

Design a Sleek and Modern Hosting Layout

Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 Review

Michael Kwan — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:04:58 +0000

There are two major hurdles when it comes to the full Adobe Photoshop program for regular consumers. First, the program can be too complex or complicated for the average computer user to understand. Second, it can be too expensive to fit into tighter budgets. At the same time, iPhoto may not offer enough features for many people. That’s where Adobe PhotoShop Elements 8 comes into play.

The newest addition to the popular PhotoShop Elements series comes with a number of upgrades and new features that are perfect for touching up those treasured family photos. There is a reason why PhotoShop Elements is the number one selling consumer photo-editing software.

Adobe PhotoShop Elements 8 introduces a number of new features, including the ability to whiten teeth and make skies bluer with a single step, preview adjustments before choosing the right one, soften and retouch skin surfaces, and share photos via your Apple iPhone.

This latest version also offer enhanced functionality for creating professional albums, scrapbook pages, greeting cards, DVD labels and more. A wide selection of customizable themed layouts are included as part of the bundle.

Since it integrates with iPhoto, PhotoShop Elements can be there to offer more powerful image editing when you need it without interfering with how you choose to organize your pictures. Access to the different brushes, effects, and tools is reasonably easy to understand as well.

One of the more interesting new functions is the ability to recompose your photos to any size without distortion. Normally, this kind of photo manipulation would require much manual input and some serious PhotoShop skills, but Elements makes it easy.

This way, you can take a landscape-oriented picture and make it a portrait style one. The feature will automatically remove the undesired elements and move the desired elements closer together. There is no distortion to the key subjects.

Another great feature is called Photomerge Scene Cleaner. If you take multiple pictures of the same scene, but no single image came out quite the well you had hoped, you can effectively combine them into one ideal picture.

Photomerge will create a composite of the different input pictures, removing the undesirable elements that showed up in errant photos. For example, if you took a picture of a friend but a car drove into frame, you can use the information from a second picture to remove that car.

For consumers who want more features than what iPhoto can offer but don’t want to spend the big bucks on the full PhotoShop package, Adobe PhotoShop Elements 8 for Mac can be a very suitable option. The Photomerge and photo recomposition features are particularly appealing.

Buy Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 [Mac] from Amazon.com.

A Creative Look at Text as Art

Michael Kwan — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:45:56 +0000

The old saying tells us that the pen is mightier than the sword. We are also told that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what happens when the picture is actually comprised of words itself? How are we meant to interpret that kind of application?

I think we would all agree that the emotional response to a font face like Copperplate Gothic Bold is distinctly different from the emotional response that someone would have with Arial Narrow. The words themselves hold a great deal of meaning, but how these words are presented also weighs heavily on how we react to their meaning. Is it soft or hard? Heavy or light? Dark or light? Traditional or modern?

While we could turn our attention to traditional paintings and even digital artwork, we should not forget about the impact that creative use of text can have as well.

The Secret Macro Life of Flowers

Michael Kwan — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 01:58:57 +0000

There’s something to be said about the inherent breathtaking beauty of flowers. Whether they be orchids or roses, chrysanthemums or daisies, their delicate petals speak volumes about what nature has to offer and how we really should stop and smell it all.

While we can oftentimes walk right by just about any old flower bed or wild flower garden on our way to the office or classroom, we have a lot more to appreciate when we get really close to admire the finer details of each individual flower. The macro mode on a camera is great for this exact purpose, offering a fantastically unique perspective.

With their bright colors and delicate fragrances, flowers will continue to entrance people for years to come. Let’s take a closer look at these natural forms of beauty.

PhotoShop Brushes to Recreate Reality

Michael Kwan — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 02:11:25 +0000

Adobe PhotoShop is the photo manipulation software package of choice for professionals and amateur enthusiasts alike. It can be great for touching up real photographs taken from a real camera, but it is also a useful tool for producing original artwork from scratch. For both of these purposes, the use of custom PhotoShop brushes can be a worthwhile endeavor.

The basic assumption that many novices may have about PhotoShop is that they can only use the pre-determined brushes that are available in the program. They may assume that the brush is only of the conventional type, but there is literally a world of other PhotoShop brushes to try. There are a few that are built into the software package by default, but many enthusiasts have created unique brushes of their own and they’re sharing these on the Internet.

If you are looking to introduce some novel elements to your pictures with realistic objects but without having to introduce full independent images, then these reality-recreating PhotoShop brushes are for you. Whether you need blood splatter, realistic hair, or burnt paper, there’s a brush for you.