Continue reading »]]> Time again for another 60 second tutorial from the guys (and gals) here at SoftwareNewsDaily and SoftwareMedia.com. In this tutorial, Kyle -our resident multimedia wizard- will show you how to create a custom brush in Adobe Photoshop CS5 in less than one minute.

Video Transcript
Kyle here again from SoftwareMedia TV. Last time I showed you how to create a custom brush in Illustrator, and today I am going show you how to do the same thing in Photoshop.

What you want to do is you want to start with an image. It can be an image you import into Photoshop or something you draw. I’m going to do a little squiggly line.

Then, using any selection tool (it can be anything… it can be the magic wand, the lasso or the marquee, it doesn’t matter) select your image.

Go to edit > define brush preset. And you can name it whatever you want. I am going to call it “SoftwareMedia TV.” Hit “Enter” and it will show up in your brush presets. Deselect, and grab the paintbrush tool, and here’s your brush.

You can edit the parameters by going into the brush panel, and you can add noise, smoothing, anything you want, it’s really all up to you. You can do whatever you want with this brush.

It’s a really awesome tool, so go forth and experiment.

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Continue reading »]]> Are you tired of experimenting with your filters only to not get what you wanted in the first place? Tired of knowing how you want your pictures to look, but lacking the tools to make it happen? If you answered yes to these questions, read on to check out 5 Free Plugins for Photo Shop as well as Free Photo Shop Filters.

1. Seamless Workshop

The Seamless Workshop plugin is perfect for pattern creations or simply making textures. Its fullest potential is unlocked when used in conjunction with other elements to create new and unique designs. Also create a surrealistic modification.

2. Craquelure 3D

Similar to the Seamless Workshop filter above, Craquelure 3D is another free plugin for Photo Shop that helps create abstract designs and textures. The only difference this has against compared to Seamless Workshop is that it generates designs without the need for a picture to base it all on.

3. Pixelate

Yearning for that vintage cartoon effect? Or maybe you’re just looking for a new approach to your design? Then try the free Pixelate plugin for Photo Shop.

4. iEmboss

Tired of using the old bevel and emboss layer style in Photo Shop?  Then give the iEmboss plugin a try! It gives the old bevel and emboss a new twist, with different simulations like iron castings, melted glass and more.

5. Face Control

Face Control is a fun, free Photo Shop filter that allows you to control people’s faces in a photograph. It’s amazing how a few little adjustments can change a face completely!

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Continue reading »]]> Photoshop Express also known as Photoshop.com received a face lift when Adboe released a redesigned site to the public. Photoshop Express is a great lite version of Photoshop for making small photo modifications quickly and easily. With the new Photoshop.com users no longer have to create an account to use the great features. You can simply navigate on over to the site and start using the magic of Photoshop upon arrival. In order to save photos or create and share albums you will still have to create an account. The new uploaded makes it a lot easier to import photos as well, import all sorts of formats including camera raw files. Also included in the update is a great new organizer, filtering through images is now easier than ever.

If you like Photoshop Express then you will love Photoshop CS5. Check out the full version today.

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Continue reading »]]> Take your summer vacation memories to the next level with the best in creativity software.

Summertime, and the living is easy. I hope you are enjoying summer as much as I am. I feel as if the bustle of spring and early summer  has quieted down a bit and now we are into those hot and lazy days. It’s prime vacation time. Here is a photo I took while kayaking at the Bear Lake National Wildlife Refuge last week. It was nice to get away and be forced to stop and see nature, in the form of a White Faced Ibis, Sandhill Crane, Snowy Egret, Kestrel and a Huge. White. Pelican.

It was beautiful, but I digress.  I am not much of a design software buff, but since I do work at a software company and have access to all sorts of programs, I decided to edit some of my vacation photos into more usable and interesting depictions.

In my first attempt I wanted to remove the photographer’s kayak from the picture so that all you see is yours truly. To teach myself how to do this I used an article from Layers Magazine outlining how to remove elements from a photo. (If I were using CS5 I would have tried out the Content Aware Fill feature Brian wrote about back in May.)

Original Photo

Edited Image

I’m betting the Photoshop experts out there will have some criticism of my editing skills, but for my purposes this will work perfectly.

For my second editing effort I created a “painting” with my photo using Corel Painter. For this I used Kevin’s Corel Painter Tutorial, which I must say was very easy to follow.

Original Photo

Painted Image

It’s amazing how you can preserve your memories in unique ways with computer software. At SoftwareMedia.com we carry such a variety of design and creativity software programs. Curious which programs rank best of the best creativity software? Find out which programs fared the highest in our user tests (user ratings are coupled with popularity to determine the best of the best).

Best of the Best: Creativity Software

Best for User Friendly Photo Editing

Photoshop Elements
Make your photos look extraordinary with Adobe’s pared down version of Photoshop. This is a great way to get your foot into the door editing photos. It is both powerful and simple, and allows you to change a photo’s size (without distortion), fix photos, whiten teeth, adjust color and give your photos a fresh look with artwork templates. MSRP $99.99.

Runners Up: Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo, Roxio Toast Titanium

Best for Professional Photo and Image Editing

Adobe Photoshop
This one may seem a bit obvious, but when you’re the best, you’re the best. Adobe continues to innovate and be the industry-leading standard in professional image editing software. It is used worldwide by professional photographers, serious amateur photographers, and designers who want to perfect their digital images. MSRP $699.00.

Runners Up: Photoshop Lightroom

Best for Cool Photo Effects

Corel Painter
Make your photos look like they were illustrated with unique brushes, materials, and textures that mirror the look and feel of their traditional counterparts. This program is fun to use and with some basic instruction it is also very intuitive to learn. MSRP $429.00.

Runner Up: Autodesk Sketchbook Pro

Best Scrapbooking Software

My Memories Suite Digital Scrapbook Software
Build beautiful pages from scratch or make a page using one of the templates provided within this affordable software. Print individual pages, create a professionally-printed hardbound book or create a movie which you can view on DVD, iPod, online and more. Download it instantly or have it shipped to you. MSRP $39.97.

Runner Up: Scrapbook Factory Deluxe

Best for Home and Small Business Publishing

Microsoft Publisher
If you are used to the Microsoft Office interface, using Publisher will be a breeze. You can easily create a myriad of publication types, such as brochures, newsletters, postcards, greeting cards and more, without needing any prior graphic design experience. Get started easily with built-in templates and font and color schemes. MSRP $139.99.

Runner Up: Encore Print Shop

Best for Professional Desktop Publishing

Adobe InDesign
With InDesign you can design professional layouts for print and digital publishing. You get precise control over the elements of your design down to the tiniest pixel. Built-in tools help streamline design, preflight and publishing, while included interactivity, animation, video and sound in page layouts help to fully engage readers. MSRP $699.00.

Runner Up: QuarkXPress

Best User Friendly Video Editing

Sony Vegas Movie Studio
Produce spectacular HD movies with powerful tools for video composting, color correction, and surround sound. Edit video in nearly any format including HDV and AVCHD, working simultaneously with standard and high definition in the same project. Customize window layouts, burn DVDs, create slideshows and more – all within an easy to use interface. MSRP $99.95.

Runners Up: Adobe Premiere Elements, Corel VideoStudio, Roxio Creator

Best Professional Video Editing

Adobe Premiere Pro
Offering breakthrough performance for video production, Premiere Pro enables you to work dramatically faster. Eliminate transcoding and rewrapping with tapless workflows. Move from script to screen faster with Adobe Story (offered online), among dozens of other new time saving improvements. MSRP $799.00.

Runner Up: Sony Vegas Pro Production Assistant (plug-in for Vegas)

Best Priced Design Suite

CorelDRAW Graphics Suite
This suite has it all, and for less than a third a cost of the cheapest Adobe Creative Suite. You get tools for vector illustration, page layout, photo editing and tracing, web graphics and animation – all in one tightly integrated suite. The programs and easy-to-learn high quality design tools that let you do more than you thought possible. This suite is perfect for professional and aspiring designers alike. MSRP $499.99.

Best Overall Design Suite

Adobe Creative Suite
Once again, Adobe proves to be the best, but not without a price. Of course if price were not a consideration, the Adobe Creative Suite Master Collection would be the ultimate suite for a professional designer. But with a suggested retail price of $2,599, you may be wise to choose your edition based on the features you need. (Try our CS5 version comparison). Adobe has provided six different editions to address the creative need of a variety of different disciplines.

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Continue reading »]]> Today we decided to check out the Top 10 Best Selling Photography Programs at SoftwareMedia.com. The results didn’t surprise me much, as the list pretty much goes along with my preferences. If you are looking to upgrade how you work with your photos check out this list of popular and useful programs.

1. Photoshop Elements 8 – Photoshop Elements has always been popular seller in our catalog, the program gives you some of the great industry standard features in Photoshop, in an easier to use, more straight forward photo editing program. If you don’t need everything Photoshop offers, this is an affordable option for great photo editing software. It’s available on Mac or Windows.
2. Photoshop CS5 – Photoshop needs no introduction, it’s been around for years and is the industry standard for Photo Editing. In CS5 you can find great new features like Content Aware Fill and more. Check out Photoshop CS5 for Mac or Windows today.
3. Corel Painter 11- If you are looking for editing software with better tools for drawing and painting look no further than Corel Painter 11, both designers and our customers agree this is an awesome program for working with photos. Check it out for Mac or Windows today.
4. PhotoImpact Pro 13 – PhotoImpact is an affordable solution for those looking for great photo editing tools such as retouching and raw editing, without paying the high price tag for Photoshop. There are also great organizational tools included to manage your photos. Check it out on Windows today.
5. iPhoto as part of iLife ’09 – iPhoto is Apple’s great photo editing and managing program included as part of the new iLife suite. In iPhoto 09 there are new ways to organize photos, by geo tagging them, or sorting by date. It even has facial recognition capabilities meaning it will automatically organize your photos by person. Check iPhoto out on your Mac today.

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Continue reading »]]> One of the most talked about new features in Photoshop CS5 is the Content Aware Fill feature, a feature that renders a new background automatically when you delete a section of a photo. Some of the examples that have been floating around the internet really impressed me, so I decided to give it a go for myself.

In this example, I cut the skier out of the photo completely. Content Aware Fill did a pretty decent job filling in the background but left a bit of a smudge.

In the next example I decided to delete a few elements that I didn’t like in the image. I removed the flag on the jump, the shadow below the skier, and the watermark in the corner of the image. Content Aware Fill was able to render a pretty much flawless background for all the elements I took out.

For my last example, I chose to test Content Aware Fill with some basic photo editing. I was able to remove glare from the sun, and imperfections in the snow within seconds, much faster than old Photoshop techniques.

Overall Content Aware Fill is an awesome feature, that will save alot of people time during the Photo Editing process. However Content Aware fill is not yet perfect, and leaves room for improvement. The amount of time you save is reason enough alone to upgrade to Photoshop CS5, I recommend checking it out today!

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Continue reading »]]> I don’t know if you’ve heard… last week… April 12th… highly anticipated… Adobe launched their next installment of the famously popular creative suite software series, Adobe Creative Suite 5! There’s been ample hype for the new release, particularly Adobe Photoshop CS5′s new content-aware fill tool. But, let me just graze over some highlights, in case you haven’t been aware of the press that’s been going around…

• Photoshop: Content-Aware Fill – remove an image element and immediately replace the missing pixels (I know, I already said it, but it’s so cool!)
• Photoshop: Refine Edge — precisely detects and masks the trickiest types of edges, such as hair and foliage, while eliminating background color contamination
• Photoshop: Puppet Warp — precisely reposition or warp any image element, such as straightening a bent arm in a photo or manipulating the landscape to generate a new perspective
• Flash: Text Layout Framework — professional-level typography capabilities with functions like kerning, ligatures, tracking, leading, threaded text block and multiple columns, as well as advanced multilingual typographic and layout features for more than 30 languages
• Flash: Code Snippets Panel — quickly inject code into projects for timeline navigation, actions, animation, audio and video
• Premiere Pro: NVIDIA GPU-accelerated Adobe Mercury Playback Engine — open projects faster, refine effects-rich HD sequences in real time and play back complex projects without rendering
• After Effects: Roto Brush — isolate moving foreground elements in a fraction of the normal time
• Illustrator: Bristle Brush —  set bristle characteristics such as size, length, thickness and stiffness, as well as brush shape, bristle density and paint opacity, for simulated life-like blending
• Illustrator: Variable Width — control stroke width at any point along a path, align dashes to corners and path ends
• New Program: Adobe Flash Catalyst — transform designs into interactive components without writing code

If you’re more of a visual person, there’s also a really long video at the launch site that gives an overview of the latest features in the new Adobe Creative Suite –tell me how it is, if you make it through the whole thing ! Adobe also posted a few coinciding press releases: Adobe Unveils Creative Suite 5 Product Family; Adobe Unveils Creative Suite 5 Product Family (Multimedia); Adobe Delivers Creative Suite 5 Design Premium; Adobe Announces Creative Suite 5 Web Premium; Adobe Debuts Creative Suite 5 Production Premium; Adobe Launches Photoshop CS5 and Photoshop CS5 Extended; InDesign CS5 Powers the Transition to Digital Publishing; Adobe Introduces Flash Catalyst CS5; Adobe Releases Illustrator CS5; Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 Redefines Nonlinear Editing; Adobe Helps Prepare the 21st Century Workforce with Creative Suite 5.

For a quick, easy-on-the-eyes rundown, check out this Business Wire page.

Now, are you as excited as I am?! Well, hold that thought for just a bit longer… According to all those releases from Adobe, “Adobe Creative Suite 5 products are scheduled to ship within 30 days, with availability through Adobe Authorized Resellers, the Adobe Store and Adobe Direct Sales.” Remember, these press releases are all dated April 12th, the same day as the launch. So, are we going to see availability by May 12th!? Well, most retailers (that even have the product up) are taking pre-orders but without saying a date. Amazon has disclaimers that say June 30th on the product order pages. Could it be possible that SoftwareMedia.com have CS5 available before the online retailer giant? Hm… Mid-May perhaps? Hmm…..

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Continue reading »]]> Michael and Kevin hit me with a few links today that mention Adobe‘s April 12th launch of Creative Suite 5. I’ll admit, I’m stoked (my wallet may not be, but I am)!! I’m even more stoked after seeing sneak peek for the Content-Aware Fill tool in Photoshop CS5 — keep reading to see what I’m talking about…

It’s all been very exciting here at SoftwareMedia.com — some of us looking at it as a great marketing opportunity and others of us just projecting our Adobe Creative Suite nerd-self. However, before you start checking your bank statements to make sure you’ve got the cash to shell out for this new edition, CS5.org reminds us…

Before you get too excited, let’s get one thing straight: This is the unveiling, or basically an introduction to the public. Adobe is going so far as to call it a “launch” day but you will not be able to buy the software that day. Adobe has not announced a release day yet, but October 2010 makes sense to me (just a guess).

Never fear. Even before the April 12th launch, Adobe has an incredible… jaw-dropping… eye-popping… mind-blowing… earth-shattering…. uh okay, it’s just insane MAGIC before your eyes. Check out this video demonstration of the Content-Aware Fill tool in the soon-to-come Photoshop CS5:

What did I tell you? MAGIC! Make sure to head over to the launch site so you can join the launch event with Adobe in April.

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Continue reading »]]> SoftwareMedia.com is itching to give away a few copies of Adobe Photoshop Elements. And SoftwareNewsDaily.com is making it easy to win! Show and tell your favorite photoshopped image. Submit an entry by simply commenting on this post and submitting your favorite photo.

Just hit the “browse” (on FireFox or IE) or “choose file”  (Chrome) button towards the bottom to add an image to your comment. Click on the image to your right for a bit more direction.

Okay, a bit more in depth…

• Be sure to tell us why that photo is your favorite in the comment text. A simple sentence or two will suffice; we aren’t looking for novels or short stories here.
• Submit a valid email because if you win, that’s how we will be contacting you.
• All images must be in JPEG format, as you won’t be able to upload other formats…
• Deadline for submissions is March 31, 2010.
• Enter as often as you’d like! Just make sure you are following the above guidelines for each submission.

That’s it! SoftwareMedia.com staff will be vote for the winners by April Fool’s… we thought it’d be a fun tie-in for April 1st — tricky images for a tricky day. We’ll have three copies of Photoshop Elements ($99.99 MSRP value!) to give away. Start showing us those entries!

Oh, if you know the details, crediting the original artist(s) is encouraged.

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Continue reading »]]> What can I say? It’s a Friday… the week has finally dragged on and there isn’t much longer until the weekend officially starts. Rather than writing on one topic, I thought I’d share the best of what was going on today, in the world of tech and software at least…

Chinese Schools Spurred Online Hacking
Remember the series of cyber attacks not too long after Google first threatened to pull out of China? Although it was never proven at the time, China was highly suspected of launching those attacks. It’s recently been discovered that two schools in China may have been responsibly. According to the New York Times, “a series of online attacks on Google and dozens of other American corporations have been traced to computers at two educational institutions in China, including one with close ties to the Chinese military.”

Google Goes (and Gets More) Green
The Federal Regulatory Energy Commission has given Google the power to “sell energy, capacity and service at market rates,” according to Wired. And now, it can start going green like they’ve been hoping… In the summer of 2007, they had 9,212 solar panels powering their Mountain View headquarters. With the FREC order, the entire Google-polis could be solar powered and maybe even your home! Of course, consumers will have to pay for service… Again, another step in taking over the world.

Photoshop Turns 20 (and transforms into an iPhone app)!
Okay, it’s really not that much of a headliner… but I thought it was cool. There’s a dedicated 20th anniversary site that Adobe created, complete with an informative and interactive timeline. Who knew, layers didn’t appear until five years after the birth? A specially created iPhone app was also given out to a group of selected attendees at the National Association of Photoshop Professionals 20th Anniversary Event. “I really wanted to do something special to commemorate 20 years of Photoshop, and the best thing I thought of was a nostalgic iPhone app,” says Russell Brown, Adobe’s Senior Creative Director.

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