Photoshop Disasters

One of my favorite sites that I like to check out on a regular basis is Photoshop Disasters. The site is a freakshow gallery of Photoshop gone wrong.  The site is driven by user submission and acts as both entertainment and education.  There mission:

“Have you seen a truly awful piece of Photoshop work? Clumsy manipulation, senseless comping, lazy cloning and thoughtless retouching are our bread and butter. And yes, deep down, we love Photoshop.”

Be sure to check the site out, it’ll make you look at things a little differently.

Cool Video Prodution Widgets for Your iPhone or Laptop *UPDATED*

Monday, June 02, 2008
I often find I have too much information to remember (and for some reason people expect me to be able to spout pixel aspect ratio numbers like a multiplication table). Fortunately the fine folks over at Digital Rebellion has solved this (and for free). They offer several video widgets that do important math, these run on a web browser or iPhone (and a couple can run offline as well).

Video Footage Calculator – Calculates how much storage you’ll need for your footage type and duration.
Web – iPhone version – Offline version

Film Rate Calculator – Determines how much film you need for a particular scenario.
Web – iPhone version – Offline version

Aspect Ratio Calculator – Determines the aspect ratio for different footage formats.
Web – iPhone version

Depth of Field Calculator – Calculates depth of field for many camera sensors.
Web – iPhone version

Pixel Aspect Ratio Calculator – Determines relationship of Pixels for many digital formats.
Web – iPhone version

Lens Angle Calculator – Helps calculate the lens angle for a given sensor size and focal length.
Web – iPhone version

Power Load Calculator – Calculates the load on a circuit to see if it is excessive. You can also calculate the minimum circuit breaker size for the given load.
Web – iPhone version

These tools are cool, free, and useful.... three points that make them a must have for my iPhone. 

Dock Options for Mac, Windows, and iPhone

Looking to get organized? If your Desktop is as bad as mine, you need all the help you can get. Here are three Dock options for Mac and Windows users that truly help clean things up.

Overflow
I’ve recently switched to an alternative style dock for OSX (giving it a thorough tryout). Overflow from Stunt Software has been a welcome addition to my productivity. You can quickly configure a floating window with multiple tabs (I’ve organized mine by job categories). You can launch applications as well as open documents using a few clicks or keyboard shortcuts. It’s a useful tool and one that helps the more visually-oriented crowd who are confused by an overloaded Dock.

ObjectDock
Now Windows users can use a Dock! ObjectDock is a welcome replacement to the Windows start menu. With several layout options (and more themes to download) this is a very visually appealing option. You can organize Windows shortcuts as well as see running applications. What I really like is the constant development cycle with small incremental improvements (okay, I’m a TQM junky).

MockDock
If you own an iPhone, then be sure to bookmark MockDock. You can find a plethora of iPhone-ready web apps, plus organize them for easy browsing. Make shortcuts to favorite phone numbers and even find some cool games. The site is constantly updated and makes good use of the unlimited data plan that comes standard with the phone. Even if you don’t have an iPhone, this is a useful site to bookmark as a lot of user-friendly web utilities and fast-laoding websites can be found. You can also use the features of the newer iPhone software to store these sites as buttons on your home screen.

Using Video Chat On Set

Author and video podcaster Richard Harrington explains how to use your laptop’s video chat capabilities to create a live video feed from your location for remote viewing and interaction.

Analyze Video Files on a Mac with Video Spec

Looking for a useful application to tell you more about your video files?  Mac users should check out the free (and still in pre-release) Video Spec software tool.  The tool is a little rough around the edges (it has one major bug which is the aspect ratio of DV and HDV is not reported accurately) but it is still truly useful.

• The latest version has been tested on Mac OS X Tiger and Leopard.
• It is compatible with PowerPC and Intel Mac (Universal Binary).
• This version is localized in english and french.



PSV#78 Making Selections: Alpha Channels

Instructor Richard Harrington explains how to use the color detail in an image to quickly make a great alpha channel.

Get Photos from Aperture to Final Cut Pro

Sometimes third-party plug-ins fill obvious holes… this is truly the case here.  Wouldn’t it make sense to be able to quickly send photos from Apple Aperture to Final Cut Pro? You’d think that sort of thing would be built right in (its not).  Fortunately the fine folks over at Connected Flow over an elegant (and free) solution.

“The Aperture to Final Cut Pro plugin lets you take your images stored in Apple’s professional photo management application and send them directly to a video sequence in Final Cut Pro. From within Aperture, you can select photos, set their order and duration and select transitions between frames.”

The Aperture to Final Cut Pro plugin is a free download and is provided on an as-is basis.  I find it works great.

Motion Templates in Final Cut Pro

For the past few years Apple has been pushing Motion as a tool that should be in every editor’s toolbox. The problem has been, not every editor has had the time or patience to learn Motion. In Final Cut Pro 6, Apple recognized this and has integrated Motion templates directly inside of FCP.

To launch a Motion template in Final Cut Pro you have three options:
1 Choose the Effects tab in the Browser > Master Templates.
2 Choose the Generators pulldown in the Viewer > Master Templates.
3 Choose the Sequence menu > Add Master Template.

Choose the template that you want and load it into the Viewer. Once the template has been loaded in the Viewer, clicking on the controls tab will let you change various parameters of the template. There is only one catch:

Not every parameter of a template is editable in Final Cut Pro. Text entry, size, tracking and populating drop zones with footage are the only parameters you can adjust inside Final Cut Pro.

If you need to edit a template to, for example, change the text color, or swap out a background, you need to edit the template in Motion. Here’s how.
1 Edit the template from the Viewer into your sequence.
2 Right-click on the template and notice at the top of the contextual menu you have two options: Open in Editor and Open Copy in Editor. Since the template is a prebuilt one from Apple, you can’t save over it (it’s locked) so you need to choose Open Copy in Editor.
3 Make your changes in Motion and save the file. Your changes will update in FCP.

Like this tip? It comes from the book
Final Cut Studio On the Spot from Focal Press.

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