Software updates
Вторник, Апрель 20th, 2010
With Photoshop, you can pretty much do almost anything.� In essence, you're playing god of the computer art world, creating and editing whatever suites your taste.� If you want to play Zeus, then here are the steps to create lightning by using the tools that were already programmed in Photoshop.
Step 1: Making Clouds
You can't have lightning unless you got clouds, same in Photoshop.� First, create a new layer and name it Lightning.� You can name it whatever you want, but Lightning seems to be the most logical in this case.� Second, make sure your foreground and background colors are set to default, black and white, respectively.� This can be done manually, or you can just press D.� This is the same for both PC and Mac.
Once the colors are set to default, go to the Filter menu at the top of the window and choose Render, then Clouds.
Step 2:� Make More Clouds
Now, one cloud won't just create lightning, it's pretty harmless.� Again, same in Photoshop.� This time, instead of rendering another cloud, go back to Filter, Render, and then Difference Clouds.� Once that is done, go to the Image menu at the top of the window and select Adjust, then Invert.� This should result in something that looks like lightning.
Step 3: Finishing Touches
To finish, double click on the empty area to the right of the layer name, and then pull in the upper-left slider.� You'll want to split the sliders by holding down the Option key for Mac users and the Alt key for PC users.� The right half of the slider should be moved all the way to the right edge.� Next, grab the left edge of the slider and start moving to the right until you are satisfied with the look of the lightning.� To have an idea of how far you need to move it to begin making it look like lightning, you're going to have to move the slider almost all the way to the right as well.
As with Photoshop and many problems of life, there are multiple solutions and multiple paths.� This is just one of many ways to make lightning in Photoshop.� Fiddle around with this method and also combine it with other methods that you already know to make this lightning look more realistic.� After all, creating art is like magic, you can't give away all your secrets.
A new TechNote has been published that is a rapidly evolving portal for administrator-centric documentation and tools that provides:
- A formal enterprise administration guide in PDF format.
- Comprehensive details about enterprise deployments, configuration, and security.
- A living list of new topics added to the admin guide.
- Links to other major admin-centric libraries.
- Links to Tools
This is an excellent resource for anyone who needs to administer deployments of Adobe Acrobat and Reader. Go to the link below and bookmark it!
Check out Enterprise Administration of the Acrobat Family of Products
Last month we wrote about Crocodoc, a new Y Combinator-funded company that makes it very easy to upload a text document or PowerPoint deck and mark it up online to share with your colleagues. Unfortunately, it was also pretty bare boned — you couldn’t even save your edited document to your hard drive. Today, that’s changing: Crocodoc has rolled out some key new features (including the ability to save) that make the service significantly more flexible, and also pits it more directly against Adobe’s Acrobat Pro.
Aside from the ability to save to PDF, the new version includes a freehand pen tool, a tool to convert any website to PDF (which you can then add notes to), and a new API. In a few days, the company will be releasing its application on Google’s recently-launched App Marketplace. The service will also be rolling out a Flash-based embeddable document viewer (similar to what you’ll find on DocStoc and Scribd) that lets you both view and mark up embedded documents.
CEO Ryan Damico says that these features make Crocodoc more competitive with Adobe’s $400 Acrobat Pro software because the free Acrobat Reader most people have doesn’t allow them to mark up and save their documents (personally, I’ve been avoiding any software with the word ‘Acrobat’ in its title for years). Damico does acknowledge that there are still plenty of premium features that Crocodoc doesn’t have that Adobe’s paid software does, but says that this basic editing/saving functionality is what most people are after, anyway. Damico says that in the long term, Crocodoc is hoping to “do to Acrobat what Gmail did to Outlook” by taking a widely used desktop application and bringing it online.