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Let’s start learning Clipping Path.

Before starting:

Expert designers always use short cut keys in their design process. So we will also learn it using short cut keys.

Here are the steps to make Clipping Path:

1. Start Adobe Photoshop. To do this click on: Start → Programs → Adobe Photoshop.

2. Open your original photo. Click on: File → Open; and select your photo → Open.

3. Now select the pen tool. You can select pen tool by clicking on the icon of pen tool in tool box. But it is always better to use short cut. In this case the short cut key is “P”.

4. Set the pen tool. In the option bar select “paths”- option, check “Auto Add/Delete box and select “Exclude overlapping path areas” option.

5. Zoom in to your image (average zoom is 400%). You can choose the zoom tool from the tool box or simply press “ctrl” and “+” Key together as short cut.

6. Choose the hand tool to go to an edge of your selected object in the object. Press down the space bar the pen tool will turn into hand tool.

7. Draw the path. While drawing the path use “ctrl”, “Alt” and “Space bar” key according to necessity.

• Ctrl key – Use it to select any specific area of a path and to move any anchor point and their handles
• Alt Key – Use it to cut any anchor points handle. To draw a sharp corner it is use
• Note – As the “Auto Add/Delete” check box is checked before, you can add or delete anchor points on paths by simply clicking on it.

8. Save the path: In paths palette double click on work path, type your path name and save it.

9. Convert the path into selection: Hold down the ctrl key and click on the path name in the path palette. While doing so the cursor should take a different shape.

10. Copy the selected area to a new layer: Just press “ctrl”+ “C” and “ctrl”+ “V”. New layer will be automatically created.

11. Turn of the original and you will get the clipping path object.

12. Save It: Save this path in PSD or TIFF format.

Lets pretend you have some lineart. Also, lets pretend that he or she needs, long brown hair.

Make your picture and grab a hard edged, 19px brush with size and opacity toggled to your stylus. Choose a nice colour…( #8F7055 ) and draw a rough show of how you want your hair.

Shrink your brush size to about 13px and select a darker colour. I sued #58422E.

Now add some shape to your hair, following the flow of the hair ( visit some drawing tutorial sites if you don’t know what I mean by that ).

Shrink your brush again to about 7px and select a lighter colour than your base colour. I used #C2A68D.

Now I chose the light source to be somewhere in the left, so I added the lighter colours accordingly. Now we’re onto the fun part…adding some detail…wo0t.

This bit isn’t hard, just time consuming. All you have to do is use a smallish brush, say 4px and draw in some strands. Just select darker and lighter colours and alternate in using them. The more you use the lighter colours the lighter the hair, and vice versa.

Now we can move into the 2nd to last step.

Shrink your brush to 2 or a 1 px brush and repeat the previous step.

Well, I suppose you could say you’re done at this stage but that would be sooo boring. It still looks like there is something missing , right?

There isn’t if you leave it like that but if you want to polish it off? Read on.

Yay! The hair are so cool now!

All I did was change the brush mode to Color dodge and dropped the opacity of the brush to about 30%. Dropping the opacity is important or else you overkill your pic then and there. And it dies. Don’t add to much glow, or esle the pic dies as well.

I hope this had helped anyone in any way.

Page 1 : Making it mmmmmmove

After seeing several of the Mmmmotion contests, I think most of the mistakes have to do with incorrect subject focus or just plain “overdoing it.” I tried to address both issues here. Hope some of you find this useful… For starters, there are several perspectives you can take when setting a picture to motion. Take the following race car pic in its original form…

Page 2
You can choose to set yourself in motion but the result is usually not appropriate for what we are trying to do.

While realistic… this would be the view if your head was traveling at 100 mph.
Instead, consider how things would look if you were actually taking a picture. You would set either the car (foreground) or the road and trees (background) as the focal point of the image.
Page 3
Focusing on the car, your background would appear to move like this (note: your wheels would still be moving, and thus… radially blurred)

If your focus was more distant (the trees perhaps), then the car would appear as the moving component in the image, like this

For this tutorial, we will go with the background as our point of focus.

Page 4
Step 1: Using the polygonal lasso tool, crop out your car from the background

Cut and paste the cropped car into a new layer so that only the background remains

Since a true moving object appears semi-transparent around the edges, we will need to clone in some of the edges where we cut the car out.
Page 5
Select your cloning tool and set the opacity to about 75%. Begin carefully cloning in the egdes so that you have a smaller exposed (cleared) area with somewhat fuzzy edges.

Our last step is to select the car shape we originally cut out and use the motion blur tool to set it in motion.
Make sure the direction of the blur is consistent with the direction the car is actually traveling in. Be cautious not to overdo things here… your car is not traveling at light speed! A setting of 15-20 pixels will probably be enough

That should get you started with a laterally moving object. Now what do you do if the object is coming at you??
Page 6
You still need to select some point of focus before you start. This would once again be an object in the foreground or the background itself.
Take my recent Jackass entry for instance. In this pic, the focus is on the shopping cart and the people. The blast cloud behind them is what I chose to set in motion.

Step 1: Make a layer copy of your original source image then crop out those parts of the image that should remain still for the most part (because they are the “focal point” of the image)

Copy the cropped area of your layer copy and paste it into a new layer like so, then make it invisible in the layers pallet.

Page 7
Now go back to your original layer copy and apply a radial “zoom” blur to it. Once again, try not to overdo it. A setting of 15 pixels should be enough for our purposes

Now select the cropped layer of the cart and people (making it visible in the layer pallet) and using the eraser tool, partially erase the edges of the image that are closest to the blast center. Setting the eraser opacity to 50% should do nicely

Now you should have something close to this with the focal point fairly sharp and the background blast in motion.

The key to any of this is “moderation”… don’t overdo the effect and you’ll get a pretty realistic Mmmmotion pic!!

So you want to get into link exchanging, but no one wants to trade with you because your page rank sucks.

Guess you need to spoof a reasonable Google PR like a 5, 6 or 7.

Well the good folks at SEOdarkteam (among others) demonstrate how you can spoof or fake a PR 10 or any Page rank you want.

Here’s how you Spoof a Google Page Rank:

1. Buy a domain.
2. 301 Redirect the domain either in you .htaccess, PHP header (anything server side) to a page with the desired page rank. It’s better to redirect to something relevant. For example, if you are doing a mortgage site, redirect to a mortgage site.
for php the code is:

<?php
header(”HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently”);
header(”location:http://www.anyurl.com”);
exit;
?>

3. Link to the page with the redirect from another of your sites that gets regularly spidered by Google. Since you use the Alexa Toolbar, you should have several sites that are spidered daily by google.

4. Wait for google update. Google Updates happen about every three months. The last update occured the week of July 15th, 2005.

5. Now you use cloaking software that says:

<?php
if(ip is in list) (list of google IPs){
header(”HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently”);
header(”location:http://www.anyurl.com”);
exit;}
else
{
header(’Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1′);
//Show your site
};
?>

The main drawback is that your site will not actually be indexed by Google as long as you are redirecting the Googlebots to your competitors site, so it’s really only good for link selling / trading.

BTW, don’t claim to have a certain PR when you are selling - that’s fraud.

This further illustrates how useless Page Rank has become in measuring a sites importance.

Buyer Beware.

There is a divide in the SEO community between Black Hats and White Hats. SEO White Hats try to always play by the rules and organically grow sites over years and years. SEO Black Hats focus on winning the search engine game and making money today.

Let’s face it: as long as there is a logical-sounding, convenient (useful) label floating around, it will get used and mis-used. That is the story of “Black Hat SEO” and “White Hat SEO”. They are poor quality labels, poorly-defined (in practice), yet so easily “understood” and so convenient that they persist… year after year.

Personally I believe that these labels are good for Google, and bad for SEO practitioners. I believe that by labeling SEO as “black” or “white”, Google gains an opportunity to influence the popular perception of SEO in it’s favor, where otherwise it would not have such an opportunity. Of course Google has used this to its advantage many times (such as the times it has cautioned web site owners not to trust SEOs, because they may employ Black Hat tactics…F.U.D.). As I have said before, there is only one color of SEO worthy of effort, and that’s Green SEO.

So while it is unfortunate that we have to accept these labels, we do have to accept them because our clients think they understand them. Therefore, it is also essential that we properly define them.
That’s really quite easy to do, especially when you start with the definition of “Black Hat” SEO:

Black Hat : techniques or tactics which have been defined by Google as in violation of the Google “Quality Guidelines” (see “Quality Guidelines, which outline some of the illicit practices that may lead to a site being removed entirely from the Google index”) . The Black Hat label applies to those methods specifically mentioned n the “Guidelines”, other methods and/or tactics or circumstances mentioned by Matt Cutts in his blog, in Matt’s comments on others’ blogs, or just about anywhere anyone from Google says anything that strongly suggests Google took action against a site for some specific reason. Black Hat SEOs know what they are doing is defined as BAD, and do it anyway for specific reasons (not usually including “get banned”). I like to think of Black Hat SEOs as opportunists. They see an opportunity to gain, and take it, managing the associated risk. Please don’t confuse ignorant SEOs with Black Hat SEOs… the ignorant ones are those who execute on Black Hat (evil) tactics without managing the risks (either out of ignorance or folly doesn’t matter to me here).

White Hat: techniques or tactics which can be defended as NOT being contrary to the spirit of Google’s expressed quality desires, by citing Google’s own published guidelines, Matt Cutts’ blog posts, or comments posted in other places, or just about any other Google communication. I like to refer to White Hat SEOs as “conservatives” of the SEO world… where things are viewed as BLACK or WHITE (GOOD or BAD), and the letter of the Google god is taken verbatim as TRUTH. Yes, there is a bit of a timeline problem with that approach (if Matt said it was bad in 2002, is it still bad?) but that’s just the tip of the White Hat iceburg.

Grey Hat (or Gray Hat): Since the color gray is between black and white, logically Grey Hat SEO sounds like a label for the middle ground. But it’s not. Because White is pure white and grey is a shade of black, we have confusion. Some say Grey Hat is NOT White Hat and is just a shade of Black Hat. So let’s step away from the coor wheel and define Grey Hat as the practice of tactics/techniques which remain ill-defined by all that published material coming out of Google, and for which reasonable people (not White Hat SEOs, mind you, but “reasonable people”) could disagree on how the tactics support or contrast with the “spirit” of Google’s published guidelines.

So here we have the Definitive Definition of Black Hat vs. White Hat vs. Grey Hat.

In summary, Black Hats know they are taking risks, defying some of Google’s expressed behavior guidelines. White Hats will only do what Google says is ok, and Grey Hats will try things which they believe are ill-defined by Google, without first asking permission.
According to Google, White Hat SEO is good, Black Hat SEO is bad, and most Grey Hat SEO is risky (ill-advised — see note below).

To the Black Hat SEO, White Hat SEO is non-competitive, Grey Hat SEO is a safe bet, and Black Hat SEO is the only thing that will beat good Grey Hat SEO.

To the Grey Hat SEO, White Hat SEO is effective only for SERPs where there are no Grey Hat or Black Hat SEOs, Black Hat SEO is for high-risk, high-yield opportunities, and in most cases, the term “SEO” means either Black Hat SEO or Gray Hat SEO. The rest is just good web mastering.

To the White Hat SEO, Black Hat SEOs are cheaters who need to be reported to Google, Gray Hat SEOs are quitters who need to be reported to Google (just in case it might get them penalized and dropped from the SERPs), and White Hat SEOs are good people worthy of reciprocal link exchanges (especially third-party exchanges), raving blind testimonials, and unconditional support.

I hope that helps clear up some of the confusion, and we can all move on from here. I suppose a good first step would be to gather every word ever uttered by Google on SEO, and update each item for the today tomorrow today (every day?), so we can know exactly what is Black or White. Then we can write down every other possible approach to web design, including those not yet invented, and make a big comprehensive list. We can then set up a meeting with Matt Cutts to label them as either Black or White. Whenever he has to “ask the right people at Google and get back to us”, we will label the item as Grey. That way we, as an industry, can use these new definitive definitions of Black/White/Grey to our advantage and clear up the confusion once and for all. If we are successful, we can publish an book, listing the Black Hat, White Hat, and Grey Hat SEO tactics everyone can use. Or better yet, just list the White Ones (since by definition, non-White tactics will be ill-defined or ill-advised).

Note: Google includes a threat statement in its Webmaster Guidelines that alludes to Grey Hat SEO as ill-advised, and indirectly calls it “spam” : “It’s not safe to assume that just because a specific deceptive technique isn’t included on this page, Google approves of it. Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit…If you believe that another site is abusing Google’s quality guidelines, please report that site… spam reports we receive are used to create scalable algorithms that recognize and block future spam attempts.” — emphasis added.

The big boys in the computer industry want you to continue thinking the way you are. The major desktop computer manufacturers thrive on consumers lack of knowledge and old ideas about desktop computers and computer hardware to drive sales of new desktop computers.

It works in their favor to keep these myths alive, because their business depends on it. So what are they?

Myth 1: You need top of the line computer hardware

Maybe some years ago this might have been true with older computer hardware, but times have changed. When computers were much slower than they are now, the latest version of any computer hardware increased speeds noticeably and allowed new possibilities from your desktop computer.

Those increases from computer hardware no longer yield such a huge increase in performance. With the basic uses of the desktop computer set and been in place for a while now, speed increases no longer result in real world benefits for most desktop computer users.

What was great computer hardware last year is still good enough now.

Myth 2: Computer hardware is the domain of Geeks

When personal computing was coming into its own, you really did need to be a Geek to know what was happening. For those old enough to remember, imagine life without Windows and hacking away at the command line, as used to be the case. Some still do, but I wouldn’t want to do that again.

Desktop computers are such commonplace that the basics of computer hardware can be understood and researched with the minimum of hassle. The ball is on the consumers side of the court. You no longer need to be a geek, just a little knowledge that is now readily available.

Myth 3: A faster desktop computer will speed up the Internet

Possibly. If you are running 5-year-old computer hardware this might be the case. But the real reason for the increase in speed is usually not the computer.

Internet speed is related to your connection speed. If you have a dial up connection, it’s going to be quite slow. When you upgrade your desktop computer and they throw in a cable internet, or DSL package the improved speed is from the faster connection, not the computer. Both cable and DSL can offer more than 10 times the speed of a dial-up connection. The computer has little to do with it.

Myth 4: To speed your computer up, upgrade!

New computer hardware is a very obvious way to speed things up. Even I have gone for new parts purely for this reason.

But it’s definitely not the only way.

Various factors play into overall speed. On a purely physical level, upgrading memory is still a fantastic way to get things to move along a little faster. But apart from this the main things that slows things down on the programs and other stuff you have on the computer.

Over time, as more programs are put on and taken off and changed, things get left behind, and things get forgotten. When your computer starts, many things get loaded into memory and each one of those takes that little bit more of the computers resources. When you switch to a new program and don’t remove the old one, the older one will still use resources.

Myth 5: Big brands are the best

Big brands essentially piece together a computer. They pick and choose the pieces to make a computer package. They also choose some software, give a warranty and then sell it to you.

Dell computer company has become well known for its customer service. This is the best part about Dell computers. The downside is there are limited choices. They pick what goes into the computer, which are often quite expensive parts. They are motivated by the suppliers to put more recent parts into their computers, keeping the prices at the same level and maintaining the “to get more, pay more,” mentality.

You don’t have the power of these big guys, but you have something more. Choice.

Your pick of parts for your desktop computer will allow you to put together something completely tailored to your needs. Put the money where you need it most, into the computer hardware that makes the biggest difference to you, and in the end getting a desktop computer you will fall in love with, rather than despise.

About the author:

Get the most honest and useful reviews to make the right choice at our Desktop Computer Hardware Reviews site or get practical computer buying tips at our Computer Buying Guide site

Peter Stewart

Spyware, viruses and worms… oh my!

If you are connected to the internet, you need to make sure you get your computer set up properly if you want to avoid problems down the road.

With all the viruses, spyware and other threats on the internet today, no computer should be set up without the proper protection.

And that protection needs to be in place as soon after you hook up your new machine as possible.

The following five steps will make your computer a much harder target for threats. You still won’t be completely immune to problems, but 99% of the time the threat will pass you by, looking for the easy mark.

1. Running a Personal Firewall

A personal firewall is software that basically makes your computer invisible to hackers, worms and other threats that can infect your computer over the internet.

Setting up a firewall is the absolute first thing you should do if you’re going to connect to the internet. Without a firewall, your computer could get infected in as little as one minute after connecting.

If you have a brand new computer running Windows XP Service Pack 2, there is a firewall built into Windows. It will already have been turned on when you first set up your computer.

If you’re running an older version of Windows, even an earlier version of Windows XP, there is no firewall automatically set up for you. In this case there are two possibilities:

- Your computer came pre-loaded with a firewall such as Norton Internet Security or McAfee Internet Security
- You have no firewall installed and should download one ASAP.

If you don’t have any personal firewall software installed, you should do so right away. Zone Alarm is a very good firewall program that has a version that you can download and install for free.

You can download the free version of Zone Alarm from http://www.computer-help-squad.com/zonealarm

2. Turn on Windows Updates

Again, if you’re running Windows XP Service Pack 2 this is already set up, but otherwise you should turn on Windows Updates. Microsoft releases updates for security problems and other bugs in Windows on a regular basis.

These updates will keep your computer running better, and they often fix security issues that could compromise your information or privacy.

If you are running Windows XP Service Pack 2, you can double-check that automatic updates are turned on by clicking Start, then click Control Panel, then double-click Security Center. The window that opens will tell you if automatic updates are turned on, and lets you turn them on if they’re not.

To turn on automatic updates in earlier versions of Windows XP, click on the Start menu, click Control Panel and then double-click on System. On the “Automatic Updates” tab, click the option to “Automatically download the updates and install them on the schedule I specify.”

To turn them on in Windows 2000, click on Start, click Control Panel and then double-click on Automatic Updates. Again, click the option to “automatically download the updates and install them on the schedule I specify.”

Now when Microsoft releases updates, they will be downloaded for you automatically and Windows will tell you when they are ready to be installed.

3. Install & Update Antivirus Software

Most new computers come with antivirus software these days. You might have Norton, McAfee, PC-Cillin or another brand. No matter what program you have, you will need to update it when you get connected to the internet.

It doesn’t matter how new your computer is - there will be new viruses, and new updates for the antivirus software, since it was loaded.

The exact process is different for each brand of antivirus program, but most of them will have an icon in the bottom right corner of your desktop, beside the time. The icon might be a picture of a shield (McAfee), a stethoscope (Norton) or something else.

In most cases, if you point to the icon for your antivirus and click the right mouse button, a menu will pop up with an update option. It could be simply called update or could be something like Live Update or Download Latest Updates. If you click on the update option (with the left button this time) it will install the newest updates for you.

If you’re not sure which icon is for your antivirus software, just point to each one for a few seconds and a little title should pop up telling you what it is.

4. Install Anti-Spyware Software

Spyware - and other things known as adware and malware - is becoming as big a problem as viruses. Spyware programs can cause a lot of problems with your computer, not to mention they can track your personal information and you never know where it’s being sent.

Some new computers might includes antispyware software, but most of them don’t yet. There are quite a few anti-spyware programs available, some free and some not. The one I recommend is from Microsoft and is one of the free ones.

One of the reasons I like it is because it always runs in the background and will automatically catch a lot of spyware before it gets on your computer.

Many of the other programs don’t catch it until you run a scan. Not only does this allow things to get on your computer, it also means you have to actually remember to run a scan.

You can download the free Microsoft Antispyware from http://www.computer-help-squad.com/antispyware

5. Set up a Free Email Account

This last item is not as critical as the first four, but I would highly recommend you set up an email account with one of the free services like Hotmail or Gmail.

Once you’re on the internet, you’ll find a lot of useful information that you want that requires you to provide an email address. In some cases, these people will end up sending you a bunch of spam.

If you use a free email account to sign up for anything that you don’t know for sure you can trust, it’s not going to fill your main email with a bunch of junk.

This goes for anything really, not just online information. If you’re entering a contest or signing up for anything offline and you don’t know where your information could end up being used, I would suggest using your free email address.

If worse comes to worse, and your free email address gets inundated with spam, you can always just set up a new one and let the old one expire.

Some of the better free email services are www.hotmail.com, www.gmail.com and www.yahoomail.com.

If you’ve had your computer for a while and never done any of these things, you should still take these steps to get it set up properly. It will definitely save you a lot of time - and possibly money - as you use your system.

About the Author

John Lenaghan offers easy-to-understand advice at the Computer Help Squad website. Find out more about these 5 steps - sign up for our newsletter and receive your free 5-part guide at http://www.computer-help-squad.com/5steps

John Lenaghan

Looking to buy a new computer?

Overwhelmed by all of the options available to you?

Stressed by the high cost of computers today?

For most people, buying a new computer does not have to be as stressful as buying a new car. Nor does it have to be as expensive. If you’re like most people, and you have a limited budget for buying a computer, then you need to try to get as much computer for your money as possible.

Here are 3 simple ways anyone can save money when buying a new computer:

1) Shop around for best deal.

Sounds pretty obvious. But many people don’t realize they don’t need the fastest, most expensive computer with the most “extras”. In fact, if you are already using an older computer, even the least expensive new computer will be a big upgrade. If you don’t know a lot about computers, you can learn a lot by shopping around. Ask lots of questions, compare prices, compare features, then find the best price. Shop at your local electronics store, and look for the best deals online. You’ll be surprised at how much money you can save by shopping around!

2) Install your own “extras”

Many computers you will find in a store have a lot of extra software already installed. While this is convenient, it is not always the best way for you to save money. Also, while many of these extras sound good, you don’t always need them. You can often find better deals by shopping around separately for your own software extras (such as a word processor, anti-virus, popup blocker, spyware removal, games, etc). And some of these you can get for free. So before you buy the “fully loaded” computer, ask yourself if you really need all the extras, then shop around to see if you can buy a scaled down computer - and get the extras yourself for much less!

3) Don’t buy extended warranty

If you are not a computer “techie”, the extended warranties offered by the computer retailers often sound like a good idea. After all, who wants to be bothered paying for service on a computer after you buy it. But keep in mind that most computers come with a warranty, and most computer problems will either happen at the beginning (when you still have the warranty in effect) or much later (when it might be cheaper to buy a new computer). Technology changes very quickly these days. So consider whether or not it’s worth the inflated price of the extended warranty. And, if you really feel you need the extended warranty, then ask to purchase it at a lower price. Not all retailers will negotiate on the warranty, but some will. And whether you buy the extended warranty or not, make sure you back up all your files periodically, just in case!

If you have an unlimited budget, consider yourself lucky. And if you do business on the computer, make sure you get what you need, while trying to keep the price down. At any price, buying something that does not fit your needs is not a good deal.

Hope you find these tips helpful, and happy computer shopping!