Find the Best Digital SLR Lens

I've been taking photos semi-professionally for a while now. I can say they were professional because I got paid for them, right? Haha!! Well... Now that I have my awesome ninja-like camera (Many thanks to the best boyfriend in the world, my boyfriend, for getting it for me!!) I guess the shopping doesn't stop once you buy the camera.

LENSES -- FOCAL POINTS -- APERTURES --- OH MY!!

I have one awesome set of photography friends who have been trying to guide me in the right direction but I was still a little unsure about lenses.  With a price tag like some of these lenses, you want to be sure! I started googling around and I ran across the BEST website talking about what SLR lens you should get. It teaches you all of the lens basics. I just wanted to share the link and the love. Here it is:

http://www.digital-slr-guide.com/best-digital-slr-lens.html

Carpal Tunnel Relief and Exercises

Making sweet graphics on your computer all day with repetitive wrist motion isn't good for your wrists.  My advice or "tip of the day" is to always use ergonomically enhanced computer products and to stretch throughout the day.  I've learned this the hard way and now I'm paying the price. When I started in the computer world, back when dinosars roamed the earth, I wasn't using the correct tools and/or posture. Now I have to wear a wrist brace every time I'm on the computer or I'm in pain for about a week.

I'm used to wearing a brace now, but it gets scary thinking about the pain I endure if I don't have one with me.  I've been looking into the carpel tunnel release surgery but that looks scary and expensive. I've even had my chiropractor work on my wrist but the pain comes back pretty quick in a bad case like mine.

I did a youtube search this morning for wrist stretches and carpel tunnel relief and I found this great video that I need you all to do, even if you don't have pain now. I did his exercises and my wrist pain has decreased dramatically in one cycle. I bet if you start stretching now and using better computer equipment you won't be in the same boat as me. FYI: It's a stupid boat with a leak and of course no paddles. My wrist pain hurts too bad not to share these videos with you. If I can help one person, I'm happy.

Here is the great video with the wrist stretches you NEED to do!

Here is the video on the surgery you can have:

Here are some ergo keyboards they have that should help.
Here are some ergo mice and accessories that will help.

HOW TO FIX - Adobe Photoshop CS4 [No Response] on Mac OS X Version 10.6.2

What a night! My photoshop decided to go haywire on me! Luckily I'm not the only one with these problems so google was a nice help! I guess it's a problem that has been going on since Apple updated their OS. I thought I'd share it on my blog incase anyone ran across my blog first. Plus, I'll have it noted on here for my reference.

Good News! There is a solution [That worked for me and other people].


SOLUTION:
Hold Command + Option + Shift down when you open Photoshop. It should give you a pop-up that asks you to delete the Adobe Photoshop Settings File [<-photo]. Click YES.

Learning how to add a custom favicon to your website [.ico]

I have been working as a graphic/website designer for a while now and I have learned several tricks that help your website looks a lot more professional.  It is so simple but I have noticed that a lot of people aren't making them [even graphic designers]. If you are a designer there is no reason not to have one on your website.

If you are wondering... what is a favicon? I suppose you could google it... but I'll give you a summary. It's the icon that displays above the address bar.   I'm sure you've seen these when you visit a big website like Bank of America, Walmart, or HKDEZIGNER.COM. The favicon also shows up in your list of favorites, shortcuts, and all over your bookmarks. This little tiny thing [16x16 pixels] is pretty easy to make. If you don't have photoshop there are tons of FREE websites out there that have something close that will assist you via web. Either way... pretty easy!

How to make your favicon in Photoshop, 6 easy steps!


Step 1: You will need to download a Windows Icon (.ico) file usually called favicon.ico that you upload to the main directory of your website. Nowadays, most browsers besides Internet Explorer [bla] can use a GIF (including animated ones) or PNG (including full transparency) instead. But since all browsers including IE understand the .ico format it is just best you use this method for compatibility issues. Download the .ico plugin from Telegraphics. Hopefully your download and install goes well... [I'd show you how but that would be another tutorial, tehe. I'm sure you know how to download and install. You got this! =P]

Step 2: I like to start my layered/main photoshop file at 64x64 pixels so I can be more creative with my artwork. I like to save this version as a layered .tiff or .psd so I can always go back and modify it.

Step 3: The fun part! The design! If you already have a logo you should reduce it to the 16 x 16 size to see if it looks cool. If it doesn't look good at this size, work with the 64 x 64 canvas and try creating a simple design. Tip: Maybe try using colors from your site so it looks uniform =)

Step 4: When you're ready to test out your cool new favicon design select Image > Image Size menu and enter 16 x 16. Click on Resample Image and choose "Bicubic Sharper" from the drop-down menu (CS only for this step). This is the best setting for making sure that an image doesn't blur as it's being resized. If it’s still not sharp enough, go back and oversharpen, oversaturate and/or heighten the contrast of the original image and then resize it again. Fingers crossed!! Hopefully it doesn't take you to many attempts to having it looking awesome.

Step 5: Time to save the .ico file! Go to File > Save as and make sure you name the file favicon.ico. Under Format you must choose Windows Icon (ICO) from the pulldown menu.  Go ahead and save it where you want it on your hard drive.

Note: This format will only be available in Photoshop after you download and install the plugin. So make sure got everything installed right before you try to save. Sometimes it helps to close photoshop and restart it.

Step 6: Time to upload your awesome new favicon to your server! Connect to your online server and upload your favicon.ico file to your website. Make sure to place the favicon.ico file into the same directory as your home (index) page.  Most browsers should find it automatically and sadly some browsers will look for a direct link in the HTML. You can help these browsers by adding this link in the head section of each page on which you want the Favicon.ico to appear.

Here is the link code to include in your head section to all of your sites pages:
<link rel="Shortcut Icon" href="/favicon.ico"></a>

WOOT WOOT! You should have a cool favicon now! See, that wasn't so hard! Lets hear it for being custom!

Heather Kant attends Flash Camp Phoenix

On January 29th I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to attend a full-day event focusing on the Adobe Flash Platform [Flash Camp Phoenix]. I was so excited to go to Flash Camp Phoenix to learn cool things about Adobe Flash and other design software. 

My friend/coworker Scott and I carpooled over to Tempe early to make sure we had everything ready to go. Who knew if the traffic was going to be terrible or not!? We sure did luck out, we even had time to stop at McDonald's for some de-lish breakfast.  What a great time! I was also ever so grateful to be a passenger instead of a driver on that packed freeway, thanks again Scott!

The event was hosted at a Design College [University of Advancing Technology] in Tempe, AZ. It was so fun going into a design college. It made me remember the good ol' days of working all day on artwork without a care in the world. Also, getting to use other design mediums like markers, paint, and clay.  I suppose when we all get older we get busy in our daily lives and forget doing cool stuff like actual painting and drawing. I suppose when you sit at a desk all day photo-shopping away you forget about your beginnings. The artwork on display at this school was phenomenal! It looks like this school has a major focus on game design, something I'm not too familiar with but it sure looked cool. My hats off to them! I SHOULD have taken some photos with my phone of this adventure, I apologize.

I'm not going to lie, this event was a little hard core and was focused more for developers vs. designers. But I was able to follow along as good as I could, it was neat seeing another side of websites and programs. I like learning new things and I really think the speakers did a great job of being descriptive enough for me to catch on. The amount of people to network there was overwhelming... There were people there from Adobe [Who gave away 2 copies of the CS4 Suite - druel] and a lot of other great people too.

On a side-note: They didn't really talk about Adobe Flash at all, it was all about Flex and air... They should have called it Flex and Air Camp Phoenix. Haha.

There were a lot of developers there who had personal websites they invented that are doing great. The guy who invented www.runpee.com was there and he was kind enough to offer to his fellow designers/developers if we had an idea he would put it on his homepage to help. I thought that was about the nicest thing I had heard in a while.  I'm so used to everyone being so cut-throat. I'm not sure I will ever need to use his website, but I will sure let people know how nice he was to all of us. If I ever make it big, I will do what I can to publish him on my homepage as well.

All in all I really enjoyed my day at Flash Camp Phoenix. Yeah, I wish there could have been more design professionals giving cool presentations on photoshop or illustrator tricks... But it was still really fun and eye opening. Very Refreshing!

NOTE: In-case you didn't know. Designers are the folks who make the graphics, designs, and layouts of websites/programs. Developers are the folks who take those designs and make them a real working website/program.

FTP Information for Filezilla

If you're a web designer I'm pretty sure you already know this trick. It's called FTP!

My very first geocities website yearssss ago was free and I had to upload everything 1 at a time... CLICK CLICK CLICK... water break... click click click click... 2 hours later your site is live... Ugg!

Now days they have awesome programs like cyberduck and filezilla! Basically you just drag, drop, DONE! You just sit back and watch it upload.  The only tricky thing is figuring out your FTP settings.

1. Enter your FTP host in the "Address" field, like this: ftp.YourDomainHere.com (replace YourDomainHere.com with your own domain name). 
2. In the "User" field, enter your FTP user ID. Your user ID is a combination of your Yahoo! ID and your domain, such as name@YourDomainHere.com (replace name with your Yahoo! ID, and YourDomainHere.com with your own domain name). 
3. Enter your Yahoo! password in the "Password" field.

How to Zip A File In Mac OS X - Pretty Easy!

It's easy to .zip a file in Mac OS X. You don't even need a program other than the Finder!

Step 1 - Create a zip archive to reduce file size when sending data over the internet.

Step 2 - Go to the Finder. Select the File you want to turn into an archive by holding down the "ctrl" (control) key while you click on the file icon once.

Step 3 - A pop up menu appears over the icon. Select "Create Archive Of (Your File Name)..."

Step 4 - This will make a copy of your file with the .zip extension. This compressed file appears right next to the original file on the desktop.

Take Vector Paths from Photoshop into Illustrator

Hey!! I found this super cool link today! Awesomeeeeee graphic design trick that can save you soooo much time!!!

http://www.bittbox.com/illustrator/take-vector-paths-from-photoshop-into-illustrator

Lightbox 2 Tutorial

I found this great tutorial this weekend and I thought I'd share it!  I've been wanting to update my website's photo gallery for a while now and I think this is going to do the trick!! I'll be sure to send out an email and a new blog update when everything is live and updated!

Lightbox 2 Website
Tutorial Website