Great FREE Fonts!

Using the right font makes all the difference in a document or webpage. Your computer comes with a nice selection but sometimes you want something more exciting or personalized.
Here is a website made just for you. FontSquirrel has over 600 free quality fonts sorted into categories. With the holidays coming, how FUN is that?! Here is one I downloaded below.
http://fontsquirrel.com


ENJOY!

Free Special Effects for your photographs!

Photoshop can create some amazing special effects on your photographs. However there are some really funky sites that will do the same thing. Today's Cool Site, BeFunky has some basic editing tools, but there are also plenty of funky photo effects that rival the filters in Photoshop.

Just upload an image and click an effect to apply it. If you don't like it, you can undo it and add another effect. Here is a photo that I uploaded and created a cartoon effect on.

The Goodies section also lets you add objects, hats, speech bubbles or other shapes. Photos can be saved or shared online.
I upload a photo of my kitty "Echo".

Here are a few of the free effects that I did with the above photo.

No registration is required and the site is free. They do offer a paid version that removes their logo and provides additional tools but I found that the free version had enough goodies for an afternoon of entertainment.
Enjoy!

www.befunky.com

Managing Facebook posts

Facebook is the most popular social networking website and has been around since September 2006. Anyone over the age of 13 with a valid e-mail address can become a Facebook user by setting up an account. If you have an account you quickly accumulate friends either by searching for friends or getting friend requests. After some time, all these postings from people you sort of know, or those posting notices that they need a brick for their barn, can become overwhelming and perhaps not what you really want to see.
Here is how to control what you see in Facebook.

1. Hover over with the mouse of a person or of an Facebook's applications post about Mafia Wars, Farmville, etc.
2. You'll see a Hide button appear in the upper right corner.
3. Select either to Hide this persons postings or Hide the Facebook application announcements.

You can always edit your personal Options later to bring either back.

Now when you visit Facebook you're seeing only the posts you want to see from the people you want to keep track of.

Enjoy your new control of your Facebook account!

Want to learn more about Facebook?
Check the video below.

Photoshop - painting a selection

Sometimes making a selection doesn't get everything you want. Your selection is rarely perfect. Today I'll share a neat trick to make your selections even better.
Select as much of the area in the photo you can with your favorite selection tool. Next, click on the Quick Mask mode button at the bottom of the Tools panel. Instantly your selection is in a normal color and everything else shows in a shade of red.
Now, using white paint you can add to your selection with any sized brush you need. Click on the Quick Mask mode button again to see your new selection.
If you get too much selected go back to the Quick Mask mode and paint away with black paint.
Making a selection just got a lot easier!
Watch my movie of how I selected a straw hat using the Quick Mask mode.
Making a selection with Quick Mask

Find FREE stuff!

You may already know about Craigslist. You can find free items here by clicking on the free link under the "For Sale" heading.

But, you may not have heard about Freenapkin.

The quickest way to get rid of something may be to give things away. Someone will be happy to take it off your hands.

You’d be surprised what you can get for free. People can find a reason to give away almost anything and all the listings are free.
I would stick to local listings so you can pick up your stuff right away and not have to worry about shipping or driving out of your way.

Who said nothing is free?

Now for my video of the month....FINALLY! (It's been more than a month)
A father and son using just a video camera, iphone for GPS signal and small weather balloon capture amazing video from space!

Print out your Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts

There's nothing better in Photoshop than to save time using the shortcut keys. You can even create your own shortcut keys if you don't find the default ones handy. (See previous blog)
Learning where the shortcuts for your most commonly used functions can take some time to learn. That's when printing out the shortcuts can come in handy. Here's how to do that.

1. Select Edit > Keyboard Short-cuts
   
2. Select which set of short-cuts you want listed. In the example below I had created my own custom shortcuts by selecting the little "New Set" icon and following the instructions on the bottom of the screen.
3. Click the Summarize button
4. Save the .htm file
5. Open the file in any browser and print your list of shortcuts

Now you'll have a list of shortcuts handy to help you memorize your favorites. This will be a long list but you can highlight the ones that you want to memorize.
Being able to customize and use shortcuts in Photoshop will save you a lot of time. You'll wonder how you ever got along without them!