Benny Ling’s Bling

As a professional and 8 years experienced. I can tell you there is no better method to learning photoshop then raw experimentation.. Layer blending modes are a great way to see how to get awesome effects, try overlay, color burn and dodge alot, and scroll through the others to see what you get. Failure Failure Failure, it will get you comfortable and not afraid to try new things. Avoid filters as much as possible, they severely handicapped me for 2 years in my journey. Best advice I can give you, if you care to listen, is buy a tablet (1028p atleast 4×6), draw as much as you can, start hard, download brush packs and make your own, and most importantly DO NOT BE AFRAID.. you can do it… the more you force yourself to adapt the program around your needs, the quicker you’ll learn. If at 12 years old I could get it, I guarantee anyone else can too. I’m 20 now, and already in my third job of my career without a degree makin good money. I never had formal training, and you dont need it either. It helps but its not required. A DEGREE IS though, I’m working for mine, just make sure you dont wait for school to get started. You dont wana go in without any knowledge or experience you wont get good job placement.

Being able to draw will heavily distinguish you from the normal Graphics Designer, not only will your designs be crisper and more unique, but you’re not bounded by purchasing a stocks or a damn good camera to capture your own. Don’t get me wrong though, stocks are an integral part of GD, you just don’t want them to be the foundation of every design. BTW, drawing is an achieved talent, your not born with it, it takes a lot of practice but hell its worth every minute.

istockphoto.com (stocks only), pixel2life.com, good-tutorials.com, deviantart.com are great places to get training and resources for any new graphics designer, as you get better look for digital painting tutorials. Go to places like depthcore.com and try to pick out how they developed their pieces, technique studies in your spare time will improve your skill DRAMATICALLY.

Join graphics design communities, and get your art critiqued (word of warning, dont beg for lessons, we hate walking people through stuff). If I had any websites off hand I would post them here. Remember, Dont be AFRAID, fear of failure will handicap you more than anything else. Know you can do it.. know it and you will eventually be a great designer.

Sorry for the rant, but im assuming if you cared about this article then your looking for all the advice you can get. I wish all the new designers luck in their venture, and I hope to see some new inspiring work up on the net! Have fun!

via Digg – 35 Basic Tutorials to Get You Started with Photoshop.

I just wanted some Photoshop tutorials, not your whole life story…

While Phil hasn’t mentioned it in the keynote just yet, it looks like iTunes might be getting a big catalog overhaul, with most major labels finally offering up DRM free tunes. Our tipster mentioned DRM free goodies from Virgin, Sony BMG, American Recording and more (iTunes Plus has mainly been limited to EMI and some independents so far), and that most previously purchased songs are now upgradable for the same old price of $0.30 a song. We’re still digging around on the iTunes Store trying to figure this out — it’s offering to upgrade our library, but the transaction won’t go through yet — and we’ll obviously know more if it gets a keynote mention. Let us know if you have any luck picking up those non-EMI MP3s on your end.

Update: As you’ve you probably noticed in the liveblog, Apple just made this very much official, and announced that some 8 million songs from all the major labels will indeed be DRM free, with a full ten million planned by the end of the quarter. As if that wasn’t enough, it’s also announced a new pricing structure for tracks, including a new $0.69 tier and a $1.29 one, which music companies will apparently be able to use at their own discretion. And, to keep things really spicy, the company has also announced that music store downloads are now finally available over 3G, and at the same price and the same quality.

via iTunes going primarily DRM free? (Update: yes, it is! 3G downloads, too) – Engadget.

Finally.

The Joy of Tech comic… laughter is the best tech support..

…and then we have:

AUSTRALIA’S use of coal and carbon emissions policies are guaranteeing the “destruction of much of the life on the planet”, a leading NASA scientist has written in a letter to Barack Obama.

[...]

In the letter he says: “Australia exports coal and sets atmospheric carbon dioxide goals so large as to guarantee destruction of much of the life on the planet.”

via Australia ‘destroying life on Earth’ | National Breaking News | News.com.au.

Eh? Come again?

C’mon – surely you cannot be serious.

‘Tis Hard to Pee Straight.

xkcd – A Webcomic – Keynote.

An excellent take on a sensetive issue.

C’mon, Phil.

We didn’t want huge product demos. We didn’t want explanations of every single new feature. We didn’t want the constant stalling, the in-depth promos, or any of that stuff. Most of all, we didn’t want to pay $2100 for 4GB more RAM in our new MacBook Pro 17″, a machine that already costs $4499.

$2100 for 4GB more RAM in the new 17".

…nor did we want to pay extra for a matte screen.

$90 more for a matte screen? GTFO.

We wanted new products. We wanted an iPhone OS 3.0 demo. We wanted Snow Leopard, Mac Minis, and an iMac speed bump.

What we got was 8 hour battery life. What we got was iLife 09, iWork 09, and the Keynote Remote. What we got was iWork.com, DRM-free iTunes Music, and the iTunes Music Store available over 3G/EDGE networks.

Sure, the updating of the 17″ MBP to a Aluminium Unibody with dual graphics cards for $100 more was nice of Apple, but I’m currently sitting on the fence – 8 hour battery life vs inbuilt battery.

iWork 09? Meh, could be better. With the addition of iWork.com, this can be seen as an above-average update. Collaboration, sticky notes, and more!

Download the Trial today!

iLife 09 actually looks alright. I have now fallen in love with iPhoto all over again – and now believe that the Mac platform rules for that kind of thing. You can’t go past Facebook/Flickr integration.

Facebook integration for the win!

…those tagged names now come down to your iPhoto! Also new is geo-tagging, “Faces” (awesome new facial recognition), and “Places” (which obviously links into the geo-tagging). All come with that special Apple polish we all know and love!

Faces, and Places.

The other thing that got me excited was the iWork updates. Full screen Pages, new text transitions in Keynote, and some funky features I didn’t really care about in Numbers.

iCONic.

New features in Pages '09

New features in Keynote '09

However, the introduction of the Mac Box Set was a really huge improvement, but something they should have done a while ago.

They should have called it the Macs Box Set, as in Max. Box. Set.

One more thing – DRM-free iTunes music! You can upgrade your music right now for 50c per song to DRM free, which comes in 256kbps AAC.

I can haz DRM-free Music plz? Kthx.

However, even with all the song and dance, I couldn’t feel there was something missing. Where is our Mac Mini update? Where were the iMac speed bumps? Where was the multi-touch Mighty Mouse, Aiport updates (thanks, adamd), or Cinema Displays, Mac Pros, Home Media Server, or the Mac Tablet, iPhone Nano, or even the fabled Mac Pro Mini?

End of the day, it’s just another Macworld keynote. For now, download the iWork 09 trial (warning, it’s 500MB), and enjoy the rest of your day.