The cats out
Well the project I had alluded to in the last post is starting to see the light with it’s first public peek-a-boo. The site, RapidWeaved.com, is a showcase project for RapidWeaver users by RapidWeaver users. It’s kind of a backyard sandbox, if you will, instead of the elitist, high-brow playgrounds that other showcase sites seem to be. The premise is that no-one gets rejected so long as the contest is G-rated and the site is built with RapidWeaver.
It’s not a new site or project by any means, I actually took over the domain and concept from Gary Byrd who found it was getting unwieldy. And indeed it was. I had a few ideas how to better manage this kind of data and put a plan into action. Only time will tell if I really know what I am doing or just talking through my butt. My intent is to make it an attractive site with attractive content but also make it as pain free as possible to update. We’ll see about that I guess.
There are a few other finer details that will come to light later as well. But first things first. Oh, and by the way, if you are a RapidWeaver user and have a site built using RapidWeaver, feel free to submit it to RapidWeaved.com.
Buyer beware
It’s an old saying and and the practice is as old as the market place itself, but never has “buyer beware” been so applicable as is in this age of cyber-shopping. It might be hard to believe but you just can’t always trust a shiny website with promising copy. And that was very true today when Jumsoft.com announced their entry into the RapidWeaver theme marketplace.
Jumsoft is known for the Keynote and Pages templates so one would tend to conclude that they might know a thing or two about tempting and the shift RapidWeaver would be a no brainer… WRONG! I was very quick to buy one and test it out only to find it was so incomplete that it was UNUSABLE. Myself and others were quick to point out the folly of their ways on the forum and in emails to which they have responded to say that they are working on it.
Only time will tell if they can pull it all together or not. Hopefully they can. I can attest to how difficult and involved theme development and I think Jumsoft is learning this the hard way. Best of luck to them, we’ll be watching.
Showcase site project is back in the mix
A while back I had taken over a particular showcase site (I’ll keep that quite at the moment) and was charged to take it to the next level. Well real paying jobs kept getting in the way, support kept getting in the way, life kept getting in the way… So I’ve recently had pause to look into this project again and was surprised at just how close I was to completing this site the first time around.
So with that said, I am amping up to get this thing done early in the new year. I’ll keep you posted.
New Photoshop how-to
I’ve written a new, quick and simple Photoshop how-to that came to me while working through Scott Kelby’s 7-Points book. It’s not an earth shaking tip but it might have had you stumped just as I was. Read more here.
In other Merrifield Photography news, I just finished a shoot this past weekend, a family shoot, that really illustrates the importance of having fun with your clients (more in this article). It was great to get the family laughing and enjoying themselves as much with each other as they were with me. I’ll post pictures soon.
Open in Camera Raw
I owe this little trick to Scott Kelby and his 7-Point System for Adobe Photoshop CS3, not because it was an integral part of his system but because it was one of those “blinding flash of the obvious” moments for me. I found, as I am sure many people did, that the upgrade path to Photoshop CS3 was more out of necessity to get Photoshop running at reasonable speeds on my Intel Mac. I more or less overlooked any new features and hadn’t really considered looking into seeing what was changed, new or otherwise. I just installed, opened it and continued where I left off more or less. Granted at higher speeds now that Photoshop was running natively.
As time went on I started hearing about, and learning about new tricks and features and what not and before I new it I was madly in love with all that was new in CS3. Then I started reading Scott Kelby’s book and the first thing that Scott has you do in any lesson is open your images in Camera Raw… all images… all formats… Raw files, jpeg files, tiff files, png files… all of them! What? You can do that? In CS3 you can. Who knew?
Since I was never a big Raw shooter I had never had to open in Camera Raw before in CS2 so haw this was achieved I had no idea. I saw no options for it. So I went online to find out how. Apparently, if Bridge is up to date (which mine wasn’t), you can just press command+r (or control+r on Windows), or right-click > Open in Camera Raw, or go to File > Open in Camera Raw.
To do this in Photoshop, it’s a bit different. Go to your open dialogue window (File > Open) and from the “Format” drop down menu select “Camera Raw”.
Why is working in Camera Raw important? It is a non-destructive way to fine tune your images exposure, contrast, warmth and tint, etc, without losing the original settings. It’s that simple.
rwReview is one to watch for
There is a new RapidWeaver resource I think you should watch out for, rwreview.com. I was hesitant about bringing it so early in the development process since good intentions don’t always equal a great follow through, but I thought this might actually have legs. That might be more because I want to see this thing succeed because I think the RapidWeaver community needs a consumer report of sorts for it’s many 3rd party offerings. This might be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how truly objective the authors are in the end but I am willing to watch and see where it all goes.
Hopefully the Mephisto powered blog is one that will allow multiple users to register at some point to allow multiple authors with multiple view points to contribute in the future. I suspect that rwReview.com and RWUpdates.com are going to have close ties when things really get going, pulling content and news from each other on occasion. There is no guarantee but it wouldn’t surprise me. I can envision rwReview.com somewhat of a sister site to RWUpdates, but only time will tell.
Convert icons: revisited
Some of you might remember my little article on the best and quickest way to convert icons into other usable formats (I should hope you remember, it’s one of the most searched articles on this site). While this is still relevant and very usable, it also costs you the license of Path Finder (which I insist you buy anyhow) which is about $49 or so. Some of you might want a cheaper alternative and so today I give you a sweet option that I was brought to my attention from David Chartier’s Jaiku feed.
It’s called iconGrabber and it’s a Quicksilver plugin (another app that I insist you use) and just makes the process of extracting usable image files from any icon sooooooooooo easy. All you do is invoke Quicksilver (usually ctrl+space or cmd+esc in my case), then drag and drop the icon or object onto the command panel, tab to the action panel, start typing “save”, select “Save Icon As” or “Save Icon To”, tab to the object panel and right arrow over, arrow down to select you format and press return to execute.
Seriously, the whole process takes about 5 seconds. Invoke Quicksilver again and your newly created image is the first to appear. Select return to open the new image in your default image editor.
[tags]Quicksilver, icons, icns, converter, plugin[/tags]