How to Rename an Entire Folder of Files on a PC

Posted by admin on Aug 24, 2009

I recently had someone call in and ask how to rename an entire folder of images. It wasn’t a Photoshop question, but I like to help out whenever I can.

Searching the internet I discovered that it is really quite simple if you have a PC. I found a great website that I would like to encourage everyone to visit for all your PC related questions.

Special Note: You can start with any number you like, so if you would like to merge contents from one folder with another, all you have to do is start the second folder where the first left off.

The name of the website is www.mediacllege and the like to their  post regarding this topic is: http://www.mediacollege.com/computer/file/batch-rename/windows-xp.html

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Mark Ishii is the owner of Ishii Design, a twenty year old design firm located in the exciting metropolis of Provo, Utah. He has been using Photoshop since it’s beginnings and enjoys sharing his knowledge with others.

Affordable Royalty-Free Images

Posted by admin on Aug 14, 2009

By now the economy has managed to reach us all. As a result, many of us have begun looking toward more affordable royalty-free alternatives.

The three royalty-free sources I turn to when budget is the most important consideration are istockphoto.com, bigstockphoto.com and dreamstime.com in reverse order. All of the stock houses get their images from indepent photographers. I find that each has its advantages and I would like to go over them here.

istockphoto.com

istockphoto.com is by far the most popular royalty-free stock photography site. It has by far the best selection of images.  I feel that the quality of the images at istockphoto.com is generally higher as well. One of the neatest features is the ability to manage and add to light boxes on the fly.

The biggest disadvantage of istockphoto.com is that the prices are constantly moving up. A couple years ago Getty Images purchased istockphoto.com  in an attempt to compete in the affordable stock-photography market. Afterall, if you can’t beat em’ join em’–right? Since the purchase of istockphoto.com, prices have climbed at a brisk pace. In addition, they have begun to pressure photographers into exclusive arrangements.

bigstockphoto.com

I believe that bigstockphoto.com has the second largest selection out of the bunch. Occasionally, I will find images here that I can’t find at istockphoto.com. Personally, I also like the ability to provide up to 140 images per page of search results. Their prices have not risen at the rate of istock.

The disadvantages of this stock house is the selection and the search criteria. After speaking with a representative, I learned that boolean searches are not allowed. This means that I cannot conduct conditional searches such as “This term OR This term”. In such a case I would get results with both terms. I don’t like the gallery (lightbox) feature because to use it you have to leave your search results and go to the galleries page and then come back to use it. However, I do like the ability to check a bunch of images on a page and add them to the active gallery all in one shot.

dreamstime.com

This is usually the most affordable stock photography source. However, the pricing structure has change to include classes of images with the most popular class being more expensive. They have a really neat light box feature as well that allows you to view it’s contents while browsing. You can also collapse it if you would like.

I don’t find the quality of the images to be quite as good as istockphoto or bigstockphoto and the selection seems to be smaller than either of the other two sources.

Tips

If you hold down your command key (control key on the PC) and click on each of the page numbers that come back in the search results your browser will begin to load the pages future viewing.

Choose to view as many images per search page as possible and then tap the space bar to advance down the screen one full screen at a time.

Use lightboxes as much as possible, so you can make your final choices after you have finished viewing your search results.

Use a thesaurus to get synonyms of additional terms the image you are looking for might be under. You can also click on the image thumbnails within the results page to see other keywords the photographer used to describe his image. Use these keywords to help find additional and perhaps better images.

A few of the images have the ability to search for similar images. You may want to give it a try. The results may surprise you.

Next to the search field you may see a link for advanced searches. Click on it to see options for narrowing your results. It’s a great way to reduce the amount of time you spend searching for images.

Conclusion

I would love to get your feedback on this matter. If you have affordable stock photography sources that I ddn’t mention here, feel free to leave a comment and I’ll try to update the post. Thanks for reading.

Text Styles

Posted by admin on Aug 14, 2009

Okay, you’re right Photoshop doesn’t have a text style pallet. But, if you have Illustrator you’re in luck. I often use Adobe Illustrator to set up web page layouts and create styles in Illustrator and then I copy and the paste the text as editable text into Photoshop. If I want to globally change a style within Illustrator I then have to copy and paste the result into Photoshop. But that seems a lot easier than styling all of the text over again in Photoshop.

If you would like to see how I do this, post a comment and I will post a video.

Help Is On The Way!

Posted by admin on Feb 10, 2009

Photoshop is the most powerful photo editing software ever made and every release it gets more powerful. Each and every new feature empowers users to be more creative and solve more problems. However, additional power comes comes with additional challenges.

One of the biggest challenges is that after each and every release the amount of content to learn keeps growing and it’s not always clear how to achieve a particular effect. The PhotoshopASAP blog was created to help those trying to learn Photoshop shorten their learning curve. The goal of this blog is to help you answer your questions even if it means utilizing additional software or hardware. All questions are fair game and there is no such thing as a dumb question.

Sometimes, finding answers online can be like searching for a needle in a haystack and twice as time consuming. Imagine being able to pick up the phone and call someone for help. That’s why we created the PhotoshopASAP.com , a low cost premium service. We utilize online meetings, so you can watch us work from your own computer screen and learn quickly.

In the end our goal is to help the you spend more time working on your projects and less time learning how to use Photoshop.

How to get the most out of PhotoshopASAP

Check out the Tutorials or Tips & Tricks page. If you can’t find what you need ask your question on twitter and we’ll try to answer your question on our Tweet Answers page. Finally, if you need one-on-one attention or if you want help with a client’s project that you would like to keep confidential check out PhotoshopASAP.com and you can watch us work on your project from your own computer in a online meeting.