* It wont be.

OK. I’ve been working with Photoshop for over a decade and today I discovered something for the first time that I WISH I had figured out years ago.

So. Imagine this. You have a big, multi-layered PSD. Only a specific part is of interest. You want to use this area for an image but want to retain the layer structure. Only way to do this is to Crop the image then Save As to create a new PSD. The PROBLEM with this is that the crop tool (C) is a totally visual tool. If you, for example, wanted to crop the image to a specific size you’ll be in bother. You’d have to create an new image of a desired size and then copy all the layers to the new document.

Today I discovered a solution to this.

Fixed Size

What to do is: Select the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M). In the Toolbar you’ll see an option that says ‘Style’. Select: ‘Fixed Size’, and input your desired size for the image after the Crop. Add the selection around the area of interest.

Now here is the cool part that I never realised. Instead of going to your Crop tool, go to the Toolbar, select Image > Crop with your previous selection still active. Hey Presto. You have a new image of a specific size and your layers are still intact.

Dropbox

Sure. Backing up online is easy. The complicated part is getting a system in place to backup your files automatically. What follows is my way of achieving this, and it uses software that is absolutely free.

Before you continue, you have to download and install the following software:
Dropbox
SyncToy 2.0

Dropbox is an amazing little application. It adds a folder your computer where, if you add files to the folder, it uploads the files ‘on the fly’ to an online DropBox that can be accessed from online and thus any other computer. This process is also two way. If you add files to your Dropbox from online, when you get home they will be sitting on your HD waiting for you.

So. With this cracking little program in place. We now want to create a method of automatically syncing particular files/directories into this online storage without the laborious task of having to regularly add the files ourselves.

To do this we are going schedule SyncToys 2.0 to run repetitively and copy files into our DropBox storage.

For the purposes of showing you how to do this I will show you how I backup my email on a daily basis. You’ll get the idea.

First up. Open SyncToys 2.0 and select ‘Create New Folder Pair’:

In the left folder you want to add a directory on your hard drive that you want to by synced with Dropbox. In my case I want to backup my Thunderbird email profile. You can do this by copying your profile folder in you windows app data. In my case it would be ‘C:\Documents and Settings\User\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles’. For more on this folder see here. In the right folder you want to select the location of your Dropbox folder on your hard drive. Which I believe is defaulted to ‘My Documents/My Drobox’. Select ‘Synchronise’ and then give your folder pair a name.

You can now test your sync by clicking ‘Run’ on SyncToys, and you’ll get a nice report on the result. Check your dropbox folder and see if sync ran ok.

OK. So now you have a method of syncing your files online. Lets now set up a Scheduled Task to run SyncToys automatically.

(Note: this might vary depending on your operating system)
1.Go to the Start menu, select All Programs – Accessories – System Tools – Scheduled Tasks.
2.Select Add scheduled task to start the Scheduled Task Wizard. You will see a list of possible programs to run.
3.SyncToy may appear as an option in the list. If SyncToy does not appear in the list, click Browse and locate the SyncToyCmd.exe file. Normally it’s installed in Program Files directory.
4.The wizard will next prompt you to enter how often you want to run the scheduled SyncToy (for example, daily, weekly, et cetera). Select a frequency.
5. The next page asks when to start the task. Select a start time.
6. The next page asks for the user name and password to run the program under. Enter your user name and password. However, in SyncToy 2.0, it’s not necessary for the defined user to log in to the computer. Different user or no one logged on is possible to have the task running too.
7. The final page contains an option to open the properties dialog when the wizard ends. Select this checkbox.
8. Modify the Run textbox to include the –R command line option. –R all by itself will run all folder pairs that are active for run all. If you want to run just a single folder pair, add –R“My Pair” to the end of the command line.

You should now have something like below:

Run the scheduled task to see if it works.

Your done!

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Thanks

Hey Folks.

This weeks tutorial is all about actionscript with flash and how we can use this to animate an object swinging back and forth.

Been working on a flash web site recently and was trying to figure out a way to swing an object. Ended up going back to my high school trigonometry days.

Have a look and enjoy me stuttering through this tutorial! (Try and spot the mistake!)

Your poster in the real world!

Hi all. Done another tutorial for you. I’m quite enjoying giving back to the community that I’ve taken so much from in the past. I’ll aim to do one a week from now on so keep checking back!

This one is for those of you how would like to see their graphic work (or anyone’s for that matter) in a real life situation. I chose a bus shelter ad because its kinda interesting and I cover a good few general Photoshop tips that might be useful for anyone.

Click Here to View!

Swift3D text added into photoshop

As promised I have done a wee tutorial to give you a feel of how you can easily create 3d images and bring them into photoshop. Creating effects like the picture left.

Click Here to View Tutorial

Some of you out there might think that bringing out the colour in a photo is just a case of increasing the saturation of the pic. Thats not quite the case because doing this too much can create alot of noize and jpg artifacts that don’t really blend nice. Well, here is a tutorial on how to get the best colourful results from your pictures.

Click here to make some Colour

Enjoy!