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Marques is back this week with a short review of his favorite image manipulation program – Gimp. Gimp is free cross-platform software that can help you complete a variety of image tasks with ease.

Gimp is a very powerful piece of software. Marques uses this program for all of his graphics on his site instead of using the expensive Photoshop software. You can do anything with Gimp that you can do with paid alternatives.

It is a raster editor, which means that it performs operations directly on the pixels that make up the image, and not a vector editor. Other (proprietary) raster editors include Adobe Photoshop, Jasc Paintshop Pro and the humble Microsoft Paint. An alternative free editor is the KOffice project, Krita. Users wanting to edit photographs will certainly want a raster editor like GIMP. Graphic designers and illustrators may prefer a vector editor depending on their tastes.

Gimp is a fantastic alternative to Photoshop or other titles you hear people raving over all of the time. It’s great for everyone from beginners up to experts and will be able to handle any project you can dream up.

Edit Images with Gimp

Can you believe FuggedabouditNL was able to do this in Microsoft Paint? I could barely draw a circle with the official circle-drawing tool. Guess it’s not about the tool, after all. He puts Photoshop artists to shame!

As you probably know, MS Paint is free software! This video once again proves that one doesn’t need expensive programs like Photoshop to create some nice 3D images!

This drawing was done in only five hours. Can you even believe he did this? Seriously? I’d like to see YOU try it!

Music Credit – Epic Demo by Cesc Vilà.

Han Solo’s Blaster Drawn in Microsoft Paint

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I haven’t yet had a chance to use Adobe CS5 myself. However, I do know that it’s a powerful – albeit expensive – program. There are free or open-source alternatives I can use. Most of the photo editing I do these days can be done inside of Picasa. However, there is one feature inside of CS5 that is absolutely killer.

You know how you can use the clone tool in a photo editing program? Most of the time, it’s a difficult process. You can take a screenshot of what’s going on with my live stream. If you wanted to crop out the iPad in the front, you’d need to painstakingly replace it with part of the curtains to block it out. However, CS5 makes this a seamless and beautiful process. It’s almost magical to watch.

Adobe products work well, even if they’re a little advanced for most people’s needs. However, the price tag on many of them (including CS5) rules out the software for most of us.

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Will Adobe CS5 be Great – or Should You Wait?

Every once in awhile, I come across a website that is so full of win that I have to stop everything in order to pass it along to the community immediately. In the case of ManBabies, my head nearly exploded before I could begin typing this post. It is honestly that funny. What isn’t funny about tiny little baby heads being slapped onto their Daddy’s bodies?!

You, too, can submit photos to the site. Every picture must have a man and a baby in it, or it just doesn’t work. Get it? Man + baby…

GET MORE AT ManBabies.com!

GET MORE AT ManBabies.com!

GET MORE AT ManBabies.com!

GET MORE AT ManBabies.com!

GET MORE AT ManBabies.com!

GET MORE AT ManBabies.com!

GET MORE AT ManBabies.com!

GET MORE AT ManBabies.com!

GET MORE AT ManBabies.com!

GET MORE AT ManBabies.com!

What is a ManBaby?

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Michael submitted this screencast for use in our channel. If you’ve always wanted to edit a photograph to have just a portion of it in color, you’re going to want to use the ColorSplash effect.

To do this, you’ll need to first open your picture in PhotoShop. Choose the Magnetic Lasso Tool, and slowly but surely trace the outline of the portion of the picture that you want to have the color.

Once it’s selected, go to Edit>Copy to copy what you’ve done, and then de-select the flower. Make a new layer, and go to Edit>Paste. The new layer will only consist of whatever you just outlined. Go back to your background layer, and go to Layer>New Layer Adjustment>Black and White. If your colored portion isn’t aligned properly, you can easily drag and drop it into place.

That’s all there is to it. I know there are a lot of different ways of achieving this same effect, but this definitely seems to be the fastest – and easiest.

Thanks, Michael, for an excellent tutorial!

Add a ColorSplash Effect in PhotoShop

Even though many people walked out during the SXSW keynote today, delivered by Evan Williams, there was a very interesting announcement made. The new platform will allow publishers to integrate Twitter deeper into their site and recreate the “open, engaging interactions” their readers expect from using Twitter “without sending them to the Twitter website itself.”

Using the new platform, users can identify and follow Twitter users on third-party sites without ever leaving that site. Some of the ones that will soon use this new service include Yahoo, Bing and Digg. This lets publishers make sure their audience is aware of their Twitter feed. The user can also elect to follow a site’s feed without ever leaving the actual site. This lets you get more followers, and allows Twitter to bring more users to their site, as well. According to Ev, Twitter is launching the service because it wants to make it easier on everyone to use Twitter. Given their growth has recently slowed, it makes sense to try to bring the service to the attention of more users.

What are your thoughts? Do you believe this new platform is a big step in the right direction for Twitter?

• BrightTALK is hosting a next-generation data center summit.
• It’s time for work. Leave your ego at the door. Kthxbai!
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• Are you a fan of Adobe Photoshop Elements?
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• How can you save money if there’s so little left over out of each paycheck?
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• Can our economic woes be tamed with high inflation? You decide.

Don’t forget to stop by the software center to see what’s new today!

Twitter Announces the @Anywhere Platform

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TechOverlord has submitted a screencast to us in order to show off Sumo Paint. This is a free – and excellent – alternative to Photoshop. There are more features and filters than I can begin to describe in this short description. I messed around with Sumo Paint myself, and was pretty impressed with my results. Are you still not convinced? Go browse through some of the user contributions and let yourself be dazzled.

You can run Sumo Paint right in your browser, or download the desktop client. The interface is very user-friendly, and clean. It’s a snap to navigate around the menu without getting lost like you tend to do in Photoshop (before you are an expert, of course). Sumo Paint also has a thriving online art community of over a 6 million unique users and over 130 000 registered members from over 200 countries. The primary purpose of the community is to create, share, remix, explore, comment, rate and fave the artwork of its members.

Sumo Paint works on both OS X and Windows machines. However, you must have the latest version of Flash installed. One of the best features is that once you create a piece of art, YOU own the copyright. It’s your work, after all!

Thanks, TechOverlord for an excellent screencast! Remember, if you have ideas for our channels you can email them to me at any time. We’re always looking for new content from YOUR perspective. We have no idea what you want to see or read if you don’t tell us.

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Free Photoshop Alternative

During his speech on the final day of CES, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has stated that users no longer have an expectation of privacy. Mark said that privacy is no longer the “social norm”, and that we are seeing drastic changes in people’s attitudes towards that privacy. Privacy issues online have always been of great concern to most people, but that no longer seems to be the case. Says Zuckerberg:

People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time.

This raises a lot of interesting questions, especially in my line of work. We have quite a large community. Granted, we don’t have as many users as does Facebook or Twitter, but I like to think we’re a large group! Reading through our various sites, I can’t help but notice how right Mark is. People aren’t hiding things as much as they used to. They aren’t as careful as they might have been even last year.

Are people more comfortable with revealing information about themselves online? Or, as I fear, are too many people simply unaware of what can happen when they reveal too much? Identity theft isn’t the only concern… marketers can be quite aggressive once they find information about you online. Where should you draw the line when posting things in a place such as Geeks, or on Lockergnome?

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Be sure to check out what’s new in our Downloads Center, as well as on our Coupons Site. You don’t want to miss all of the great savings!

Social Media Users No Longer Expect Privacy

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Sometimes, people want to make use of features of Photoshop, but they don’t have the need (or resources) to buy the complete program. Adobe allows you to sign in on the website (or join for free) and use certain elements of PS without having to buy the actual software. There are options to create projects, edit photos and even email them to others when you’re finished. In this screencast, Alex is going to show you where to go, and what to do when you get there!

Head over to the Photoshop website. Register for a free account if you haven’t yet, or sign in with your existing ID. If you have an Adobe account, you can sign in with that, as well. Once you’re signed in and choose a photo, you’ll see all of your options ready for you to make use of.

If you choose to edit, you’ll have a basic editing suite loaded and available. You can crop and shrink, auto-prep the photo, adjust sharpness and saturation, and choose from some advanced editing tools. You can even adjust the white balance so that it’s more to your liking.

This free suite is not as powerful as the actual Photoshop program itself, but you can do basic editing, as well as photo enhancement. There are even cool effects that you can apply to your pictures if you choose.

Once you’re finished editing, you can choose to decorate your pictures. You can add text, colors or stickers on your photo if you wish. This can be a lot of fun to do with those family vacation photos, or pictures of your friends (or kids!) goofing off. Add little fun pictures on the top of your own pic, or even add a frame around it!

If you want to do basic photo editing, using the free Photoshop website tools is a great way to accomplish your tasks. Thanks Alex for this excellent screencast!

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Free Photoshop Online

You get to answer the question.

1. Download this photo.
2. Place it on top of any background image.
3. Upload your mashup (possibly on Geeks).
4. Post the link to your remix in the comments thread here.

Have fun! By the way, I’m wearing a J!NX shirt.

What’s Behind Me?

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Someone decided to print a digital photo, and then turn it into a work of art by placing it on canvas. They also applied styles to it to make it look as though it had been painted. If you look at it from a distance, it truly does look like it was painted by hand! Did you know there is software that you can use to make your digital photos look like works of art? It’s easy to do, using Snap Art 2.

Quickly start by choosing from hundreds of new styles and ten natural media, such as oil paint, watercolor, and pencil sketch. Then customize anything from brush size to paint thickness to make your signature look. Snap Art’s wide range of control lets you make your work completely unique.

The folks at AlienSkin have long been the leader when it comes to PhotoShop plugins – and this is definitely not an exception. Snap Art is an amazing little plugin! There’s a color pencil effect, as well as an oil painting one. You can choose to apply pen-and-ink or pencil sketch to your photo, or even make it look like it is a comic strip!

You may think you already have these things built into PhotoShop. But, you can’t tweak it to make it perfect. It’s just too difficult and limited. AlienSkin makes it simple. You just click the different templates and styles, and let it apply them for you. If you hate it – revert back and do something different.

You won’t get as much detail and perfection by using PhotoShop alone. You definitely want to check out Snap Art if you love to mess with photos. What 3rd party filters do you use? I want to see what our audience is into at this point in time. If you use coupon code: CHP0900, you can save 10% off your order through the end of June!

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QA

How to Create Art from Digital Photos

Put Me Somewhere

Wow. Just yesterday, we gave away ten webcams from Microsoft. We finally reached that 7500 member mark… and we’ve smashed it already! Have you checked out what’s been happening on Geeks today?

Forum Threads

• Do you need any good Photoshop tutorials?
• Who left the lid off of the peanut butter?
• Do you use BitTorrent?
• What is the first thing you upgrade on your computers?
• What inventions can you not wait for?

Blog Posts

• Are there double standards in America?
• iPod rant of the day.
• Will Microsoft make the same mistakes with Windows 7?
• Why should you change your primary browser over to Firefox?
• Never crawl again…

Not to be outdone, here is the latest happenings over on Lockergnome.

• Are there weaknesses in the IRS computer systems?
• Hamfest, Sociology, and fake boobs… what more could you want?
• Have you heard of DisplayPort?
• Deep fried Pepsi? You have to be kidding me.
• Do you even know what a wurzel is?

If you haven’t joined us yet, what are you waiting for?

Wurzels, Ratchets, and Star Trek… Oh, My!

If you have any photo editing skills whatsoever, go ahead and play with this photo. What is it that I’m admiring in the frame? Is there something on my t-shirt? What about that empty area on my desk? Should there be something different on those monitors behind me? Here’s what Brent Spore pulled out of his brain:

Others have been equally as creative:

• Infatuated with the Disney Girls
• See Through
• Chris Chris Chris
• Pirillo Trekkie
• Chris Pirillo Forever
• Steve Jobs Gave me a Mac Tablet!
• Pirillo with BSOD on his Mac

Insert Image Here: Photoshop!

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I have been addicted to the Web since the day it was born. The other day, I did a video about Cameroid which can help you do all sorts of cool things with your video camera. I came upon a link from my friend Mona for a site that is similar to Cameroid… only even better. On PhotoFunia, you will get “the photo software that should have come with your camera”.

Click on any of the pre-defined effects, and then browse your computer to choose a photo. PhotoFunia will automatically apply your selected effect to that picture before displaying it! Once your picture is ready, you can save it to your computer, save it to ImageShack, or save it out as an avatar.

The second place I want to tell you about comes from JoshM. Dumpr is where you create marvellous photos to share with your friends. It’s very similar to both Cameroid and PhotoFunia. Again, you can take an image and throw it into a variety of effects. This site is free, or you can choose to sign up and pay a fee. Once you pay, you’ll have access to even more effects. Once you finish with your photo, you can save it to your computer or Flickr, or send it to others in an email.

So there are two very cool sites you can use to play with your pictures, and create something new.

FirstRSS ERROR: "http://shop.tagjag.com/products/photos" NOT FOUND!

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Who Needs Photoshop?!