Category: graphics

What part of attribution do you not understand?

Here’s what you see if you try to download one of my photos on Flickr.

Veesees photo showing Creative Commons license rights

There’s a Creative Commons license notice that some rights are reserved right under the photo. It clearly shows that the license uses the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License.

Attribution. That means you give credit to the particular artist whose image you are using.

I took a lot of photos at BlogHer. I take photos of most big events I go to. I like to take photos. I like to share them on Flickr. I even like it when people appreciate my photo enough to want to use it on their blog or website. But only with attribution! Don’t steal it and don’t ignore the CC license attached to it!

I’m reading articles all over the web about BlogHer09. I’m upset to see how many blogs and sites are using my photos without so much as a wave in my direction or a request for permission. You know better, people.

Useful Links: Aviary, What not to do on Facebook, HTML5 Cheat Sheet

5 Things You Can Do with Aviary Screen Capture at Web Worker Daily gives a good summary of a new feature of Aviary. I’ve written about Aviary before in Updates on Aviary and An Early Look at Aviary.

In case anyone in your life or classroom needs a reminder that everything you say and do on the Internet can come back to haunt you, here’s a little morality story to that effect. Wife blows MI6 chief’s cover on Facebook. Well, hmmm, didn’t Facebook just make a big announcement about changes to their Privacy Policy—guess she missed the news.

Smashing Magazine put together a nice handout for your classroom. An HTML5 Cheat Sheet in PDF format.

Resources for Learning SVG

Shelley Powers from Burningbird sent out a tweet this morning that IE 8.1 is going to include support for SVG. If you haven’t started paying attention to SVG yet, now is the time.

A good place to start learning about SVG is Burningbird. Shelley has been working with it on her personal sites for quite some time and has explained in numerous posts how to make it all work. The site itself is the best example, so look under the hood and kick the tires. Here are a few of Burningbird’s posts:

You should look at Shelley Powers excellent book, Painting the Web. Chapter 7, which clocks in at just over 50 pages, is called SVG Bootcamp.

Other learning resources on the web include,

Open source vector graphics software is available from Inkscape. There’s a Java based SVG toolkit available from Batik.

Other books, neither of which I’ve read (I have read Painting the Web and recommend it.)

Updates on Aviary

Aviary, the online image editing tool that I reviewed way back in April in An Early Look at Aviary announced updates today. One important point is that the URL is now aviary.com, with no extra dot. The software is out of beta and has added features including a vector editor and other new apps. There’s a free plan and a pro plan. It you were interested in Aviary back in April, take another look now and see if the finished product meets your needs.

Useful Links: Being Thankful, Fireworks CS4, protect your Mac

15 Things Every Web Developer Should Be Thankful For lists some great things to be thankful for. You can suggest more objects of your gratitude if the list isn’t inclusive enough for you.

Way back in 2005 I published a rant here called Why colleges should stop teaching Fireworks as a primary web design tool. Three years and a lot of Fireworks version releases since then, it appears that Fireworks CS4 is capable of creating web standards based designs. Matt Stow wrote Creating standards-compliant web designs with Fireworks CS4 at the Adobe Developer Center to walk you through the new CSS export feature. If you don’t own Fireworks CS4, you can download the trial copy to see if this new feature is a must-have for you.

In the times they are a-changin’ department, Apple recommends that you install anti-virus software on your Mac. It isn’t the computer security so much as iTunes, QuickTime, and the Safari Web browser. The recommended products are Intego VirusBarrier X5, McAfee VirusScan for Mac, and Symantec Norton Anti-Virus 11 for Macintosh.

Review: Adobe Photoshop CS4 One-on-One

by Web Teacher
get this book from amazon.com

Adobe Photoshop CS4 One-on-One (Amazon affiliate link)

★★★★★ Adobe Photoshop CS4 One-on-One by Deke McClelland is from Deke Press | O’Reilly (2008). This is a full-color book with excellent illustrations for every step of instruction. In addition, there are 4 hours of video lessons from lynda.com with Deke McClelland. Deke McClelland is one of the better known authors about Photoshop for good reason. He’s earned a reputation for being good by, well, being good. Whether you’re an old hand at Photoshop who wants to keep up with the changes for CS4, or you’re a beginning who wants to understand what Photoshop is capable of doing, this book can help you.

There are 12 chapters, or lessons. Here’s a summary (in my terms, not the book’s):

  1. basic software orientation and use
  2. highlights, midtones, shadows
  3. color balance
  4. selections
  5. cropping and straightening
  6. painting and editing
  7. masks
  8. filters
  9. layers
  10. text and shapes
  11. styles
  12. printing and output

Material not covered here, ostensibly because McClelland covers it so thoroughly elsewhere, are actions and Save for Web, among others. Elsewhere is lynda.com. The book gives you a URL for a seven day free trial at lynda.com if you want to check out some of those other resources.

You work through the book by reading, watching the videos, and doing the hands-on exercises. Three ways to learn and absorb every technique in the book can only be helpful to learners. Teachers will be happy to know that each lesson ends with a multiple choice quiz.

Summary: Clear and effective learning materials for new CS4 features and general Photoshop techniques.

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