Archive for the ‘Graphics’ Category

How to Join Photos in Photoshop

Sunday, November 29th, 2009
  • Join Photos in Photoshop

    • Join Photos in Photoshop 5

Suppose you want to make a panorama in photoshop by joining two photos, but the lines in the picture do not line up where they will intersect. (See the unmerged photo pair below). Joining them as they are would make the wall behind the fireplace appear to form a corner.

  • Step 1

Select two photos with some part of one photo showing part of the same view as in photo two.  I.E.,  there must be some degree of overlap (preferably about 10%). Make the canvas size of pic 1 wide enough to hold the added photo, and paste it in.Join Photos in Photoshop 1

  • Step 2

Align the photo content.   These pics both show perspective lines that will not match up (E.G., Ceiling molding line, floor skirting board line ).  To join the pictures successfully you need to make the perspective lines in the photos parallel. Click on the top Ruler and drag down with your cursor — (a blue horizontal line should appear) – position the line on the low end of the ceiling molding. Click the Edit/FreeTransform menu (Ctrl T) and hold down the Ctrl key to drag the top right corner handle down until it  lines up with your blue Guide RuleJoin Photos in Photoshop 2
Repeat the process until all the perpective lines match, then crop the pic to trim the top and bottom edges. (if your version of PShop includes the perpective tool, you might prefer to use that instead of the FreeTransform tool)Join Photos in Photoshop 3

  • Alternative Step 2

If your Photoshop includes Filter/Distort/Lens Correction, then use this instead, it is faster and easier to line up with the built in grid pattern.  Just grab the Horizontal Perspective handle and drag it left until the gridlines and the perspective lines match.Join Photos in Photoshop 3A

  • Step 3

a)  Go into Quick Mask and select/draw a rectangle over the area to be merged.   b) With foreground Black, and Background White, use the Gradient Tool from left to right and fill the rectangle selection.  c)  Back out of Quick Mask and invert(Ctrl Shift I) the selection.  d) Click Delete. Join Photos in Photoshop 4

  • Step 4

Slide the RH pic across to the left onto the LH pic until the images merge.Join Photos in Photoshop 5

- There you go, you now know how to stitch together two photos using PShop, where the picture perspective lines DO NOT line up.

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Posted in Adobe Photoshop, Graphics | No Comments »

How to Tame IE6 Hover Problem

Sunday, August 31st, 2008

How to Tame IE6 Hover Problem

Suppose you want to make a pop-up tool-tip with CSS and you get it all done, but your tool-tip won’t work in Internet Explorer because of the IE6 Hover Problem. You can solve this with Java Script, but it takes quite a bit of code, and it isn’t really necessary.  There is a way to make IE6 hover work just using CSS and one simple trick.

  • Use Tool-tips ??

Maybe you want to provide an explanation or some other info when the user hovers the mouse over a word in your text like this. You can make a tool tip appear by putting your explanatory text in the ‘title’ field of an anchor.  The problem with that is that you can’t style it, and by default it disappears after 5 seconds.  Useless for long explanations because you don’t get time to read it before it vanishes.

  • Pure CSS Pop-ups

You can have  nicely styled pop-upsYour beautifully styled Tool Tip pop-up window looks like this.You can add code to it (E.G., <p>), style it how you like, and generally stamp your imprint on it to reflect your site or your personality. that fit your theme and are cross browser compatible using just style statements – no Scripts!  Add the following code to your style sheet or style statements in the header:

/* Pop up styles  */

a.ref   {
position: relative;
}
a span   {
border: 1px solid #700;
padding: 4px;
visibility: hidden;
position: absolute;
top: 30px;
left: -20px;
color: #900;
background: #ffd;
width: 250px;
}
a:hover   {
background-color:white; /* Trigger for IE6  */
}
a:hover span, a:active span, a:visited:hover span    {
visibility: visible;
text-decoration: none;
}

  • The Secret

Note this code: a:hover   { background-color:white;  } /* Trigger for IE6  */ Because IE6 will not action a hover call for anything other than the <a> anchor itself, you need to trigger the hover event by calling a straight hover action like this a:hover {something}, then it will read the rest of the hover code and action it.  In this case I have used a <span> to make the tool-tip hover, but you can apply this to  <img>; or whatever…..

  • The Code:

The Page code looks like this:
<a href=”#” class=”ref”>anchor text here<span> Pop-up Text contained in the span statement</span></a>

Hover this to see it work anchor text herePop-up Text contained in the span statement and beat the IE6 Hover Problem once and for all.

  • Tip:

If you are doing this in WordPress, use the ‘HTML’ tab, not the ‘Visual’ Tab for editing it, ’cause WP makes a right ‘Dog’s Breakfast’ of the embedded code if you save it in Visual.

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Posted in Dynamic Web Pages, Graphics, WordPress | 6 Comments »

Photoshop Gifs without white Jaggies!

Wednesday, June 6th, 2007

Do you get frustrated trying to get transparent gifs to appear without those maddening little white dots (artefacts) all around the edges?

Here’s how to do it: there are two simple steps.

1. Select the object(s) you want for the Gif but be sure to turn “Anti-alias” OFF first; and cut out the background to define the transparent area.

2. Save the file with “Save for the Web” and put the color of the web page background in the “Matte” selector dialog box. So if your web page BG color is #00F, set Matte to #00F

No Jaggies

That’s it – no annoying little white dots, just a nice clean transparent Gif.

Posted in Adobe Photoshop, Graphics | 2 Comments »

Publish a Video to your Web Page

Friday, April 13th, 2007

You can put an AVI or MPEG video on your web-page with this following code. It incorporates the player, so doesn’t depend on the user having “Quicktime” or “Whatever” installed.

<object id=”MediaPlayer1″ CLASSID=”CLSID:22d6f312-b0f6-11d0-94ab-0080c74c7e95″ codebase=”http://activex.microsoft.com/activex/controls/mplayer/en/nsm p2inf.cab#Version=5,1,52,701″
standby=”Loading Microsoft Windows® Media Player components…” type=”application/x-oleobject” width=”144″ height=”154″ border=”2″>
<param name=”fileName” value=”Movie.wmv”>
<param name=”animationatStart” value=”true”>
<param name=”transparentatStart” value=”true”>
<param name=”autoStart” value=”true”>
<param name=”showControls” value=”true”>
<param name=”Volume” value=”-450″>
<embed type=”application/x-mplayer2″ pluginspage=”http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/MediaPlayer/” src=”Movie.wmv” name=”MediaPlayer1″ width=154 height=158 autostart=1 showcontrols=1 volume=-450 border=2>
</object>ntrols=1 volume=-450 border=2>


standby="Loading Microsoft Windows® Media Player components..." type="application/x-oleobject" width="144" height="154" border="2">

Change the screen size(s) to your choice and change the filename from Movie.wmv to your file movie name. Note there are two sets of names and sizes to change. Note 2, if you alter the display to “hide” the controls, you need to reduce the height setting by 44px.

Saving the original AVI file in MovieMaker to the smallest option reduces the files size dramatically. Choosing “Save to the Web”/”DialupModem(56k)” option reduces a 1.8GB file to 2.6MB.

The quality of your video will depend on how much you compress it – the greater the compression, the more detail you lose in your screen. Reducing the screen size increases the picture definition.

If your video is stored in a different folder to your web page, you need to put the path to the file in the code:
value=”path to file/Movie.wmv”

Posted in Graphics | 3 Comments »

How To Edit DVD’s or your own Video Movies

Thursday, April 5th, 2007

How To Edit DVD’s or your own Video Movies. Have you ever bought a DVD that wouldn’t play, because the zone was wrong or something? It is totally frustrating to have your player spit the disk out again every time you load it.
I had to experiment for days, and read hours of tutorials and forum comment to assemble this info in one place!
It is quite easy to recode a DVD to play on your ordinary DVD player, using the following steps:

· Decode the DVD to your Hard Drive
· Recode the resulting VOB files to AVI
· Edit the AVI files to reposition any FBI notices, etc, or add video of your own.
· Recode it back to VOB files, and burn a new disk.

· Decode the DVD to your Hard Drive –
Search for and Download a program called DVD Decrypter (DVD43_3-9-0_Setup.exe). This will decode any encrypted video, and copy the files (as VOB) to your hard drive.
There are a number of options you can set on Preferences, but it worked fine for me using the default settings.

· Recode the resulting VOB files to AVI – I used NeroVisionExpress, just because it came bundled with my DVD writer, and it can read and write VOB files. Open the “Make a Movie” dialog and then browse for the VOB files you just created above. Drag whole files (or selected clips) down to the time-line Video Track and you can edit them or not.
When you are satisfied, export them to the format of your choice. I used Custom / AVI / PAL / 4.3 / 720×576 with the Microsoft Video compressor to save them as AVI files.
You can use the Nero clip editor functions, but I found it easier to edit with Movie Maker; (except that titling is better in Nero).

· Edit the AVI files. I use Movie Maker, it comes free with XP and is quick and easy(use the space-bar for stop/start, Ctr/L to cut, Alt/Arrow to step to next frame[s]).
Finally, save each clip as you edit it, and you can connect them in whatever order when you burn the disk.

· TIP – To detach a sound track from a clip, duplicate the clip, add it on to the time line, then drag it down (The Video track disappears) to the Audio track below where you need the sound, and turn off the sound in the normal Audio track above it by R/Clicking Properties/Sound/Mute.

· Recode it back to VOB files, and burn the disk. Once you have your AVI files all ready, open NeroVisionExpress again and open the MakeDVD/DVD Video dialog. Use the Add Video Files dialog to assemble your movie chapters – each AVI is a chapter, to connect multiple clips in one chapter, selct several files you have added, and click “Merge Titles” from the lh menu to merge them into a single chapter. Click Next, to get to the (fully editable) Edit Disk Menu dialog. Test your movie in the preview page, then “Next” takes you to Burn, where you can choose to Burn to Disk or Hard Drive.
If you need many copies, it is faster to burn the VOB files to an ISO disk image. Choose “Burn to”/”Image Recorder” and it will create an ISO disk image file (Filename.nrg). Burn your new DVD’s from the image file, and bypass the composing time for each burn.

Enjoy!

Posted in Graphics | 3 Comments »