David R. Stong

Assorted Tutorials...

This is a mixed batch of tutorials, on different topics and in different formats; they serve as "sandboxes" for me to work out a number of things.

First, before seeing how I made it, you can view an mp4 snip showing how Justin Miller used the final Photoshop file:Now... Disappear!

Logo Color Inversion

In response to a "help desk" type question, I tried to see how quickly and effectively I could get something finished and on the streaming server. This three minute exercise took close to 30 minutes. Much of that time was me trying to reacquaint myself with the environment. As a regular solution though, it would be quick, effective and easy.

SecondLife Strawbale Construction

A proof-of-concept video demo using SecondLife: A screen capture video of strawbale housing construction techniques.

Vanishing Point

Not a tutorial, just a quick video demo of one of Photoshop's new 3D capabilities. Not too long ago we used the 3DTransform filter...

Old School "HDR"

I experimented with Photoshop's Merge to HDR command. I'm impressed by the technology but not by the results people are getting. This is a video capture of how we used to do it; interesting because it's still valid, not just historically interesting.

Hand captioning Quicktime video (Streaming FLV)

The hardest part is getting a transcript. Regardless of claims, I've found nothing transcribes as well as a human. Hire one. Then do this.

Remove matting from SecondLife textures (Streaming FLV)

Often Second Life artists find that a carefully prepared image with 8bit transparency appears in world with a white fringe. What's the problem?

PSD 01 (FLV)

After scanning a drawing, you can easily move the lines to a transparent layer in Photoshop.

PSD 02 (FLV)

This is a bit long and possibly of limited interest- I show how I apply color in Photoshop to the lion drawing that we moved to a new layer.

PSD 01 (FLV)

This is a duplicate of the first clip, only I was experimenting with captions. I added captions to the Quicktime that the FLV was made from.

Making a Penn State custom shape (FLV)

I have a collection of Penn State specific Photoshop Custom Shapes. This is how you can create a Mark custom shape of your own.

Loading the Penn State custom shapes into Photoshop

If you've downloaded my Penn State custom shapes, this is how to load them.

Creating an Action to Place the Mark for Web Use(FLV)

This discusses some of the nuances of placing a vector mark, and problems caused by alignment of a mark with a 27 pixel wide shield.

Neighborhood Interface Ramble

A rambling interface demo from a 2009 blog post.

Listen to directions for making a red⁄cyan anaglyph

During phone conversations, I've talked folks through fairly complex Photoshop operations. I felt that audio without video might be a possible tutorial method, even leading to Photoshop tips and tricks podcasts. As a quick experiment, I grabbed a stereo image from the Library of Congress and tried to talk a "user" through turning the old stereoscopic image into a red and blue anaglyph with Photoshop.

Got your 3D glasses? You might want to see if this works for you; I assume some rudimentary PSD skills, but it's fairly simple. Download a zipped stereo photo (3b08681u.jpg) of Lincoln and McClellan in 1861- pretty amazing. It was available with no restrictions at the Library of Congress site. Then follow along with the audio.

After you've mastered the technique, it's an easy next step to shoot two images with a camera and merge them this way. Hold your head still, and shoot a photo looking through the view finder with your left eye. Move the camera so you can view with your right eye and click a second picture. Open both images in Photoshop, drag the second on top of the first, and get started. It works with color images, too- not just grayscale. Check out one I took of the Lion Shrine or another of just a paw...

Batch re-size a folder of images

This was done pretty quickly with little explanation. A folder of images for Powerpoint and the shots were way too big...

Postershow tips (HTML)

Loosly joined tips and advice for making a poster for an academic poster session. Currently it's text and images, but I'm slowly adding links to explanatory videos- like the next one.

Powerpoint poster size

Get that poster size right before you start layout.