Andrew Devis has 2 more tutorials, this time on the AE camera:

“Cameras are notoriously difficult to get to grips with in After Effects. In this tutorial, Andrew Devis explains some of the behaviors and problems that are common to camera animation and then shows how … to create a simple camera rig, and why it is important to get the order of the layers correct to achieve predictable results.”

• Animating a Camera 1: Camera Difficulties
• Animating a Camera 2: Simple Rig

Here’s a few more resources on the AE camera, mostly collected at AE Portal:

• AE Camera Basics links to tutorial from Chris & Trish Meyer, Motionworks, Aaharon Rabinowitz and others.
• Camera and 3D view improvements in After Effects CS5
• Rotate AE camera around point of interest
• Sure Target 2 from Video Copilot is a free AE plug-in (with tutorial) that offers advanced control over the After Effects camera. An older version, Sure Target 1.5 comes as a preset that works with the VC 3D Falloff preset.
• Pixel-Perfect Camera Move Transitions from Greyscale Gorilla
• Simple Camera Rig tutorial and script from Maltaannon
• Simple Camera Rig Script by Hyploy
• Pro Training for the After Effects Camera is a video training set Rob Birnholz sold at Toolfarm.
• There’s a good number of handy scripts at AE Scripts that make working with 3D and the AE camera easier.

There’s much more in the AE Help page Adjust a 3D view or move a camera, light, or point of interest and in many AE Portal posts tagged AE camera.

Here’s a sample from the Birnholz training:

Find more videos like this on MyToolfarm

In this tutorial we are going to cover different techniques and approaches for creating interface elements using shape layers and various other filters. Hopefully this will inspire you and give you some ideas on how to use After Effects effectively to create stunning interface designs.

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Quick Tip

Additional Resources

• Create a Futuristic Floating Hologram Effect
• Find Your Way With Shapes and Modifiers
• Tracking A Futuristic High Tech Floating Interface
• How to Create a Glitchy Interface Animation

Chris and Trish Meyer parse some of the results of “who makes how much” found in the 2010 Motion Graphics Design Census.

For background on this survey by Bran Dougherty-Johnson and Jake Sargeant, see 2009 Motion Graphic Census: Who, What, Why and How at Motionographer.

Today I am excited to bring you Totem 4! This very special totem is made entirely made from Vectortuts Flickr Group submissions! This is the last Totem in the series, but it doesn’t mean the end of the Vectortuts+ Community Projects! Find out more at the jump.

Continue reading “Community: Totem Project 4”

DeviantART released their group’s platform this time last year. It’s spawned 1,000′s of groups ranging from digital art groups to fan art groups. Let me introduce you to the only Adobe Illustrator resources focused group on DA and some of it’s many AI resources.

Continue reading “Free Resources for Adobe Illustrator on DeviantART”

I am an acoustic guitar lover. I have been playing guitar since I was a kid but it wasn’t until I was 22 that I started loving my acoustic guitar much more than I ever did my electric. Recently I had to sell my acoustic in order to buy a new one. Sounds peculiar but due to travel constraints I couldn’t travel with all my guitars, forcing me to sell my precious acoustic.

Since I couldn’t live without a proper acoustic guitar I decided shortly thereafter to buy a new one. Buying a guitar, for me, is an intense project. I absolutely can not buy guitars online and need to weigh every option before I part with my cash. If you are in the same predicament I was, keep these few things in mind when you are deciding on your acoustic guitar. It will get you an amzing axe, regardless of budget.

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Play Every Guitar in Your Price Range

When you go in to buy your guitar, set aside some time in the store to test out guitars. Se aside a budget and play every guitar in your budget. I had a budget of $350 which isn’t a huge amount but by trial and error got me an amazing sounding guitar. I’m not kidding about this one, if you are serious about your next guitar purchase, actually try out every guitar in the store.

For me, a few strums can often tell me everything about a specific guitar. If you like the sound, make a mental note of the copy and move on. Don’t come back to a specific guitar until you are through with each one. Maybe the first one you played was so amazing sounding that it blew all the other ones away. But unless you try each one out, you might not find the perfect make for you.

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Check the Strings

Guitars aren’t restrung that often in the store. So an otherwise great sounding guitar might sound dull and lifeless just because it has worn out strings. I restring my acoustic every three months or so because I can hear the life of the instrument getting sucked out by the corrosion of the strings.

Also, I feel that some gauge strings are better for some models than others. A lighter set of strings sometimes do not compliment the fullness of an instrument, making it sound sharp and toppy. I accidentally put a lighter gauge of strings on my old acoustic and the sound changed dramatically for the worse. Needless to say, I quickly changed the strings back to a heavier gauge to get my old sound back. Strings can have a lot of say in the sound, especially on an acoustic guitar.

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Check for Buzz

I bought and acoustic guitar I thought was really good. I thought, “This sounds really good for the price, and I can even feel the strings being worn out. Imagine how it would sound with a new set of strings?”

But when I brought it home and started playing it for a while I noticed fret buzz that I should have checked right away in the store. Check for every type of technical problem the guitar might have, or move on to another guitar if you think it isn’t worth it.

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Find Out What They are Made Of

Certain types of woods sound a certain way. Depending on what you are going to use your acoustic for, just for playing live or primarily in the studio, some woods might have a more balanced sound suitable for recording for instance. For a detailed run down on the various woods check out Sweetwater’s Acoustic Guitar Buying Guide.

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Check the Action

Do those open chords sound great? Ringing out and awesome? Cool, but have you checked how it is to play chords up on the neck? Do those power chords feel harder to play because of the action?

If the action of the guitar is too high it’s a good indication that you should put it down and move on. I want my guitars to be set up properly and playable from the get go. When I’m moving around the store, playing every guitar I can, I completely disregard and don’t think twice about guitars that have their action too high.

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Check for Extras

Are you lucky enough to happen upon a guitar package that comes with a bag, picks and new strings? Great! Check and see if there are any extras you can squeeze out of the store. Sometimes you can negotiate new strings if you make a convincing argument that the current ones are too worn. I got mine for $50 off because there was an offer in the store and I was lucky. See if it’s your lucky day, you might gain something from it.

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Make Sure It’s Set Up Right

If you find your dream guitar make sure it’s set up right intonation wise. If you strum a nicely in tune open E chord but when you start playing up on the neck it suddenly sounds a little out of tune the guitar might have an intonation problem.

Obviously, guitar stores should be aware of these problems and not have guitars that have them but sometimes they get overlooked. Most stores offer free set up for your guitar, especially if it has a problem to begin with. There’s nothing worse than finding these things out after you’ve taken it home. The hassle of bringing it back really takes away from the pleasure you should have of having bought your new acoustic.

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Happy Picking

Next time you find yourself with a wad of cash in one hand, a pick in your pocket and your feet inside a guitar store, keep these simple things in mind. It can help you weed out the sub-par ones from that make and model of your dreams. You don’t have to buy that $2000 Martin to get a great sounding guitar. If it’s the right fit for you, sounds good to you and is properly set up, it can last you a long time.

This is a list of the most useful default Photoshop keyboard shortcuts that you can use them to speed up your workflow. Some of them are rarely mentioned, some are more common and some are only available in Photoshop CS5. I hope everyone will find some new and useful shortcuts in this article. So let"s get started!

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1. Drag-Zoom

Command/Ctrl + Space + Click and Drag Left or Right. Fastest way to zoom in and out with one keyboard shortcut (only in CS5 and only with GPU enabled).

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2. HUD Color Picker

Alt + Shift + Right Click (Win) or Control + Option + Cmd + Click (Mac). Gorgeous color picker with a color wheel (only in CS5 and only with GPU enabled). Preferences are under General tab.

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3. Bird’s Eye View

Hold Down H + Click, Reposition View and Let Go of the Mouse to Zoom Back). Works great with large images, when you need to work closely. Fast way to fit the image to screen and then zoom back into another area with the previous zoom ratio quickly.

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4. Brush Size & Hardness

Ctrl + Alt + Right Click (Win) or Control + Option + Click (Mac). Drag your mouse to right/left to change the size and up/down to change the hardness. It only works with CS5 in both directions. In CS4 only the size change works. You can change the color of the brush preview under Preferences/Cursors. You also need GPU turned on under the Performance tab to be able to see the brush preview.

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5. Draw Straight Lines

Hold Down Shift. Works with nearly every drawing tool.

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6. Move

Hold Down Command/Ctrl. Fastest way to move something quickly and then switch back to the previous tool.

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7. Pan (Shift + Space) and Zoom Simultaneously in all Documents

Shift + Ctrl + Space (Win) or Shift + Command + Space (Mac). Best way to compare or work on more than images at the same time.

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8. Hide Panels

Hit Tab. You can always show them again by pressing Tab once more, or just simply hover over the edges to show the panels and toolbar temporarily.

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9. Full Screen Preview of Files From Mini-Bridge

Space and Then Arrow Keys. It works the same way as in Bridge. Make sure that you deselect the images in MiniBridge or collapse the panel when you continue working in Photoshop.

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10. Text Size

Command/Ctrl + Shift + . or , you can use it for selected text. It won’t work by only selecting the text layer.

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11. All Caps for Text

Command/Ctrl + Shift + K. Quick way to switch between lowercase and uppercase text. Make sure you type without Caps lock to be able to use this.

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12. Tracking and Kerning

Alt/Option + Left and Right Arrow Keys. Useful way to make equalize the distance between characters. If you select a word, a line or a whole paragraph then you change the Tracking. If you click between two characters you change the Kerning.

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13. Leading

Alt/Option + Up and Down Arrow Keys. Quickly change the distance between selected lines.

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14. Baseline Shift

Alt/Option + Shift + Up and Down Arrow Keys. Easy way to use one text layer but have different positions for the text.

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15. Fill

Command/Ctrl + Backspace – Foreground Color, Alt/Option + Backspace – Background Color, Shift + Backspace – Fill Options. Great way to fill color into selections or change the color of text and vector shape layers.

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16. Reset Any Dialog Box

Alt/Option + Click on Cancel. Instead of canceling a dialog box and returning to it try Reset and save time and effort.

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17. Changing Opacity and Fill Opacity

Numeric Keys, Shift + Numeric Keys. This will change the opacity and fill of the selected layer (or even more than one layer at the same time in CS5) and it will change opacity and fill of the tool if you select a drawing tool.

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18. Invert Colors of Selected Layer or Layer’s Pixel Mask

Command/Ctrl + I. This is a fast way to invert visible parts of a layer if you invert the colours of the layer mask.

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19. Switch to Precise Cursors for Drawing Tools

Hit Caps Lock. If you don’t want to see the edges of the brush you can switch to precise mode easily by having Caps lock on.

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20. Reset Preferences

Ctrl + Alt + Shift (Win) or Command + Option + Shift (Mac) When Loading Photoshop. If you want to start with the default settings and user interface hold down these buttons while Photoshop is loading.

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21. Switch Foreground/Background Colours

Press (X). Fast way to switch between the selected colour.

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22. Mask View

Alt/Option + Click on a Layer Mask. Great way to clean up the mask after you save it from a selection. Using it again will switch back to normal view again.

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23. Disable Mask

Shift + Click on a Layer Mask. You can quickly show the original contents of the layer with this keyboard shortcut. Using it again will enable the mask again.

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24. Intersection of Selections

Alt/Option + Shift + Click With a Selection Tool Over Another Overlapping Selection. Easy way to keep only a specific part of a selection.

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25. Merge All Visible Layers to a New Layer

Ctrl + Alt + Shift + E (Win) or Command + Option + Shift + E. If you want to keep all your layers but you also need to merge them together to be able to use something you can convert them all into one Smart object or use this keyboard shortcut to make a duplicate merged layer.

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Bonus (Easter-Egg) Keyboard Shortcut

Alt/Option + Click on Panel options under the options of Layers panel.

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Conclusion

Of course you can use Photoshop without keyboard shortcuts, but you can be much faster and productive if you spend a little time on getting used to have one of your hands over the keyboard all the time and memorize some of these combinations. Feel free to include some other useful shortcuts in the comments section.