Archive for June, 2010
The Wild And Wonderfully Creative Animal Artworks
Artists all around the world are continuously exploring more ways of showing their creativity and digital art is the best way an artist can use to explore his creativity. Since there is lots of room for an artist in digital art to create something innovative and appealing, this form of art is getting much popular these days. You can go as weird as you want and bizarre as your imagination would allow you to go. In this post, we have compiled a list of some creative and interesting animal digital art for your inspiration. We hope that you like this collection and would share your opinion with us.
You are welcome if you want to share more Animal Artworks that our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at smashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter. Click on the images to go from where the images has been taken and learn more about their creators and to appreciate them.
Mutation Nation-The Elephantron
Breath of Wisdom ‘The Bluffer or Flubber’
Enlarge Facebook Photos By Hover Mouse Pointer (Firefox+Chrome Plugin)
I find Facebook’s picture viewing interface inconvenient. When I am viewing a friend’s album, I can view the pictures as thumbnails in the main album page. To view a picture’s true size I have to click it. Then I have to go back to the album (photo thumbnails view) and select another image to enlarge. The process can become quite time consuming. But thanks to two browser extension, I no longer have to click back and forth while viewing pictures on Facebook.
The first is Facebook PhotoZoom (there is no space between the words Photo and Zoom).
This is an addon for Mozilla Firefox and can be used while viewing Facebook photos. Its function is a simple one: it shows you the true size of an image thumbnail in Facebook. Whether that thumbnail is in a photo album or the thumbnail of an image shared on your wall or news feed, you simply place our mouse pointer over the thumbnail and view its enlarged version in a hovering view.
The second extension is Facebook Photo Zoom (there is a space between the words Photo and Zoom).
This tool is an extension for Google Chrome and works much in the same way. In addition to enlarging your Facebook photo thumbnails in a hovering window view, the extension places an icon near the bottom right of Facebook i.e. next to the Chat bar. You can toggle Facebook Photo Zoom on / off from this icon.
Hence it is up to you whether to use the hovering window photo enlargement or use Facebook’s original interface.
These extension are absolute must have for all Facebook accountholders using Firefox or Chrome. They have certainly saved me the umpteen clicks required to view a photo album. I am positive they will be as helpful to you as they were to me.
Click here for the Firefox Addon and here for the Chrome extension.
Desuade Partigen 2 Giveaway (Professional Flash Particle Effects In One Click)
Desuade Partigen 2 is running a contest, where winners will get 5 licenses (worth $147 each). Well, you guys know what Desuade Partigen 2 is. Lets say it once again for n00bs.
Featuring over 120 exclusive preset effects, Partigen 2 is the first and only extension for Flash that let’s you to create complex particle effect systems in just a click. This means you can effortlessly engage and “wow” your audience with stunning effects in just seconds, instead of days. Most importantly, you and your clients save time and money – all while having fun.
Partigen features over 120 preset effects, such as: fire, smoke, explosions, sparkles, water, and many more. But what’s the fun in using the same effects as everyone else? Since fun is valued so much at Desuade, not only is tweaking and adjusting every preset easy, but saving your own custom effects is a joy.
All of Partigen’s effects are rendered in realtime – making your movies come to life with realistic and interactive effects in ways never before possible. Give your audience the incredible experience they deserve, and blow everyone away. Stop the rendering hassle and treat yourself to a delicious cup of instant gratification. Now.
This contest will run from June 18, 2010 to June 25, 2010 and we will select the winners randomly by running MySQL query. Result can be announced any day before June 27, 2010 so keep visiting here or subscribe to our rss feed to get the latest updates. To participate in the contest and win free license of Desuade Partigen 2, All you have to do is just :
1. Just leave a comment.
2. Use valid email ID in the email box.
3. Not necessary, but you can subscribe to our rss feed and follow us on twitter as well. (To track this contest and for future updates)
4. And thats it!
So what are you waiting for now? Let’s participate in the contest and good luck!
The Incredible Beauty Of Sunrise And Sunset Scenes
A good photographer can only capture the memory of the sunrise next to majestic mountains and the sunset going down to rest behind the ocean’s horizon. These are the most attractive scenes of nature a camera can capture. Here we have compiled a showcase of such beautiful photographs of sunset and sunrise that would inspire you a lot for sure! In these photos, you can notice that how challenging it would be to adjust with the light to take the photograph the way you want!
You are welcome if you want to share more Sunrise and Sunset Photography images that our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at smashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter. Click on the images to go from where the images has been taken and learn more about their creators and to appreciate them.
Land of the Rising Moon – Arch Rock, Joshua Tree National Park, California
Sunset at City of Arts and Sciences
Winter Magic – Yosemite National Park, California
Point Arena Lighthouse Sunset – California Coast
Golden silence, serenity at its finest
Pfeiffer Beach – Sunset Splash
5 Online Tools For Designers To Help Recognize Unknown Fonts
If you are designer you undoubtedly view websites critically. You judge their flow and overall design. An important part of a site’s design is the font used on it. If you like a font style, you would definitely want to incorporate it into one of your latest site designs. But in order to do that you first need to know what font style is actually used. Because of the sheer number of fonts available on the web and the number of new fonts being created, it is hard to recognize fonts simply by looking them.
This is why I thought I should create a list of 5 online font recognizers. These tools are must-haves for every website designers. Give each of them a read and decide which one will suit your usage best.
We would love to know what you are thinking while checking this post. If we missed any tool you are welcome to share with us. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter.
1. Identify Fonts
Identify Fonts is a free to use website that gives you the most simple way to find out what font is used on a website. When you are on the website having the font you like, simply take a screenshot of the text-included portion. The screenshot should not be greater than 1.8MB in size, must have the text in one line only, and must be in JPEG/JPG, GIF, or PNG image format. You then upload this screenshot image onto Identify Fonts and the site displays all results. You can choose to filter the results as free fonts only, commercial fonts only, or both. Click here to visit Identify Fonts.
2. Identifont
Identifont asks you a series of simple questions in order to determine which font you are looking for. The questions are easily answerable and are like “What type of tail does the upper-case ‘Q’ have?” There are diagrams provided so that we can select an answer. If we have only a set of characters of our desired font, we can answer character-specific questions to find the font. Click here to visit Identifont.
3. WhatTheFont
WhatTheFont recognizes fonts in the same way as IdentifyFont. The image we upload can be of GIF, JPEG, TIFF or BMP image format and must not have more than 25 characters. As the characters are scanned by the website, we are asked to confirm if the right character has been confirmed. The site then proceeds to analyze each character and find our font. Click here to visit WhatTheFont.
4. Font Trainer
Font Trainer will help you view fonts in various styles. It acts as a font recognizing quiz for the user. You can train yourself to recognize many popular fonts and reduce the need of font recognizing websites. Moreover knowing the names of many fonts will definitely help you impress your fellow website designers. Click here to visit Font Trainer.
5. TypeNavigator
TypeNavigator is a font searching tool that lets you go through a series of options in order to reach your font. The options to choose are much like the questions asked by Identifont. Alternatively you can search fonts by their names or by their designers. Click here to visit TypeNavigator.
Filter Forge Expands Your PhotoShop Ninja Skills
As I’m sure you’ve already noticed, many of the most creative types both online and offline make extensive use of Adobe PhotoShop. It has become the de facto image editing software package for just about everyone, but it is still inherently limited in scope. That’s why there is so much interest in different add-ons and upgrades that are available for the popular photo editor.
One such utility is Filter Forge. It is a plugin for Adobe PhotoShop that not only grants you access to a huge library of additional filters, but it also gives you the ability to build your own filters too. This opens up all sorts of creative possibilities that may not have otherwise been available to the regular PhotoShop user. Compatibility appears to be quite good too, supporting both current and legacy versions of Adobe PhotoShop.
Standalone or PhotoShop Integrated
Going through the features page for Filter Forge, we discover that despite the software utilizing just one main user interface, it can actually be used two different ways.
First, Filter Forge can be used as a standalone application. You can launch it like how you would any other program on your computer, going through to view, edit, and create different filters that can later be used with PhotoShop. The user interface has the filters organized based on a number of categories, which are then further broken down by different types of filters.
Each individual filter comes with a number of different factory presets, which are quite distinct variations on the main filter. Shown above, for example, is the “bacteria” filter. As you can see, the green version is not only different in color from the red or purple version, but the sizes of the “bacteria” elements are quite different as well.
Second, Filter Forge can be used as a PhotoShop plugin. After the main installation process is complete, you will see a new option within PhotoShop to access and edit the different filters available in Filter Forge. The plugin itself is quite tiny, only being used to send and retrieve image information. The image processing is done with the main Filter Forge application and then it is output back to PhotoShop for your creative needs.
Other Major Features of Filter Forge
In addition to the large number of filters that come preloaded with Filter Forge (currently at 7000+ and growing), you have the ability to edit and create new filters as well. With the factory presets described above, for instance, you can click on the Settings tab to access individual components of that filter, shifting and adjusting them to suit your specific needs.
Take this distortion filter as an example. You can adjust the relative level of the distortion, roughness, stretch, angle, size in pixels, and variation. You’ll also notice that there is a checkbox for “seamless tiling.” This Filter Forge feature allows for the filter to be seamlessly expanded and replicated without the appearance of having separate tiles. This works even for non-square elements.
Similarly, all filters in Filter Forge are generated procedurally. Since they do not depend on external bitmap images, they can effectively be scaled infinitely without pixilation and other artifacts. As such, they are resolution-independent, allowing you to use any filter in any size under any circumstance.
In case you want to have an extra large filter, you’ll be glad to hear that the software supports “huge” resolutions as well. The developers were able to generate a filter measuring 65536 x 65536 pixels. It took hours to render, but the interface remained responsive during the rendering process.
Seeing the Filters in Action
After downloading the program (there is a free 30-day trial), the installation process took mere moments. It’s all automatic and easy enough for even computer novices to understand.
To test out the capabilities and usability of Filter Forge, I tried editing a simple photograph that I took on a recent business trip. Loading the image in PhotoShop 7, I selected a portion of the wall behind the two gentlemen using the magic wand and lasso selection tools. I then clicked on the “Filters” section from the main pull-down menu and selected Filter Forge.
This loaded the primary user interface shown earlier this review. I chose one of the pre-existing wood-based filters and edited it slightly in the Settings portion. As I did so, the preview section within Filter Forge showed me when the end result will look like. This live rendering can come in really handy, since you don’t have to go back and forth to see which filter is the one you want to use.
Reasonably satisfied with what I created, I clicked on Apply and the full filter was then applied to the main image back in PhotoShop. The result could use a little more post-processing to make it look more natural (that’s more in regards to my PhotoShop skills than in regards to the Filter Forge software, of course), but the actual filter application was perfect.
The process was very straightforward and the wealth of filters available is truly impressive. If you want to expand the possibilities of PhotoShop for your image post processing, Filter Forge is a solid choice.
Buy Filter Forge for Mac or Windows
Available on both the Mac and Windows platforms, Filter Forge has a free trial version for use for 30 days. There are positively no limitations to the trial version, except for the time limit. This allows you to try out all the features and functions available for both the standalone application and the PhotoShop plugin. This gives you free access to over 7000 user-created filters too.
There are three main versions of Filter Forge available for purchase: Basic, Standard, and Professional for $99, $199, and $299, respectively. However, you can upgrade to the newer three versions now and save quite a bit of money.
Filter Forge 2.0 can be preordered for $79, $139, or $229 for the Basic 2.0, Standard 2.0, and Professional 2.0 editions, respectively. The Professional version allows for the largest bitmaps, unlimited CPU cores, high-precision file formats, and support for both 16-bit and 32-bit image modes.
FindEXIF Lets You View Detailed EXIF Data of Any Image Online
When you take pictures through a digital camera, a lot of detailed information is attached to it. Among other things, these details include which camera the picture was taken from, what are its dimensions, its exposure time, and color space. All this attached information is called EXIF data and can be accessed by right clicking your photo on your computer and entering the details field its properties (in Windows).
The information in this properties window is not always easy to interpret. Moreover there is no method to store this information in a file unless you start typing yourself.
FindEXIF is a website that lets you view and save the EXIF data of any picture.
FindEXIF is a free to use website that extracts the EXIF data of any website and presents it to you. This can be done for any picture, not only the ones on your computer. The input is an image’s URL; for online images this becomes quite easy but if the image is store on your computer you will first need to have it hosted online through a service like ImageShack.
Once you enter your picture’s URL you can click on the “GO” button and view its detailed EXIF information.
Your information is shown under the thumbnail of your image. You get a permalink (permanent URL) for this information which you can use to access the EXIF details from anywhere. Alternatively you can copy the text on the webpage and copy it in a text editor to save on your computer.
Visit FindEXIF by clicking here.
7 Insanely Cool Google Chrome Extensions
You might have been using Chrome for a quite some time now but there is a good chance you are not taking its full advantage. Chrome’s maximum potential lies in the power of its extensions. Below We have gathered 5 Chrome extensions that will enable you all to realize Chrome’s full potential. You will not find these extensions in similar lists on other websites; I hope you find them to be useful to your computer usage.
Give the list a thorough reading, try out any extension you are interested in, and let me know in the comments how they worked out for you. You are welcome to share if you know more useful chrome extension which our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter.
Mini Google Maps
Mini Google Maps is an extension for Chrome that makes it easier to use Google Maps whenever we are browsing the web. The extension adds a new icon to Chrome’s address bar which is a shortcut to using Google Maps.
Web of Trust
The WOT add-on is a safe surfing tool for your browser. Traffic-light rating symbols show which websites you can trust for safe surfing, shopping and searching on the web.
Google Dictionary
Google Dictionary extension is Google’s own extension for its own browser, Chrome. With the extension installed, Chrome users will no longer need to bookmark any dictionary websites. The extension simplifies looking up word meanings by eliminating the need to visit a dictionary website in a new tab.
IE Tab
Some sites can only be displayed using IE, and with this extension you can now see those sites without leaving Chrome. Great for web developers who want to test the IE rendering engine, users who use sites with ActiveX controls, and users who want to use the explorer view for local files
Webpage Decorator
Webpage Decorator is a browser extension for Google Chrome. The extension provides its users with a unique feature: it lets us create our own color scheme for any website.
Google URL Shortener
goo.gl url shortener is an extension which allows you to shorten the current website URL with the new Google URL Shortener service http://goo.gl/
TV Chrome
When I saw TV Chrome extension, I did not believe my eyes. Without paying anything, setting up anything, I was able to view hundreds of channels from around the world. TV Chrome is an extension for Google Chrome. It places an icon in Chrome’s address bar which we click to dropdown a window.
goo.gl url shortener is an extension which allows you to shorten the current website URL with the new Google URL Shortener service http://goo.gl/
Hold The World In Your Hand With Google Earth For iPad
Google Earth, the world’s most famous virtual globe, map and geographic information program from Google is now available on the iPad. This news had been in the pipeline for a long time and now that it’s finally here, Google earth is sure to do wonders on the glorious multi-touch screen of the iPad.
The Google Earth app available now on the App store carries version 3.0 of the software and supports both the iPad and the iPhone.
The official description of the app reads as follows:
Hold the world in the palm of your hand. With Google Earth for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, you can fly to far corners of the planet with just the swipe of a finger. Explore the same global satellite and aerial imagery available in the desktop version of Google Earth, including high-resolution imagery for over half of the world’s population and a third of the world’s land mass.
With Google Earth, you can:
- Navigate the world with a swipe of your finger
- Swipe with two fingers to adjust your view to see mountainous terrain
- Show the Panoramio layer and browse the millions of geo-located photos from around the world
- View geo-located Wikipedia articles
- Use the Location feature to fly to your current location
- Search for cities, places, and business around the globe with Google Local Search
Google Earth 3.0 app’s official page can be accessed here.
Congratulations To The Winners Of WinX DVD Ripper Platinum
Thanks to all of the participants of contest in which you could Take A Chance To Win Free License Of WinX DVD Ripper Platinum. We ran the MySql random query and selected these commenter to give them WinX DVD Ripper Platinum.
- Prem Rajah
- gsoroos
- Jasonscliew
- fhj
- drahendra
- Ranjith
- Kevin Ha
- Voras
- Ram
- Lee
- Matthew
- Jake
- Kevin Bayer
- derrick
- jane
- Parker Donat
- Duane Hall
- Michael Barrett
- vietnamrum
- Karl
- MBK
- Prakash
- kirk
- LeNa
- Blastajack
- Marco Pirozzi
- Jason Morton
- Eric
- PS Neg
- Vinay
- Kevin
- Floody
- Sandy
- Christopher
- Walt
WinX DVD Ripper Platinum can rip the content of DVDs to all popular video formats such as AVI, MOV, FLV, WMV, MPEG, MP4, 3GP, etc. What’s more, it also owns the ability of ripping different DVDs (including encrypted DVDs) to Sony PSP, Apple iPhone, iPod, iPad, iTouch, Apple TV, Zune, Mobile phone, etc
This DVD ripper software supports multi-core CPU and is fully compatible with Windows 7. They promise WinX DVD Ripper Platinum is the fastest DVD ripping solution in the market. Besides converting DVD to regular video formats, 1:1 DVD copy enables you to backup your DVD with original video, audio and subtitles within only 5 minutes (the processing time also depends on your CPU and DVD driver speed).
WinX DVD Ripper Platinum fully supports normal DVDs, CSS protected DVDs, Sony ArccOS DVDs and all region 1-6 DVDs. WinX DVD Ripper Platinum is a one-click solution for DVD ripping. It is suitable for all levels of experienced users or even novices. And we promise it owns the fastest ripping speed.
Congratulations to all the winners from SmashingApps.Com. All of the winners will be contacted in few days. If you are not winner at this time so please be patient and keep visiting here or subscribe to our rss feed, you can follow us on twitter because we are coming up with another new great contest in couple of days.
Thanks to WinX DVD for sponsoring this wonderful contest at Smashing Apps.
If you want to conduct any contest at Smashing Apps just contact us and send us all the details.
