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By Tom Giannattasio

Is time kickin’ your ass? Well, learn to defend yourself! Master these killer Photoshop keyboard combos and you’ll find yourself with more time for the important things (e.g. Facebook trivia questions). These combos assume you’re using Photoshop CS3 on Windows platform with default keyboard shortcuts.

Legend:
( ) = Repeat as desired
{ } = Manual Input Required

Image source

10. Cloak of Invisibility

Remove everything from the screen except for your file.

• F, F, F | Cycle through Screen Modes
• Tab | Remove Tools and Palettes
• Ctrl+H | Hide Extras (Grid, Guides, Slices, etc.)
• Ctrl+R | Hide Rulers

9. Quick Brush Jab

Quickly and easily customize a brush. This combo is a staple for digital painting.

• B | Brush Tool
• Right-Click and Select or F5 and Select | Open condensed or full Brush Palette
• or . or , or Shift+. or Shift+, | Cycle through brushes or jump to first or last brush
• [ or ]: | Shrink or enlarge brush radius
• Shift+[ or Shift+] | Decrease or increase brush hardness
• {Numeric Input} | Change brush opacity (e.g. ‘5′ = 50%, ‘55′ = 55%)

8. Quick Brush Jab Path Stroke

Stroke a path with a customized brush.

• {Draw Path} | Use any tool to draw a path
• B | Select Brush Tool
• Quick Brush Jab | Use the Quick Brush Jab Combo to customize brush
• Enter | Stroke the path with your customized brush

7. Gaussian Attack

Apply a filter, fade it and apply again. Good combo for fine-tweaking filters.

• {Apply a Filter} | Manually choose and apply a filter (warning: using the Lens Flare filter may result in a swift kick to the mouse balls)
• Ctrl+Shift+F | Fade the filter
• (Ctrl+F or Ctrl+Shift+F) | Reapply filter with or without dialog box

6. Shadow Maker

Create a basic shadow based on a chosen layer.

• {Select Layer} | Select the layer the shadow will be created after. The transparency of this layer needs to resemble the desired shape of the shadow.
• Ctrl+J | Layer via Copy
• Ctrl+[ | Move layer down
• D | Reset color defaults
• Alt+Shift+Backspace | Fill with black and preserve transparency
• Ctrl+T | Free transform
• {Transform} | Modify to your liking
• Enter | Commit

5. Layer Catcher

Select, group and mask layers. Often easier than using the layers palette.

• V | Selection Tool
• Ctrl+Click or Ctrl+Shift+Click or Ctrl+Shift+Right-Click | Select your layers
• Ctrl+G | Group Layers

4. OCD Layer Sort

Rearrange your layers quickly and easily. Great cure for you neuroticism.

• F7 | Show Layer Palette
• Alt+[ or Alt+] or Alt+, or Alt+. | Select a layer
• Shift+Alt+[ or Shift+Alt+] or Shift+Alt+, or Shift+Alt+. | Select more layers
• Ctrl+[ or Ctrl+] or Shift+Ctrl+[ or Shift+Control+] | Move layers down or up or send to bottom or bring to top

3. Ultimate Flattener

Merge All Layers (even those hidden). Quick way to flatten a file.

• Alt+. | Select Top Layer
• Shift+Alt+, | Select all layers between currently selected and bottom layer
• Ctrl+E | Merge the selected layers

2. Infinite Dupe

Duplicate and evenly distribute or transform items. Nice way to distribute something like nav buttons.

• Ctrl+T | Transform
• {Transform/Move} | Manually Move or Transform
• Enter | Commit Transform
• (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+T) | Duplicate and transform relative to the newest item

1. Finishing Move - The Web Extractor

Extract a selection and save it for the web. Extremely useful when pulling individual elements from a design, such as buttons or rules.

• {Create Selection} | Select the area you want to extract
• Ctrl+Shift+C | Copy Merged to clipboard
• Ctrl+N | Create New Image based on selection size
• Enter | Confirm New Image
• Ctrl+V | Paste from clipboard
• Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S | Save for the Web

About the author

Tom Giannattasio is a Web Designer/Flash Developer living in Bethesda, MD. In his free time, he enjoys reading, philosophizing, digital painting and going to the zoo. To view a sample of his work, visit his website at www.attasi.com.

Editor’s note

This post is one of the finalists of our guest author contest. Over three weeks selected top-10-lists and discussion articles will be published. To rate the articles we’ll analyze their popularity, users activity, quality of backlinks, traffic and further data.

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Practically every blogger performs regular "vanity searches" to see if they were mentioned on the Web. Some use Technorati, others, Google Blog Search, or Twitter Search. And Google has made it very easy to get alerted via e-mail if your name has been mentioned out in the blogosphere. But recent efforts by MyBlogLog's "New With Me" feature, integrated with FriendFeed, have resulted in an overflow of useless updates, whether you're searching for yourself, or anybody else active on both sites, adding a flood of noise to what used to be actionable search results.


My pre-saved Google Blog Search watches the Web for me.
In February, MyBlogLog made a big move into the lifestreaming space, by doing more than tabulating fans of your content and tagging your blog with keywords, but letting you see your friends' activity around the Web, including their participation on Twitter, Last.fm, Digg and other social sites.

In May, no doubt in response to users' requests, MyBlogLog added the ability to show FriendFeed comments and likes in their lifestream, adding the popular social aggregator as a supported service.

That sounded good on the surface. Now, by going to my MyBlogLog page, I can see activity from my "friends" on FriendFeed, as well as the other previously-supported services.


My Google Blog Search Alerts Stopped Being Useful
But then, Google Blog Search started indexing MyBlogLog's updates as equal to actual individual blog entries. This meant I started to get results in vanity searches, and those sent by e-mail for things as mundane as "Louis Gray commented" or "Louis Gray listened to a track". And it wasn't just my activity, but others. Every few hours, I would get e-mail reporting, "Spullara commented", or "Corvida shared an item", for example. If they were commenting on my items or sharing my items on FriendFeed, MyBlogLog heard about it, and told Google, who then told me.


MyBlogLog Delivers FriendFeed Activity to Google Blog Search.
Clearly, this isn't the end of the world. But it's messy, and it's taken what used to be a fairly rock-solid service, in Google Blog Search and Alerts and made it a lot less useable. While I have no doubts that I'm overweighted with this problem, thanks to being more active and visible on FriendFeed, others I tested showed the same issues, including the aforementioned Corvida, Chris Pirillo, Duncan Riley, and Sarah Perez, for example.

Some people have openly expressed concern about how services are auto-populating and aggregating outside activity, creating an echo effect. This is one of the clearest examples of unintended consequences. So what should happen? Should Google Blog Search remove MyBlogLog results, or should MyBlogLog remove FriendFeed entries? Which service should make the first move if any move is needed?

Yahoo just announced that the close beta period for its location platform Fire Eagle has ended and that the service is now open for everybody. We wrote about Fire Eagle extensively when the beta was first announced. Since then, a number of high-profile services, including Brightkite, Movable Type, Dopplr, and Pownce have implemented Fire Eagle through the numerous APIs Yahoo provides for accessing the service.

When we first wrote about Fire Eagle, we were especially concerned with the privacy implications of sharing your location online. This is especially important because Fire Eagle wants to be a central hub for sharing location information across applications.

However, it is important to note that Yahoo has made privacy a central focus of the platform and right upon sign-up, users are given the option to receive regular emails from Yahoo to see if they are still comfortable with sharing this kind of information. If you do not respond to this email, Yahoo will automatically disable your Fire Eagle account. Yahoo also allows users to turn the service off when they want to keep their location private.

Upon launch, Fire Eagle seems to be having some trouble with keeping up with the sudden rush of new users, as the service was sometimes unable to pinpoint our location. Once it is running smoothly again, we would not be surprised if Fire Eagle could make good on its promise of becoming the central clearinghouse for location services. Already, close to 800 developers are working on applications that make use of Fire Eagle in some form or another.

Today at Yahoo’s Brickhouse, a team of developers, press, and Yahoo execs including co-founder David Filo converged for the release of Fire Eagle, Yahoo’s geo-location platform. Fire Eagle allows allows developers to include positional data in their applications with a minimal amount of work. The platform was originally announced in November, and has since been deployed by a number of select partners including Six Apart and LightPole. Today’s release extends availability to anyone.

Fire Eagle allows users to syndicate their positional data to any partner service after updating from a supported device or website. This means that after sending a Pownce message with a geo-tagged photo, I could have Fire Eagle automatically update my current location on my blog and social network profile. Users can opt to disable updates whenever they’d like, and for the especially paranoid, you can even lie about your location.

Included in the announcement were demos from partners Six Apart, Pownce, and Outside.in, each of which already features integration with Fire Eagle. Six-Apart’s Moveable Type plugin has actually been available since March, and allows users to go-tag their posts and include a frequently updated map on their blog. Pownce, which is launching Fire Eagle support today, allows users to geo-tag nearly anything on its file and message sharing service. In the future, Pownce will also allow users to browse other users’ messages by location.

One of my biggest concerns with Fire Eagle (and one that Yahoo is well aware of) is the lack of a standardized way to remove location updates from partner services. While users have full control over their current Fire Eagle status (which only includes their current position, and keeps no log), the partner services they’ve signed up for may continue to display their location history indefinitely. Fire Eagle says that as part of the Terms of Service, partner services must agree to let users delete their messages, but this will be impossible to enforce. Ultimately, it will be up to users to selectivity give their information to the services they trust.

That said, Fire Eagle’s ease of use and relativity low barrier to entry (you can use your existing Yahoo ID) stands to make it a hit for developers and users alike, especially given impending rise of proximity-based social networks and services.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Dell could really use a comeback. It has lost its luster in computing to the likes of Apple and Hewlett-Packard. So it struck back today with 10 new laptops, most of them new versions of its Latitude business laptops with as many as 19 hours of battery life. (OK, more like 10 hours of battery life; see below.)

The new computers use Intel’s new Centrino 2 chip sets which introduce built-in WiMax, a high-speed wireless networking technology that promises much wider ranges for connectivity compared with Wi-Fi. Jeff Clarke, senior vice president of Dell’s business group, said at a press conference in San Francisco that Dell spent two years designing the laptops and went through more than 3,200 prototypes. It used a kind of crowdsourcing for its design, soliciting ideas through its Ideastorm web site and working with more than 4,000 customers to design it.

Welcome to the Web 2.0 era of computer design. The laptops are aimed at a class of users dubbed “digital nomads,” who want to be connected anywhere they go. The company even started a blog site, digitalnomads.com, to target those users.

The new laptops include seven Latitude business laptops and three Dell Precision workstation laptops. The laptops actually have 9 hours and 45 minutes of battery life and an extra battery, dubbed a “battery slice,” that can be plugged in at the same time to deliver nine more hours. But the battery slice costs extra.

The Latitudes range from a 2.2 “ultramobile” version with a 13-inch screen to high-end laptops with bigger screens. All come with a backlit keyboard to see it in the dark. Other features include a magnesium alloy case, a built-in webcam and microphone, a lock-down system that protects a hard drive if the laptop is dropped, and the ability to track down or disable a laptop if it is stolen. It also has fingerprint readers and security features such as the “control vault” processor and memory technology that stores your identity and credentials on protected hardware. On the smallest ultramobile laptops, Dell will offer something new for a business laptop: color choices such as pink, red, blue and black. Dell is including global positioning system (GPS) capability as an option for the laptops.

Later this year, the company will also have the ability to boot to a virtual compartment, using hardware already built into some of the models. This gives it the ability to get on the Internet instantly or access your email immediately without waiting to boot the complete Windows operating system. Clarke said it will be available as a software upgrade before the end of the year. The prices range from $800 to $1,400; those are starting points for the various models of Latitudes.

I’m not sure this is going to do it for Dell. It’s starting to look like the differentiation in this space is based on the tiniest of differences: my colors are better than yours; I can figure out how to deliver more battery life than the other guy using similar components; I can protect a dropped or stolen laptop better. You get the point.

HP launched its own series of nifty machines for the back-to-school season last month. The HP machines also had good designs, similar features, but didn’t hit the same battery life targets. Then again, HP hasn’t yet described its Centrino 2 machines. The Centrino 2 chip sets from Intel were originally due more than a month ago but were delayed. Still, Dell has given Apple, HP, Toshiba and Lenovo a target to strike at.

By Juul Coolen

Although I’ve been a Windows power user for years, the transition to Mac couldn’t have been easier and more pleasant. I don’t want to turn this article into some endless rambling about how great Mac is, but as the user of both systems I can speak from my own experience quite objectively. Let’s take a look at some of the spots where Apple really has done it better in terms of user interface and usability.

1. Consistency
The whole OS and almost every application looks and feels the same, as if a single team developed the whole thing, thanks to Apple HI Guidelines. Official guidelines for user interface design made it possible for users to actually use most Mac-applications in a very same way, creating a seamless and comfortable experience in the end. Users are able to anticipate how system behaves and what to expect from its applications. In fact, consistency dramatically improves learnability and usability of interacting with the system.

2. Intuitiveness
Installing and uninstalling applications is simply drag-and-drop. It can’t get much simpler and more intuitive than that. In fact, it’s hard to make any errors here, e.g. selecting some wrong option in a drop-down menu or clicking occasionally on the cancel-button. Quick and simple.

3. Effective and appropriate metaphors
Mac effectively uses the power of unambiguous metaphors. The different overviews in the OS just work. Exposé does the right thing, Time Machine uses a 3D view where appropriate (none of that 3D-flip ‘just for the sake of it’-nonsense of Vista). Depth in Time Machine represents the location in time and therefore uses a neat metaphor helping the user, and browsing your albums with Cover Flow in iTunes (and Finder) feels almost like the real thing.

4. Informative error reporting on-demand
Contrary to other user interfaces, Mac-applicatinos display user notifications only when something goes wrong, not permanent baloons when some process is being started or finished. Think of it, do we really need someone to tell us when something goes the way it should?

5. Hiding the technical details
Manually having to defragment a hard drive? Hmm, not here. On Mac users use technical tools by communicating with simple and memorable metaphors. Most users are not savvy and they have no clue how to take care of technical details so why should a user interface prompt them to do this?

6. Fitts’ Law
Essentially, the famous Fitts’ Law says that users are more productive with the mouse when they have less distance to travel and a larger target to click on to do their tasks. Mac’s design engineers have incorporated this rule in their design: almost all application menus are attached to the top of the screen, rather than to the applications’ windows. It improves the usability and reduces screen clutter. Compared to other user interfaces, regarding Fitts’ Law Mac performs better.

Source (mock up)

7. User input feedback
Mac applications have no useless “OK” and “Apply”-buttons and changes are applied immediately and on the fly. Thus the system seems to be more responsive and requires less input from the users, making user feedback as effective as possible.

Clicking the checkbox here makes the tab bar show up in the browser window instantly. (Firefox)

8. User support and navigation
Remember Clippy? Mac has its own (OS wide) version as well, called Spotlight. The only difference is that it’s actually a lot more helpful and versatile. And damn speedy too! Really, navigating an OS hasn’t ever been that straightforward. It does calculations as well and launching applications is as easy as typing in its name and hitting Enter (see screenshot below).

9. Workflow
Mac doesn’t force you to focus on a single window, but keeps them all visible in the background ensuring a more efficient workflow. However this might be a thing of taste and getting used to.

10. Even kernel panic looks nice!
A funny but still nice example of Apple’s attention to detail. On the rare occasions when Mac crashes, it still does so in a respectable manner. Usability-wise it’s not perfect, since it doesn’t let the user know what went wrong and only asks the user to reboot the system. Still, beautiful and elegant.

Image source

I’m not saying Mac’s user interface is perfect. There is probably no perfect solution which would satisfy everyone. Yet Mac has done it right a lot of times, at least from the usability perspective. What do you think? Do you have examples when Mac fails from the usability point of view? And how exactly is Mac’s user interface better than other interfaces?

About the author

Juul Coolen is a web-designer living in The Netherlands. Apart from some freelance work he is still studying computer science at the university. His dream is one day to have a first-class design and development agency called Imaginized.

Editor’s note

This post is one of the finalists of our guest author contest. Over three weeks selected top-10-lists and discussion articles will be published. To rate the articles we’ll analyze their popularity, users activity, quality of backlinks, traffic and further data.

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Back in January of this year, I got an email introduction from my friend Sarah Reed introducing me to a New York-based company called Ignighter.com.  The premise was simple, yet novel:  current online dating services don't "work" for the current crop for 20-35 year olds.  Ignighter had invented the concept of "group dating" which they believed was safer, less awkward and more fun. 

At the time, I knew nothing about online dating, but did know that a few sites were very successful (J-Date, Match.com, eHarmony), so I was intrigued with what founders Adam Sachs and Dan Osit had come up with.  I decided that I would present the idea to the graduate school class that I teach at the University of Colorado.  The class overwhelming supported the idea, especially the women in the class.  At that point, I knew they were on to something.

While my partner Seth was out in New York, he visited with Adam and Dan and reported back that he was intrigued and really liked the guys.  Seth and I encouraged them to apply to TechStars as a way of accelerating their development.  After they were accepted into the program, Seth and I were excited to be part of their mentorship team.

During the summer, they've done a great of job of completely redesigning their website and technology.  They've done an even more impressive job of thinking about the future of their platform and how devices like the iPhone might be a game changer in their industry.  In short, they've gone from concept to product in a short period of time. 

This week is their official launch.  They are kicking things off with an event in New York City.  If you are around, you should attend.  I've been told that I'm too old for dating target audience, so I'm not allowed to go.

I'd like to congratulate Adam, Dan, Kevin, Nicky (a.k.a "boy genius") and Molly on a job well done.  It's nice to see the progress that you've made while here in Boulder and even nicer that I can now call you all my friends.

Here's to Ignighter - "Opportunity without Pressure."

Yesterday Joel was schooling me about how he believes men “trade in favors.” He explained that men keep an internal tally of what they’ve done for you and what you’re going to have to do for them in order to balance the scales. I was like, “are you serious!?”

I honestly don’t think about my life in terms of I give you X and you now owe me Y, so after reminding me that businessmen often have an “implicitly understood bank of favors,” I told him how I think creative types differ in thinking about this emotionally charged issue. I talk about how I perceive moms and I realize each mom is different, but here’s the metaphor I used when talking with Joel.

It’s all about coffee cups.

When a mom sees a coffee cup and notices a ring forming beneath it she extrapolates that there’ll be a stain to clean up later if it’s not taken care of now. Whether or not you (let’s say you’re her kid) left the cup there she’ll usually pick it up, wipe up the ring and wash out the cup. I realize this is a very broad generalization, but I think this is an automatic response to “tiny messes” by caretakers, moms or dads or anyone maintaining a home. One thing’s for sure, it’s a requirement for keeping a tidy home.

Let’s say mom, in this example, decides one day that she’s not going to pick up your coffee cup after you (”I’m done cleaning this house until you all start appreciating the hard work I do around here!!” Sound familiar?). The stain, she knows, will likely develop into a bigger problem.

One that’ll require some elbow grease and bleach to get up.

She could ask you to do it, for sure, but that could be interpreted as nagging. Why wait for the stain to settle in when it could ruin her countertop? She pulls out a rag with an exasperated huff and cleans up your tiny mess. Then she moves on to the next tiny mess. I don’t think she really stops to think “you owe me one, kid” each time she cleans up your mess. Pretty sure my mom didn’t…it would lead to resentment, no matter how you slice it.

Your mom or dad or primary caretaker (in my case, from eleven on, it was my grandmother) does this out of love.

Turning on the “Pay Me” Switch

I’ve known women and men who undervalue their work. Most people that have had trouble with this have exhibited highly creative and occasional highly emotional characteristics. In almost every case, the folks that demonstrate an inability to value their work (self most definitely included) tend to be strong creative types.

CreativeBits.org’s Ivan has an excellent piece called “Say No to Free Work!” that is an absolute must-read for Creatives and specifically, Designers. He says,

“Our skills as designers were shaped by many years of mostly hard work. It didn’t come for free. Being able to transform ideas, feelings and messages into visual designs is not something we should take as granted. You should never forget that the skills you possess are of great value to others. The way you think, the way you see, the way you draw is something that only a trained and talented human can do. At least at this point in time. You should make sure there is always a value associated with every hour you spend on work.”

He says “stop giving it away” but it’s not as always as simple as all that.

Let me give you an example of how this plays out.

A client requests we do a brainstorming session before starting billable hours.

I say: do one. For free. Resist the urge to do more than one free brainstorming sesh with a client because here’s the deal: brainstorming is your work. Many of us excel at consulting because in an hour of “brainstorming” with a client we can hit on multiple solutions to the “coffee stain” problem that will save hours of work (perhaps it’s time for us to come up with a stronger term than brainstorming?). Translated to dollars, we’re talking thousands of dollars potentially saved from a one-hour “brainstorming” session.

Case in point.

A one-hour session with a client last month (remember, we’re talking sixty minutes, not a whole lot of time) yielded: an employee suggestion that led to the hiring of said employee, a tagline (ultimately, a branding statement), numerous connections within the blogging world and a Plan of Attack for branding at a conference. It’s business development and it’s highly creative. It’s also billable.

Creative types (and Scanners) often undervalue themselves…not because we don’t have anything of value to offer…but because we’re often unable to put our fingers on what it is exactly that we offer. I’ve seen this happen with countless Designers.

I can’t say this loudly enough to you creative types in the working world: Stop Right Now. Stop Giving it Away.

It’s going to be tempting to keep giving it away. We’re enthusiastic about things. LOTS of things. Bright, shiny things. Things that are new. Things that other people are excited about.

We get excited, too!

And there are plenty of folks out there that are willing to exploit our enthusiasm for their project(s).

I’m not saying they are jerks for doing so. Nor am I suggesting we chill and give up our enthusiasm (or become jaded…I’ve had my moments where I’m like eff this, I’m not giving anymore of my Go Juice to this project you’re paying me beans for.) I’m saying it’s up to us to say, “no, you may not have it for free.” Rather than saying we have to go against our nature and focus on one thing and one thing only, let’s figure out ways to pay our bills AND continue to love the way we do.

We can have both.

We’re All Trading, Yes. We’re Trading in Love

It’s going to look different to everyone, but it boils down to this: we do trade daily, all of us…cubicle dwellers and CEOs alike. The difference may be that Creatives…I think we tend to see the cleaning up of the coffee stain as an act of love. It’s something we do because we care about the people in our lives very deeply. We want to see them succeed. We want them to have a clean home, we see a cabinet full of clean dishes and food on plates as love.

And we’re not “paid” for it in dollars. Most housewives would be shocked to see a check show up at the door one day for $134,121. But, according to one survey in 2006, that’d be the amount they were due.

I read this super-charged piece by my friend Erin (Queen of Spain) called “The Business of Mommyblogging” that left me shaking my head going, “Yes. Heaven’s yes.” The main thrust was that companies like J+J are reaching out to mommybloggers and that it’s time for moms to get serious about what they have to offer (as a brand/business) and what they expect in return. Sometimes it’s not our lack of valuing ourselves that causes the problem. It’s our lack of knowing what we deserve in return for wiping up the coffee stain.

I think it’s time we have that dialog. And start coming up with some creative solutions.

After all, that’s what we do best.

I believe Ivan from CreativeBits would agree. He concludes his article with, “Everyone should do as much [pro bono] as time allows. We as communication specialists have a big responsibility and opportunity to change the world to the better.” Changing the world comes from a place of love. Changing the world starts with loving and valuing ourselves and our creative work within it.

—
*The title comes, in part, inspired by the latest from the always inspiring Merlin Mann. I’ve watched this half a dozen times and still have only figured out about 1/4 of what he’s saying. WARNING: Might be USFW (unsafe for work)…for the backstory.

After parting ways with singer-guitarist Andrew Stockdale last week, the two former members of Wolfmother reportedly plan on making their side project into a full-fledged band. Bassist-keyboardist Chris Ross and drummer Myles Heskett performed as Doom Buggy last year at a small show in Sydney, Australia. As evidenced by the above video, Doom Buggy have a more psychedelic/krautrock sound than the stoner metal of Wolfmother. Doom Buggy was also the name of a Milwaukee band, so Ross and Heskett should be prepared to rename their group Doom Buggy AUS for their Stateside visits. Stockdale, meanwhile, plans on restocking Wolfmother soon with new members in order to get to work on the band’s second album. A Sydney session musician has reportedly already filled one of the two vacancies. Although Wolfmother announced their split last week, the band might have made the decision to break up more than a month ago, but opted to stay together for their headlining performance at the Splendour in the Grass festival, which was ultimately their last concert together.