Robyn Gough Designs » tutorial

Zipping And Unzipping Zip Files

clikchic — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:32:48 +0000

One of the most fundamental aspects of digital scrapbooking is being able to unzip the files you download. Read on to find out how to zip and unzip zip files.

Creating and Extracting Zip Files In digital scrapbooking there are many occasions where you might have to deal with creating and extracting (opening) zip files. Most digital scrapbook kits you download, whether you buy them or whether they are freebies come in zipped files. Zip files are normally a way of compressing files to keep down the size of them as well as keeping them together in a single file rather than several separate ones.

With graphic or image files, zips do not normally reduce the file size much, if at all, however they are a very good way of keeping a collection of files together to enable easier downloading and uploading on the web. Windows provides it’s own zipping facilities, but if you do not have Windows there are several zipping programs out there which you may be able to use instead. For the purpose of this tutorial, since most people tend to use Windows we will explain how to zip and extract files with Windows Explorer. Extracting Zip Files Firstly open Windows Explorer Start> All Programs> Windows Explorer Locate the zip file you wish to extract the files from and right click on the file. From the menu that is displayed, choose Extract All.

Tip

Double clicking on a zip file will show you what is inside the zip file but will not extract it’s contents.

The Windows extraction wizard will open. Click on Next to continue and you will come to the window below.

Here you can select a destination for the files to be extracted to. You can click browse to find a folder on your hard drive, or type the path of where you want the files to be extracted to. The default is a folder named the same as your zip file, usually in the folder the zip is contained in. If you are happy to have your files extracted to the default directory and folder, click on next to continue.

You zip file will begin to extract and display a progress bar as below.

This completes the extraction of your files, check the box next to ‘Show extracted files’ if you wish to have a window open showing the extracted files.

If you selected the ‘Show Extracted Files’ checkbox. A window explorer window will open at the location of your extracted files.

Creating a Zipped File

Firstly open Windows Explorer Start> All Programs> Windows Explorer Add all the files you wish to zip into a folder. Select the items that you wish to add to a zip by ctrl clicking to select each file individually or click on the top of a list of files, hold down the shift key and click on the bottom file in a list of files.

Once your files are selected, right click on one of the files and choose, Send To> Compressed (Zipped) Folder

Your zipped file will appear among the files you zipped. Your zipped files are now ready to upload to the web, send to someone else or do what you will with!

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Creating a Blinkie in Photoshop CS-CS5

clikchic — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 09:50:09 +0000

Anyone who joins the online digiscrapping communities will notice the popularity of blinking avatars and ‘blinkies’. This tutorial teaches you how to easily create your very own blinking avatars and blinkies in Photoshop CS-CS5.

There are a few more steps to create a blinkie in older versions of Photoshop CS than in Photoshop Elements but once you know how you will be creating dozens of blinking avatars and blinkies! The blinkie size I have used in this instance is 125×60 pixels, another common blinkie size is 150×50 pixels. The avatar size limit on most scrapping forums is 125x125pixels so this is a good size to create your avatar’s at.

Firstly you need to create your design, and this needs to be a layered image, as showing and hiding the layers enables you to create each frame of the blinkie.

For the purpose of this tutorial I will be using the top three layers as ‘blinking’ layers for the blinkie. You can use any combination of layers you wish to create a frame for your blinkie. In this instance I will keep it simple and only ‘blink’ the top three layers.

Once you have all your layers ready to go you then need to begin the animation process. To do this, go to the file menu and choose Edit in ImageReady.

Note: This step is unnecessary in Photoshop CS3+ as animations are now done within Photoshop itself. Simply click on the window menu and click on Animation to open the Animation window while still in Photoshop.

Image Ready will open up (this can sometimes take some time to load) with your image in it, and no longer in Photoshop. If you need to go back and fix something you can just choose Edit in Photoshop from the file menu of Image Ready. Be warned however if you do this you should do so before you begin the animation process as it can play havoc with your frames. If you need to do it after you have started adding new frames, first delete the extra frames and then do your editing in Photoshop before coming back to Image Ready.

Next you need to open the Animation window, in image ready or in Photoshop CS3+.

Go to the Window menu and ensure that the Animation option is checked. This will ensure you have the animation window open.

To create each frame we need to turn on the layers we want visible and off the layers we don’t. You can do this by clicking on the eye next to each layer. If there is no eye next to the layer, it means the layer’s visibility has been turned off. In the above sample we have turned off the ‘Love’ and ‘CD’ Layers which will be for the first frame of our blinkie. For this blinkie the first layer only has the ‘I’ layer visible.

Here we have the Animation window visible. This is where we create each frame of the animation. Here we need to ensure it is set to forever. This allows the blinkie to continue blinking. If it is set to once, it will only go through the frames once and then stop.

The frame delay is the length of time in seconds the frame will appear. You can set different time values for each frame if you wish. For instance if something takes a little longer to read you can make it a longer frame delay. If it is just an outside border which flickers, you can set it to a short delay so that it blinks quickly. For the purpose of this tutorial we will set all the frame delay’s at 0.5 seconds.

Once the first frame is set, following new frames are defaulted at the same value, but can be changed if you wish.

We already had the first frame ready to go, and just had to adjust the frame delay. Now we are ready to create the second frame. First we need to click on the New Frame Icon circled above.

Next we need to make the layers visible that we want to appear in the second frame of the blinkie. Above shows the second layer we want visible.

Here is the third frame we wish to have for the blinkie, showing the layers which are visible for this frame. We have now finished creating the frames for the blinkie and it is now ready to be saved into gif format.

Note: In CS3+ this step is now done through Save For Web & Devices (file menu). The settings are on the right hand side of the window. If you wish to view the quality settings, click on the two up tab. This allows you to view the Original file on the left, and your adjusted settings on the right. You can use the play button at the bottom right of the window to view your animation before saving. Once you are happy with your settings click on save and save to your computer.

Photoshop CS3+ Save For Web & Devices

Back to prior photoshop versions…

Next we need to make sure that gif is selected in the optimize palette. If you need to compress the image a little further and reduce the file size you can try adjusting the number of colours, however this can reduce the viewing quality of the image. If file size is not an issue you will not need to adjust any of the other settings.

For the purpose of this tutorial I have left all the settings at their defaults.

Now it is time to save our image! Go to the file menu and choose Save Optimized As. Choose an easy to find spot on your hard drive to save your blinkie and you are done!

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Cross Processing Graphically Challenged

clikchic — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 02:59:00 +0000

The March Graphically Challenged at DSP is to 'cross process' a photo and create a layout with that photo. Cross processing is a traditional still film photography technique that can produce some really striking results, however you can achieve similar effects in photoshop without messing with those stinky chemicals! I have done a tutorial to demonstrate how to achieve the effect in photoshop. The challenge is to create a layout using the cross processed photo and have it take up the entire page. I decided to scraplift a layout done by Klamb1111 because I loved the affect she created on her layout with the tutorial and had the perfect photo to use after Jasmine learnt how to ride her bike without training wheels over the weekend! Anyway, here is my layout using the technique, using the cross processed photo, blend modes and a background paper from my Altered Heart Page Kit.