"Love with your heart; use your head for everything else." Captain Disillusion

When people watch TV they understand that most of it is staged, meaning an actor is portraying a role. Even though YouTube seems to share many of the same sort visuals as television it is taken for granted that most of it is real. Unfortunately the line that separates the genuine and artificial on YouTube is so blurry it is very difficult to figure out. Soon I will be posting about viral videos and their effect but today I wanted to talk about one source I always to go for the seemingly unexplained online video. Captain Disillusion is a series of videos explaining how these videos are created. This may seem dull but I find it riveting. Although he is painted in silver and looks a bit strange he does a perfect job of deconstructing these internet phenomenons like the penguin pushing another into the water. Now why is this important you might ask? Well for a couple of reasons it shows how the information online needs to be taken with a grain of salt. It also pulls the veil away and shows how this sort of movie editing magic is done. Some might say it takes away from the video knowing that it is not real but I feel I can appreciate it even more for knowing the amount of work that has gone into the making of it. I should mention that the language used may not always be suitable for the very young but it is a minor issue. So if you are amazed by UFOs flying passed or the incredible face catching of sunglasses then I recommend that you give this a try.

“Keep up appearances whatever you do.”Charles Dickens

On the same subject of Photoshop and its ability to alter our reality is a fantastic timeline of forgeries. A professor at Dartmouth College, named Hany Farid, has put together a list of examples of how photos have been altered to highlight an element or just to deceive the viewer. The list is quite amazing. It ranges from 1860 to the present. It shows off some of the most famous and popular pictures we take for granted as real. He has links comparing the original to the altered when possible. Since the invention of Photoshop, it seems the original unaltered photo must become a thing of the past. If you have a love of history or photos give this one a try.

Note: When I teach Photoshop Elements this is what I use in class. Many Thanks to Professor Farid.

“If life gives you a bowl of lemons, go find an annoying guy with paper cuts”

This post is fairly specific to Adobe Photoshop Elements users. Here at Providence Public Library we are upgrading out Photoshop software on the computers that I teach at. As I have been using the software in getting ready to teach it for the public I kept having a really annoying problem. Essentially if you put in a disk, flash drive, or a CD that contains photos then a program called Adobe Photo Downloader pops up. It is supposed to be helpful and load all my pics into the system. I always try to quit and it keeps popping up. I checked online and it seems all the version of Elements has the same new feature and it is annoying! Everyone who has this is looking for a remedy. Thankfully Adobe has a nice instructional page that tells you how to disable it. So if you are having the same problem give this a try.

How to Cheat in Photoshop

As a computer teacher I am always interested in reading books on a new subject, especially if the book is set up in an interesting and easy way. A book I use all the time as a learning tool and as a great reference is How to Cheat in Photoshop. It is written from the designer’s standpoint with real world examples. It comes with a CD full of the samples used in the book so anything that is used as an example, you can try as well. Give it a try!