Retrofy Your Photos!

Spoon Graphics' blog recently shared a light leak texture pack that you can download and use in photoshop! There are fifteen different types you can use. The textures are vibrant and colorful, as seen in many old photos. They really help if you're trying to make a photo look like it's from the 70's!

Best of all, it's FREE!

How to use them: After you've downloaded the pack, you can open the texture file in photoshop, create a new layer, and paste the file. Switch the blending mode of the new layer to Screen to let the parts of the file that were originally black become transparent.

This texture pack is useful to those of us creating multimedia who want to make our projects have a more retro feel. Being able to add effects in order to change the viewer's perception of the time period is a really useful tool and I think this light leak texture pack can help with that a lot!

Scroll down and download the pack here!

Cleaning up Audio

One thing that I'm always on the lookout for is audio quality.  It can add (or detract, depending on how well you do it) a great level of professionalism to a video if you take the time to mess with the audio settings. I'll be speaking more toward Final Cut Pro for now, but I'm working with Premier more, so I'm sure there's more to come on that.

Final Cut Pro has a great simple function to reduce background noise.  Highlight the audio sample you want and click the arrow next to audio analysis.  There's a slider that can change how much of it is cut out and a hum removal button for electrical or ambient hums.  Quick tip, I've found that 100% reduction is nearly as bad as no reduction.  It adds a sort of tinny sounding element to the video and makes dialog sound robotic.  Somewhere between 50 and 70% seems to be working fine for me.  And the more experienced among us can mess with the equalizer if they feel up to it.

Speaking of audio changes, Final Cut also has audio filters, and a surprising amount at that.  Putting some of those on a clip can help with voiceovers and the like.  I just used a radio effect on some music that was in my video and it worked out perfectly.

Apple's website isn't great on the technical aspect of using everything but it does a good job of laying out the features.  Besides, trial and error is the best teacher.

Social Media Users BEWARE!

            With today’s rapidly expanding (and already expansive) social media outlets, there is always the fear of your information being shared with third parties. Whether those third parties are prospective employers, the government, or telecom firms, we are always wary of how we share ourselves and our personal information (or maybe not). The last thing we want to have happen is for a prospective employer to find our Facebook or Twitter and read that embarrassing status that we made four months ago, or see that one picture that probably isn’t very G-rated. I don’t know how many stories I’ve heard of people being rejected from possible opportunities just because of what they post to social media websites and how they say it.

            While in the past you might have been able to hide your overly irate and explicit tweets about how much you hate the Yankees, new laws that have come into effect that may change the way you interact with your future and current employers. As of about a week ago, the Illinois state House passed a bill that allows employers to investigate employee social media in order to avoid any internal conflicts, as well as to identify disgruntled workers or possible flaws in their business structure.

Now before you start freaking out and telling Shelley that there’s no way you’ll give her your Facebook password if Delaware passes something similar, you might want to know that the bill does not mandate employees to give the information; it just allows for the right to request it (albeit in a forceful and possibly unpleasant manner). This could put employees under some considerable pressure, although the bill does not impose penalties or the possibility of being fired for noncompliance. The purpose of this bill is to allow employers to understand employees on a more personal level, even though it seems quite invasive and unwarranted.

I’m glad to say that no such bill has passed in either Delaware or in my home state of Massachusetts, but this is definitely something that we should keep an eye out for in the future (or, if you’re from Illinois, in the present). The only thing that I can say is: keep that social media stuff PG.

The Batteries of the Future

OK, so I know that batteries aren't the most exciting things in the world, but work with me here, because this is pretty cool. Batteries are used in most of the equipment here and sometimes (very rarely), items can't be borrowed because their batteries aren't fully charged. Well, with the new 'mighty micro-batteries' that are now in the works, charging laptops could go from 4 hours to a couple of minutes, with claims that the new batteries charge 1,000 times faster than those now. These changes could even help aid the progress of all technologies, allowing the cameras and other multimedia equipment to be even smaller! Unfortunately, we will still have to wait a little longer for the micro-batteries, for they are not quite safe enough and experience over-heating problems.  Hopefully these problems are fixed soon, because according to TechNewsWorld, "battery technology has always lagged advances in other areas of electronics." Once popular, who knows what changes we could see in the equipment we loan out!

To check out the article with all of the technical terms as to why micro-batteries are the next big thing, click the link: Mighty Microbattery Delivers Lightning-Fast Charge

After Effects Rendering is such a pain!

So earlier this month I was having a lot of problems with an animation I did in After Effects rendering out without any errors, but the .Mov file created was lagging on most computers.  The entire clip was there, and everything looked great, but I couldn't figure out how to get these videos to play smoothly without sacrificing the crisp quality.

I've rendered this piece out probably at least 30 times, and I was doing everything I normally did.  Either Quicktime, or H.264, both of which are pretty standard for video in After Effects.

H.264 created the quality issues and pixelated a lot of my footage, but Quicktime was the format that was lagging.


After checking every single box I could possibly check, I found a drop down menu under "Format Options," after you selected Quicktime as your format.

This dropdown menu was set on "Animation" which is what mine piece was, however, I realized after the fact, that the Animation setting doesn't really compress your file!  So it ended up being huge!

This was all easily solved by changing from "Animation" to "Apple Pro Res" which is another standard compressing format for Apple devices.


Sent my piece to render, and everything played great!


So if you ever have trouble in After Effects, or have a video-file that you know is all there, but your computer can't seem to play it.  Try sending it through After Effects under an Apple Pro Res format, while still set as a Quicktime file!  Should work wonders!

Offering Alternatives to Patrons

During this time in the semester, we can expect a plethora of repeat questions and rush times for equipment. At these times I find it not simply helpful, but critical to know other solutions that we can offer to library users. For instance, if the queue for printing posters is too long for a user, that user can also print at Smith Hall for a slightly larger fee per foot. Also, if the service desk is out of Mac adapters for VGA projectors, one can borrow a PC laptop for 4 hours. This would give the user enough time to use it for a presentation then return it. Offering alternatives helps to assure library patrons that the service desk does service best.

Drawing Machine Workshop

Do you have an interest in machines that are interactive? Working with your hands? And having tons of fun on a Saturday afternoon? Well, an upcoming Drawing Machine Workshop should be the right thing you need to get those creative brain juices flowing!

Ashley Pigford, a Visual Communications professor at our very own University of Delaware, will be leading this workshop at the Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts in Wilmington, DE."....You will build and program small robotic machines that create drawings. The machines consist of an Arduino microcontroller, motors, wheels, batteries and magic markers, all of which will be provided. And you will be introduced to Arduino programming for controlling the robots. No prior experience with programming required. Drawing machines will remain on exhibit at the DCCA through June 16, 2013." Hope to see some familiar faces there!

Saturday, May 4, 2013
Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts in Wilmington, DE
1-3 pm, $25 per person
Ages 10+

If you're not yet convinced that you are going to have the time of your life, then click here, to view this awesome video. Afterwards, be sure to register to reserve your seat at the Drawing Machine Workshop by clicking here.