You can turn you photos to artistic painting or drawings, using a simple method.

Hi friends, I hope you read and practiced the part 1 of the graphic tutorial, this will have taught you how to configure your photo to the size required by TakingITglobal site. If not you can check it in my TIG Blogs. Today, I want to bring our attention to the fact that our photos can be redefined to look like an artistic painting or drawings. This effect is awesome as it can stylishly turn you to a professional artist.
I observed that some members do not want their real photos posted on the site, If you are in this class, you can turn your photos to graphics or paintings before posting it. Although, I strongly recommend that you read through the term of use and principles of this organization before you do so.

Now we shall begin assuming that you already know how to open Adobe Photoshop, how to configure your photo to the recommended size for TakingITglobal site, e.t.c if otherwise kindly revise the part 1 of the tutorial (check in my TIG Blogs).

1. Open Adobe Photoshop on your PC
2. Click FILE > OPEN (to open your already saved photo on your PC)
3. After the above, you will be able to see your photo in the application.
4. Click FILTER > ARTISTIC (this will give you numerous options of artistic paintings/drawings) click on anyone of your choice (you can change it later). Note FILTER is in the menu options, close to FILE menu.
5. A box will be opened wherein you can play around or change your initial choice. These are some of the options available: Colored Pencil, Cutout, Dry Brush, Film Grain, Fresco, Neon Glow, Paint Daubs, Palette Knife, Plastic Wrap, Poster Edges, Rough Pastels, Smudge Stick, Sponge, Underpainting, Watercolor etc. All these options are dependent on the version of Adobe Photoshop you have (for these tutorial I use CS version)
6. For beginners, just pick on any option of your choice.
7. Afterwards, you can save the photo.
8. Click FILE > SAVE AS > e.t.c (I’ve talked about this in Tutorial Part1)
9. If you check my photo in my profile, you’ll notice I have used the “Neon Glow” effect.
10. Finally, you can conveniently play around the effects as you wish, if you have any hard times please send a note to me.

The effects mentioned above can equally be done in other photo applications, I shall be reviewing them later.
Thanks.

Dear members, you can use this bit of graphic tutorial to enhance and compose any graphics & photos u may want to post on takingITglobal site. The application explained in this part is Adobe Photoshop.

There are few steps to take, but the most important one is having the application on your system (You can contact your system administrator for the installation). Otherwise, you will have to look out for the part 2 of the tutorial which will be focused on using another application.

Herein below are the steps to be taken:
1. Have your photo save in a location on your system (PC).
2. Open the application.
3. Use the “Open” command in Adobe Photoshop and browse to the location where the photo is stored on your PC. The Open command is located in File menu > Open.
4. If you correctly got the above open command, you will have something like this show above(Image A1, left side)
5. In this example, I have opened a photo of Horse as seen above. This picture is okay for use but care must be taken on the image size. The size must conform to the specifications of the target use. For TakingITglobal’s members profiles, there are two types of specifications;
(1) Picture: 200/250 pixels maximum, either in GIF or JPEG formats.
(2) Avatar: 35/35 pixels maximum, either in GIF or JPEG formats. In this tutorial, I will talk about the JPEG format; this is sequel to the easy of production. So also, most of our intended photo will be in this format.
6. Since the specifications for the picture says maximum of 200/250 pixels, I will be explaining how you can make a 200/200 pixels, I believe this will eliminate any error on your parts and also still put you in the region of 200/250 as expected.
7. The photo shown above is larger than required thus, we’ll use either the “Cropping” tool or just reduce “Compress” the photo to size. In this tutorial, we shall use the compress to size method. This method will preserve the photo areas but will only reduce the pixel size. This method is used when you want every part of the photo to be seen. Note: your photo may look distant in view.
8. Click on “Image” > “Image Size”. With this, a drop down box will appear like this shown above (Image A2, right side)
Input in the Width: 200 & in the Height: 200; before doing this make sure you have deselected the constrain aspect ratio. The aspect ratio is equally shown above but at the lower edge titled “Constrain Proportions” (just remove the green mark).
9. By the time you click OK your photo size will have reduced considerably to the required size.
10. We shall now save the new sized photo: this is done by Clicking on the “File” > Save As. Choose a location on your PC for the storage and give a file name so also change the format to JPEG (*JPG.*JPGE.*JPE) in the drop down box. Click Save.
11. With this Photo, you can successfully submit your photo to TakingITglobal members’ profile.

If you have any problem whatsoever with understanding any of the above please express it. I’ll will be talking about how you can configure you photo to close-ups, cropping, enhancements, how you can get you photo from you Camera Phones, changing of formats and so many other lovely things you can do later in the other Parts of the Tutorial. The application used here is not the only one that can be employed in dealing with photo, later I will be talking about some other ones too.

RED!!! with estimate of 2.4million deaths to AIDS in Sub saharan Africa, Bono has now gone RED, he say check out at www.joinred.com for further details.

(RED) was created by Bono and Bobby Shriver, Chairman of DATA to raise awareness and money for The Global Fund by teaming up with the world's most iconic brands to produce (PRODUCT)RED branded products. A percentage of each (PRODUCT)RED product sold is given to The Global Fund. The money helps women and children affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa.

What's the meaning of the parentheses or brackets? Well, we call them "the embrace." Each company that becomes (RED) places its logo in this embrace and is then elevated to the power of red. Thus the name -- (PRODUCT)RED.

You, the consumer, can take your purchase to the power of (RED) simply by upgrading your choice. Thus the proposition: (YOU)RED. Be embraced, take your own fine self to the power of (RED). What better way to become a good-looking samaritan?!

With the global rate of Airplane crashes, I will like to ask this big question "are we save?"

Just few weeks ago (Aug 27) in the US a Comair Flight 5191 crashed while attempting to takeoff for Atlanta from Lexington Kentucky leaving only one survivor out of 47 onboard.

Also 4 days ago in my state Georgia, another plane though small also crashed within a nieghborhood after taking off from one of the local airports....this leaves only one survivor out of 4 on board.

As if It is not over, just yesterday, we had something similar to the world trade center event, another small airplane crashed into on apartment building killing the 2 onboard in NY.

My question now says...are we save at all, even to live/work in a building or say walk on the street?
May God help us all.

A handfull of people in the US precisely Georgian province are now protesting about having the popular movie Harry Potter's books in the public school libraries. They claim they are an extreme dabolical pieces. The claims go that it will teach a lot of kids wizary, fetishism & make them think diabolically.
A suit was filled at the court initiating the removal of all Harry Potter's books from all Georgian Public School's Libraries. Personally i find this very funny, as the law here states that they (Kids) are not compelled to read all the books in the Library. So also, the books in particular is not part of the school's curriculum.
I'd have loved to ask those group, if really non of their wards a home has not seen the film (Harry Potter). Then, which one is more vivid? (film or books).
Anyway they are still one the suit in court. I hope this will not reduce the sale of the books or otherwise give it an unnecessary publicity, which may be good for very curious kids.