The Electric Sheep screensaver can turn your desktop into a psychedelic wonderland.
(Credit: Chris_Ursitti/Electric Sheep)We all know what fractals are, even if we can't explain them very well (myself included). In simplest terms, fractals are geometric shapes that can be split into increasingly smaller, yet identical, fragments.
In 2002, Scott Draves created something called "fractal flares," which are a class of fractals that use nonlinear transformations and color in a way to create spectacular images. His work was put into a free, open-source fractal-flame called Apophysis.
I've been playing a bit with Apophysis this week, and be warned: once you get started, you may find yourself spending hours creating increasingly impressive artwork and tweaking your inventions. The learning curve for Apophysis is fairly steep, but there are plenty of tutorials online to get you started.
Once you get comfortable with two-dimensional creation using Apophysis (and your computer can handle a somewhat intense processing demand), you can take the fractal madness up a notch with the "experimental" 3D version of the software, one of several beta versions of Apophysis.
For lower-maintenance fractal flames on your desktop, Scott Draves also created an open-source screensaver called Electric Sheep. This most excellent software uses your computer's down cycles to generate fractal flames and share them with the community at large.
You can even vote for other users' creations, or "sheep," to increase their lifespan and ensure that they "mate" with other sheep to create beautiful children. You can also create sheep using scripts built into Apophysis and then submit them to the Electric Sheep Web site. A gallery of the user-generated fractal flames displays all sorts of images, as well as useful and trivial data about both living and dead sheep.
What other software do you use to create cool-looking fractals or any other digital art? Tell me about it in the comments.
This low-cost graphics app makes creating Web buttons, banners, and stylized text easy. With tons of premade templates and samples to get you started, Art Text lets you spend your time fine-tuning your work instead of starting from scratch. When you're done, you can export your work in several formats, letting you put the final touches on your design in your favorite graphics or image-editing program.
Still not convinced? Then check out this First Look video of Art Text for Mac to get a quick overview.
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
There are many online sites for creating blogs with ready-made templates, hosting services, and even opportunities to display ads to make a little money. Blogger, Wordpress, and LiveJournal all offer easy ways to get set up and writing your thoughts right away. If you're a first-time blogger, these sites are a great option.
There comes a time in a lot of bloggers' lives, however, when the limitations of blogging sites make them believe it's time to move on. Maybe the site's specific templates aren't up to snuff, or the process of updating your blog is too complicated, or you feel like your site looks like everyone else's. Whatever the reason may be, I came across an app recently which offers tons of flexibility and enough original templates and options to make your site both unique and easy to update.
Use the Media browser to gain access to your iPhoto library
(Credit: CNET Networks)Sandvox is a WYSIWYG design app which can help you get the look you want while making it easy to change elements quickly and to your specifications. The main window is where all the action of updating your site takes place. The top of the interface lets you add pages, create links, add media and other options. Navigate your site by using the site outline on the left side of the interface to get to the pages you want to update quickly. The main panel shows what your site looks like, just as it would if you were viewing it online. To make edits, simply click on the area you want to change and start typing. To link to other pages, just highlight the text you want to link and hit the create link button at the top to drop in a URL. What's great about Sandvox is you don't need to know how to code to make a great Web site--it does it all in the background for you. When you're done, the integrated FTP client lets you publish directly from within the app to any Web host.
Choose from several different page templates to get the style you want
(Credit: CNET Networks)Sandvox also offers several great features for adding small media elements to any page of your site. You can add photos, movies, RSS feeds, and much more using the Pagelets pull-down menu. An integrated media browser lets you quickly browse iPhoto for the images you want on your site. Simply drag and drop a group of photos into the Photos section of your site outline and Sandvox creates a page for each photo along with a separate page for the index with thumbnails. It's these time-saving features that make Sandvox so easy to use.
Set up your hosting service from within the program so you can publish with one click
(Credit: CNET Networks)From the makers of the popular scene-rendering program Bryce comes DAZ Studio, a powerful 3D-modeling and CAD program for Windows and Mac that looks great but is a resource hog and can be sluggish for the average user.
The publisher recommends having at least 256MB of RAM, but that's wishful thinking. The program runs choppily on anything less than 1GB, although some of the more complex rendering was processed more slowly than others. It also requires an OpenGL-compatible graphics card with at least 128MB of RAM onboard, so machines built before 2003 will certainly struggle. This isn't unusual for this kind of program, though.
DAZ offers up a wide array of built-in models and tools for creating, animating, and recording life-like scenes. Users can purchase additional models through the publisher's Web site. Free tutorials on the site take a bit of the edge off the learning curve, although it's still steep. The feature set is nothing short of incredible: you can take a model, manipulate it, add detail and texture, have it interact with other models, and manage your art files. The tool panels on the left and right navigation bars can be hidden, to maximize screen space, and all the tools have mouse-over labels to help newbies learn what's what. There are also components for easy export to other programs, like Photoshop.
According to the publisher, the program is compatible with Windows Vista, however, we were unable to install it on our Enterprise edition. Also, keep in mind that all users must register on the publisher's Web site to get the free serial number to run the program.
Do you maintain a Web site or blog? If so, you've probably experimented with several FTP clients to keep your site up to date. While there are a lot of good File Transfer Protocol apps available, SmartFTP continues to stay high on our Most Popular list for good reason: It has the features you need and it's incredibly easy to use.
Whether you're a pro Web designer or are looking to start your own site, check out this First Look at SmartFTP, the affordable shareware FTP client with pro-level features.
Lego Digital Designer for Windows and Mac gives users the chance to play with Legos without paying for Legos. Loaded with features, the drawbacks are minor and this program is a lot of fun to use. The program links to the Lego online store, but there's more going on here than corporate shilling.
The graphics-intensive program seamlessly zooms in and out, rotates your point-of-view 360 degrees, connects bricks to each other, rotates them, and moves any hinges they might have so you can explore how your pieces fit together. Parts include basic bricks, model jet engines, and infrared sensors. The Brick Palette puts all your bricks in one basket, so to speak, so that managing them is no more difficult than keeping track of more than two dozen subpalettes that catalog the variations.
Beginners get a helping hand with the 17 prebuilt models, and there are tools-a-plenty for memorializing your creation, including sharing your design with other builders at Lego.com and blowing it up. Resurrection of your masterpiece takes only a mere mouseclick.
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
Long before I got into the business of writing about tech and Mac stuff, I worked with 3D graphics on Macs for my father's visual analysis firm. We were hired to create 3D models of architectural projects and superimpose them on photographs of a proposed site to study how a project would look before it was built and how it would affect its surroundings.
Create complex room layouts. You get bonus points if you recognize this living room.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Some of our clients wanted to make the project look nice for city officials so it would get approved by city planning departments, while others wanted to prove that the new project would obstruct the views for several homeowners in an effort to block the project. Either way, this meant that I spent a lot of time on a 350MHz blue-and-white G3 Mac (lightning fast!) using 3D graphics software, figuring out how to create models of houses, buildings, wineries, and even county dumps.
Once I started as the Mac guy at CNET Download.com, in addition to all the other exciting software I learned about, I was also introduced to several new and different types of 3D graphics programs. One that caught my eye right away for its unique process for creating 3D models was SketchUp. With this program you can sketch (in a manner of speaking) in three dimensions and extrude your outline to create 3D models instead of connecting vertices like in the old ray trace apps we used when I worked for my father.
You can even place your own models in Google Earth.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Pretty quickly, Google snatched up this innovative program and offered the app for free. Just updated today, Google SketchUp is made for those who like to tinker with 3D graphics and bring their ideas to life on their Macs. If you've got a home-building project you would like to see before you build it, or just want to create cool stuff in 3D (including building models you can see in Google Earth), we highly recommend this free program. Google SketchUp is also available for Windows.
Do-it-yourself magazines like MAKE and basement-brewed steampunk anachronisms might be at the forefront of home engineering projects, but 50-year-old Lego is still the name builders know best. Now you can play with them on your computer in the official freeware program Lego Digital Designer, available for both Windows and Mac.
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Paint.NET provides a free way to create high-quality greeting cards.
(Credit: CNET Networks)If you think you've got it tough on Valentine's Day, consider your poor, humble Download.com editor. My wife's birthday is on Valentine's Day! Luckily, we've been together long enough that I don't have to impress her with dozens of roses, buckets of chocolates, and the rest of the conventional commercial holiday paraphernalia. However, a homemade card is always a great way to demonstrate my love.
Creating your own Valentine's Day cards with commercial design software like Adobe Photoshop or CorelDRAW will provide you with a wide array of options for tweaking your images, text, and other graphical elements. Those programs also offer instructional assistance and templates to help you through the process. But if you're willing to use a little elbow grease and your imagination, you can create a fantastic Valentine's Day card using free design software.
For this tutorial, I'm going to use Paint.NET, a top-rated download that offers many of the important features that you'll find in commercial image editors. GIMP is another great free program that actually offers a bit more power in terms of third-party plug-ins and online tutorials, but I find that Paint.NET is an easier program for new users to learn.
Also, I'm going to create a basic Valentine's Day card that includes an image with overlaid text and the date on the front, and some graphic elements and romantic sentiments on the inside. If you're the artistic sort and can create your own graphics, more power to you. One good free app for doing so is the vector-illustration software Inkscape. I'm artistically incompetent, so I tend to focus on using cool pictures and injecting some wit into my text.
First, install and launch the Paint.NET application. A new document should already be waiting for you, but if not, create your own by selecting File -> New or hit Ctrl-N. By default, your workspace will be 800x600 pixels, set at a resolution of 96 pixels/inch. Feel free to play around with the dimensions and resolution, but the default settings will let you create a reasonably high-quality card without having to worry about the borders of your page.
Before even selecting an image, we're going to divide your project in half, for a traditional folded card. Unlike Photoshop, Paint.NET doesn't seem to have "guide" lines that you can use to mark specific measurements in your project. What I do instead is create a one-pixel black line down the middle of the page.
Information about your cursor position sits in the lower right corner.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Click the Rectangle Select tool in the Tools dialog, and move the cursor to the very middle of the top of the 800x600 project by watching the cursor location in the bottom right corner of the Paint.NET interface. When it reads "400, 0" you're there. Now click and drag your cursor down to the bottom of the page and move it one pixel to the right, or to "401, 600." Select black as your foreground color using the Colors dialog (if it's not visible, hit F8), then select Edit -> Fill Selection. Now you've got a black line down the middle of your page that will represent the fold mark of your card.
Next, choose the image that you want to use for the front of your card. Luckily for me, my wife is an excellent photographer who is a power Flickr user, so I've got thousands of images with which I can work. Save your selected digital image to your computer if it's not already on your machine, and then open it in Paint.NET. You should now have two files open, your blank card (with a black line down the middle), and the image for the front of your card.
After opening your selected image in Paint.NET, you may need to crop and resize it to fit onto one half of a standard 11-by-8.5-inch piece of paper. In my example, I've cropped my image to 330x392 pixels, which allows about 2 inches of white space on the top of the card, and a little more than an inch on the right border. I'll cut off that extra paper when I'm done, leaving me with a lovely card that's about 4x6. At the default resolution settings, you've got about a maximum height of 600 pixels and a maximum width of 430 pixels before your image will become too large to fit on half a sheet of standard paper. Crop to Selection is the first option in the Image menu, and Resize is right underneath it.
Thumbnails in the upper right corner of Paint.NET help you navigate between open images.
(Credit: CNET Networks)When your image is at an appropriate size and shape for your card, select the whole thing by using Edit -> Select All or hitting Ctrl-A. Copy it to your clipboard with Ctrl-C, then switch to your card project. Paint.NET displays thumbnails of your open documents in the upper-right corner of the interface, making it easy to navigate between them.
Now create a new "layer" in your card project. A layer is a discrete part of an image that can be moved, edited, or tweaked without affecting the rest of the image. All the layers for an image will be displayed in a Layers dialog. If you don't see it, hit F7 to make it appear. To create a new layer, select Layers -> Add New Layer, or hit Ctrl+Shift+N. In that new "Layer 2" you've created, paste your copied image onto your blank card.
We need to position your image so that it sits directly to the right of the black line running through the middle of the page. Select the Move Selected Pixels tool from the Tools dialog (hit F5 if you don't see it). It's the darkened cursor with a plus sign at the top of the left column. You can also select it with the keyboard shortcut "M." Then use your move to drag and drop that layer directly to the right of your black fold line. The arrow keys also move your selection pixel by pixel for fine tuning its location. Use Ctrl-+ to zoom in for a closer, more precise view.
The image for the front of your card is in the right spot. Now we need some text. I usually add the date in the upper right corner (or wherever is appropriate) for historical reference, and then write a big "Happy Valentine's Day" ("Happy Birthday" in my case) or other clever phrase in big letters on top of the photo. In this example, I've added "February 14, 2007" at the top and the short-but-sweet "I do!" at the bottom.
For maximum flexibility and editability, I recommend creating a layer for each text element you want to add to the front of the card. After creating the new layer, select the text tool from the Tools dialog. It's represented by the letter "A." (You can also just hit "T" if you're into keyboard shortcuts.) Position your cursor where you want to add the text, click, and type. It's that simple.
A secondary text menu at the top of the Paint.NET interface lets you select the font, size, effects, and orientation of your words. One nice aspect of Paint.NET is that the font drop-down shows how each font looks, so you don't have to keep applying them to see. Once you've decided on the content and appearance of your text, select the Move Selected Pixels tool (M) again to position the text exactly where you want it on the card.
Adding a drop shadow to your text helps it show up on the card.
(Credit: CNET Networks)One quick aside: a semifancy trick for making your text pop on the front of the card is to apply a drop shadow, and there are a variety of methods for doing so. In my case, I've created one layer of text with "I do!" in black, and then other layer on top of that with "I do!" in white. I positioned the two text elements exactly so that the black background text disappeared below the white. Then I used the arrow keys with the Move Selected Pixels tool to set off the black text from the white text by 2 pixels to the right and 2 pixels down. Super snazzy.
Also, if you're looking for some fancy new fonts, I highly recommend the Web site dafont.com. Just download the font you want (if it's free), extract it using a program like WinRAR, open up your Fonts controls from the Windows Control Panel, select File -> Install New Font, and then navigate to the extracted file on your local drive to add it to Paint.NET and all your other applicable Windows programs.
Who's that handsome guy?
(Credit: CNET Networks)Hooray--you're halfway through! (No one said love was easy.) Save your current project as a Paint.NET (PDN) document, so that you can edit any part of the document. Saving it as a JPG or other "flattened" format will remove your ability to edit specific layers.
What I would do now is print the front of your card to see if you're satisfied with the appearance. If not, go back and fix whatever's bothering you. If it looks good, it's time to move on to the inside.
I'm going to assume that you're using a single-sided printer (color obviously looks better), so we'll need to eventually print the inside of the card on the back of the paper upon which you printed the front. That will give you a nice, foldable card, but it's essential to line up the inside contents of the card with the front.
First, save your current front-card Paint.NET document with a new name, such as "cardback.pdn." This will let you create a new document without affecting your existing one. Now create a new layer, and select the entire area represented by the front image of the card, using the Rectangle Select tool (keyboard shortcut "S"). Choose light gray as your foreground color from the Colors menu, and Fill Selection, just like we did when we make the black folding line.
Now you've got the exact area for the inside of your card demarcated by that layer of light grey, so you can delete all of the other layers from the front of the card by selecting them in the Layers dialog and hitting the "X" mark.
Flipping images vertically and horizontally is a quick way to make corner pieces.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Next, create new layers for the additional graphic elements and text that you want to use on the inside. In my example, I've taken a selection of a picture of my wife's wedding bouquet and used Image -> Flip Horizontal and Image -> Flip Vertical to create four cornerpieces. I've kept each of them in their own layer in order to position them independently. If you're looking for some clip art to include in the inside (or front) of your card, Pat's Web Graphics has a lousy site design but a great collection of relevant images.
After adding the flowers in the corners, I added text to the middle of the page using the same procedure that we used on the front of the card--create a new layer, select the text tool, type it in, and tweak the appearance and location. In my example, I've spared you the romantic mush and used a generic "Romantic sentiments go here!" placeholder.
Once the images and text for the inside of the card are complete, you can delete that layer of light gray that we created to mark the card's area. You'll also want to delete the folding line from your background layer. Select the entirely area of the background layer using Ctrl-A, then simply hit "Delete" button to clear its contents.
Now it's time to print the final card. Take the piece of paper upon which you printed the front of a card, turn it upside down and reinsert it into your printer. Print the inside of your card on the back of that paper and then fold the entire piece of paper along the black guideline on the front. Use scissors (or better, a paper cutter) to cut along the lines of your card, discarding the blank extra space along the top, bottom, and right of the card.
Voila! You've got your own homemade Valentine's Day card. It didn't take that long, did it?
Did this tutorial work for you? (You can thank me after Valentine's Day.) What other software or tricks do you use to create your own customized greeting cards? Tell me about it in the comments.
(Credit:
Oxygen Media)
Ript is a new, free software application in beta development that lets you collect images and text from the Web, then compile and arrange them into pages you can print or share with friends and family. It's a simple freeware idea that makes sense...and it's from Oprah? Well, sort of. The publisher is the Oprah Winfrey-founded Oxygen Media, recently acquired by Universal.
Ript works via an overlay "Pile"--representing by a stack of documents--that sits on a layer on top of all your applications. You can work with your programs as you normally would, and drag any images, text, or links to the Pile that you want to save. Each of the specific saved Web data is called a "scrap."
Once you've saved a few scraps, you can access them by double-clicking the Pile, which opens the Table interface. In the Table interface you can then rotate, enlarge, and otherwise arrange those scraps on pages, similar to a scrapbook. You can't add links directly to scraps, but you can store certain metadata such as where an item comes from, where it links to, and any notes you want to include about an item. You can save links, but they're stored as simple text URLs, and not clickable in the RIPT files.
You can work on several pages at once using the Table interface, and save your final, single-page creations as JPGs or proprietary RIPT files, which can be edited or enhanced with more scaps. Printing worked fine, as did the e-mail feature, but do we really need to be printing or e-mailing more bits of digitial ephemera? Aside from creating by collage, you can can add your own text to any Ript file, but there's only one font. Voila!
This Ript collage isn't very cool, but it doesn't violate the terms (as far as I can tell).
Did I mention it's a beta version?
Unfortunately, there are a few major problems with the image capturing process, or maybe the Pile is just out of luck when it comes to background images or images displayed via CSS. I especially had a bit of trouble capturing images from Oxygen Media's own site using Internet Explorer. Worse, it doesn't seem to work well with large images. Even when I did manage to grab the background image of Husband for Hire, half of the image was black. That happened frequently with other large images.
The software seems still very much in development, so it's impossible to rip on Ript too much, and I hope I don't sound too critical. It's a great idea, but it needs to work more effectively with all Web images (and why not video too?) and/or launch a online sharing service--which obviously brings its own set of issues...
When reading the pre-install license agreement (which you should always do, by the way), I noticed a variety of unusual restrictions for sharing content using Ript:
You may not use the Service to post, upload, share or transmit any message or Content which:
•infringes or violates any copyright, trademark, service mark, patent, trade secret, confidentiality rights or other proprietary rights of any third party
•is abusive, hateful, inflammatory, harmful, tortuous, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable
•is obscene, vulgar or pornographic
•you do not have a right to transmit under any law or contractual or other obligation
•is being used to harass, stalk or otherwise threaten a person
•is libelous, defamatory or invades any privacy or publicity rights of any third party
•impersonates any other person or otherwise falsely states or otherwise misrepresents an affiliation with a person or entity
•contains or promotes violence, drug use, illegal gambling or other criminal activity
•contains any virus, Trojan Horse, time bomb or any other harmful or disabling software code
•is harmful to minors or
•contains or promotes any materials or information which may violate any law, rule, regulation, ordinance or requirement to which you are subject.
Wow, that's a lot of stuff. Don't even think about creating an adult-version adapation of Fight Club (I won't even dare to venture a possible title), and specifically don't use it to harass or libel me, because I'll sue!
The Pile, on this very page--spooky!
(Credit: CNET Networks)As for my Ript file above, I used the Oxygen Media original art piece as an editorial example from the software publisher's site of the program's inability to capture large images well; the text blurbs are from Google Search, but obviously repurposed from other sites. (If Google can use it, can I?) The picture of Ken Mehlman is covered by well over 50%. It is infringement? Libel? I don't think so. I removed a delightful picture of Queen Latifah and Steve Martin from Bringing Down the House. I left a blank white text space in their honor.
Most of these content restrictions are reasonable for an all-ages online service, although "vulgar" (does sex education qualify?) and "harmful to minors" (pictures with people smoking cigarettes?) seem awfully broad. Also...Ript doesn't have an online sharing service. It's clear they must be considering one, or else particularly sensitive to liability issues.
If it's the former, I agree with them. With the Ript software alone, you're e-mailing JPGs to friends without any interactivity. A Web site that let you upload the proprietary RIPT format files and provides tools for you and your friends to collaborate (and destroy) each other's creations--that would be cool. Until then, I'll likely rip Ript out of my Add and Remove Programs panel shortly.
