So here is my First Graphics/photo Thursday post. Flickr and Photoshop seem to be a good topic, at least they are two photo programs that I use for my pics.

Flickr as you know is where I have all my photos. I might be adding some photos onto one of those photo sites where people pay you to use your photos, and when I do, I’ll certainly be writing a post about it.

Yesterday, Lizzie started painting a new picture, which I called “Three Stix” because Lizzie always paints Fat Ladies, and these were by far from being fat. Having left my Kodak at my kids, the only camera I currently have is the web cam, and the stills taken with that are really pretty pitiful.

The logo to the left was a picture I took with the Phillips SPC 700NC PC Camera, and then used Photo shop to cut and paste and add some color to make the Bob Ross brush into the Logo for the “Painting Painters” group on Viddler.com. I started the group yesterday,and added five videos I made of Lizzie painting her latest master piece. Other painters are also encouraged to add similar videos. Who knows, maybe the next Bob Ross will be discovered in the group.

My Photoshop tip of the day.

I took a pic of Lizzie’s Masterpiece, which was to become her famous Stink Eye, and it was a bit crooked, so she made me straighten it using photoshop. Here is one process you can use to make a picture look less skewed.

1. CTR + A
2. Go to edit
3. Then transform
4. Then rotate
5. Grab a corner of your pic by hovering your mouse over a corner and clicking.
6. Pull or push the pic to make the pic squared.

Realize that I am a beginner, and have never had any classes with Photoshop, my only instruction comes from Lizzie, who does have a degree in Graphic Design as well as training in the fine arts. However, she really does not like graphic design, so she does not have intrinsic motivation to seek out a career in design.

Yesterday I created a the Painting group, uploaded the 5 videos, made the logo, and cropped and poorly edited several pics.

Flickr Posting Tip

A couple days ago I read Thomas Hawk’s Digital Connection post the Top 10 Tips for Getting Attention on Flickr. Ok, I did not do the majority of things he suggest to do. I took a crappy pic using a video cam. I did do number two, which is to put the best pic up last. Your last picture uploaded is what your contacts will see when they open up their screen so he says, make it your best or most interesting pic.

Next I need to get the conversation going on my pics, that way they will eventually get picked up and placed in the explore stream on Flickr. To do this he recommends not only placing your best and most interesting pic last, but post your pics early in the morning, because Flickr starts selecting the pics to be in the Explore stream early in the AM. Hence my 1230am posting.

Got any Tips for Me?

Well there are my two tips for today, sorry if they are not helpful, but I do aspire to learn. So if you have any tips or resources I should check out, let me know.

One of the sponsors of BlogPhiladelphia, Viddler.com did a presentation during the open grid session at the end of the day yesterday. Inspite of having tech difficulties due to the presenter’s Apple not being able to be hooked up easily, it was a good presentation.

Viddler.com is a video sharing social network that is much like the other video networks. The coolest thing about them is that when you sign up for an account, you can place a video comment on a video at any given point of time during the video. That is soo cool.

Viddler. com is currently running a contest where they are giving away two Iphones, not that I want one of those darn things, however, it would make a great prize for a contest. To enter the contest, submit a METoday video, which is a video you can post about what you are doing today.

Update: Created my first MeToday video.

So you have a blog and you want to add pictures, what do you do? Depending upon your platform and if your site is hosted on its own server, you may or may not be able to upload pictures directly to your blog. Many blogging platforms require that the pictures you want to use, be hosted somewhere online.

www.flickr.com More of Emperor Anton’s photos

Sure you could host them yourself on a nice little gallery somewhere, or you could do like I and many other bloggers do and use a Web2.0 photo hosting site like Flickr. Flickr is a great site for hosting and sharing of pictures that has lots of cool features such as tagging, commenting, and the ability to organize your photos into sets and collections for paid accounts.

One feature that I just started using, that I think is really cool is the ability to put notes into pictures. Click on the picture of me at CD’s Place and hover the cursor over the pic to see the notes that I have placed. Friends can also add notes to your pics which can be a positive or a negative if you are sentimental about your photos.

Another feature of Flickr that I recently started looking at is the ability to view pictures by camera that the pictures were taken. Since I am in the market for a new camera, this is one of the the places that I am visiting to get ideas about what camera I will be upgrading to. At present I am using what I don’t like about my current camera to guide my consumer research.

I hate that my Kodak EasyShare C643 seems to take forever to take a picture, and frequently misses those once in a lifetime shots due to its slowness, or I manage to take the picture but it is out of focus, blurry or the lighting bites.

Want to use My Pics?

If you would like to use any of my pics on your site, you will need to create a flickr account, which is free to do. Then select the pic, and grab the url. Please make sure you link the pic back to its flickr location or give me credit for the pic in your post. Anything less would be an act of digital Piracy as told by Tamara.

If you would like me to add you as a Flickr contact, please add me, Emperor Anton as a contact. While your at it, check out my Flickr contacts and add them as well if you are so inclined.

Oh, if the url offends, I apologize, it was an early SEO experiment in conjunction with one of my first blogs, which has since been renamed to Site For Sale, but will be renamed Live,Love,and Laugh blog after either the sale of or the domain for My Rectal Thermometer Blog expires in June. If anyone would like to make and offer, leave a comment.