steveostudios

Giveaway: Paint Party

Steve — Mon, 14 May 2012 14:00:46 +0000

What you’re looking at is 14 high resolution scans of paint drippings, splatters, sprinkles, and smears. My wife and I created these in our kitchen a few years ago, and I’ve got to be honest, I’ve used these a ton in my artwork to breath just a little more life and color. Just drop them on top of your artwork in Photoshop and set the blending mode to Multiply (you may want to adjust the levels a bit, too, to get rid of the paper). Also, changing the hue will give you endless possibilities!

Here are some examples of how I’ve used them:

Download them here (78.2 mb).

Feel free to use these, but please don’t redistribute (meaning link back to here), and don’t sell them.

Wallpaper Photoshop actions

Steve — Mon, 07 May 2012 14:00:27 +0000

Lately I have been making a few desktop and mobile wallpapers to promote a few things and have realized just how tedious of a task this is. The first time it took me almost an entire day to just modify the same file to work within the different sizes and export the different sizes. Finally, I decided to make my first pass at automating the process by creating standard Photoshop templates and actions that will do the work for me. But why should this work only sit on my computer, right? So I’m giving them away!

There are two Photoshop documents in here: Desktop and Mobile. For each there is a layer group called “Guides”. Basically, design your main content to fit in the darkest area and you’re great! Also in the .zip is an action (which must be installed) that will automatically turn off the “Guides” layer and save the following files (as JPEGs) to your desktop.

Desktop

800×600
1024×768
1280×720
1280×800
1280×960
1280×1024
1400×1050
1600×1200
1680×1050
1920×1080
1920×1200
2048×1536
2560×1600

Mobile

iPad Retina – 2048×2048
iPad – 1024×1024
iPhone Retina – 640×960
iPhone – 320×480
Android – 960×854 (not sure why this is a standard…)

You can download the zip here. Let me know if this works for you, and send me something that you’ve created with it!

Soup by Jon Gordon

Steve — Tue, 01 May 2012 14:00:04 +0000

Whether you are producing a church service, or creating a product, or providing a service for others, what you put into your product is more than time and money. We, especially in America, have gotten used to the idea that if an idea is failing we need to lob more people or money at it in order for it to succeed. And when that doesn’t work, drop the idea – it was never meant to be. Jon Gordon supposes that there is another way: change the ingredients.
Image that your product, whatever it is, is a soup. Sure, you probably need time and money, but people can taste other ingredients that you put into (or don’t) your soup. And the ingredients make the soup. This book suggests several necessary ingredients for a good idea to succeed. Ingredient like
It’s not just for folks with dying ideas though. I think it also applies to bringing life to newborn ideas that are looking to take off. Learning to start off with a great idea and a team that fully stands behind the idea and each other is paramount to a successful venture.
The book itself is fun because the author wanted to present the information in a new different way, so it read like a short novel. The characters themselves are a little two-dimensional, but not annoyingly so. The content was so new to me, that I almost needed the down time (story) to think through the meatier content.
I loved it and would definitively recommend it to anyone who feels their product needs a jumpstart! Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
You can buy it here on Amazon.

Defining guides in your own presets in Photoshop

Steve — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 14:00:40 +0000

Everyone who has used Photoshop in the last decade is familiar with the new document dialog box. Here you define the size, resolution, pixel aspect ratio, and color profile of the soon to be masterpiece that you are going to make. Adobe as even done a fairly decent job of compiling a list of presets for you to use for print, web, and video.

If you find yourself making the same changes over and over again to these settings you can simply click the “Save Preset…” button on the right.

This is great for most cases. But I use guides to define Trim and Bleed marks in Photoshop, which I have to set every time. If you look at any of the “Film/Video” presets, they have Title Safe and Action Safe guides. This got me thinking and investigating.

If you go to (in Finder on the Mac – I’m sure it’s found in a similar place in Windows) Applications/Adobe Photoshop CSx/Locales/en_US(or your language)/Support Files you will find a document called “Default New Doc Sizes.txt”. (Note the “CSx” stands for your version of Photoshop i.e. “CS5.5″) Duplicate this file so that you has a safe copy. Then open up the original and take a look inside. Here, in plain text, we can see all of the presets in the New Document dialog. We can even make changes or rearrange them a bit. Scroll down to look at the “Film/Video” presets and you’ll notice the tail of characters.

1	"HDV/HDTV 720p/29.97" 1280 720 pixels screen dpi RGB 8 1.0 white "none" 5.0 h 10.0 h 90.0 h 95.0 h 5.0 v 10.0 v 90.0 v 95.0 v

The last string of numbers and letters are the guides. They are in percentages and suffixed by an “h” or “v”, corresponding with horizontal or vertical.

Let me give you a practical example. I want a preset that is a 5 in x 7 in, 300 dpi, white page document, with guides surrounding at .25″ and .5″ (for Trim and Bleed). Here is what that would look like:

1	"5 x 7" 5.0 7.0 inches print unchanged unchanged 0 1.0 white "working" 3.5714286 h 7.1428572 h 92.8571428 h 96.4285714 h 5.0 v 10.0 v 90.0 v 95.0 v

Simply paste this line after the “Tabloid” in the “Standard US paper sizes” and your set to go!

Read It Later is now Pocket

Steve — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 17:17:06 +0000

Last week I published my thoughts on the web app called Read It Later, which you can read now, here. The day before the article was scheduled to hit the inter webs, the guys at Read It Later pushed their big announcement: Read It Later is now called Pocket.

As someone who knows a little about rebranding and renaming, I think that this was a smart move. The old name implied that the app was specific to articles, specifically those which are to be read. While that was in fact why the app was originally written, uses for it have evolved to include videos, images and other web related media, so the name just didn’t fit anymore. But the idea of collecting these things and putting them in your pocket for easy retrieval fits so much better. Kudos ~~Read It Later~~ Pocket team!

The update wasn’t just a new name and icon, but also a new promo site and ‘Pocket’ site, both of which look stunning. Previously, the site didn’t match the beauty and simplicity of the icon, which was weird. But now, the page has took on a Pintrest feel: clean, image-based, and functional. No more blue-underlined titles in a lame list.

You can also sort by article, image, or video, which is pretty sweet since it just works. You don’t have to tag them as such anymore. There is now favorite-ing and search as well, which make finding that idea in a hurry even faster.

Finally, probably the biggest change is the price. While Read It Later (the service) has always been free, the iOS app used to cost $2.99. While I’ve already supported the cause with my 3 bucks, I’m excited to get others on board with the ‘free’ tag!

You can find more info about the change straight from the horses mouth here, and get to using it at getpocket.com.

Testflight – App Development Deployment the easy way

Steve — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:00:00 +0000

Here is something I have learned about making apps for Apple: Distributing to a bunch of beta testers (including oneself) is actually pretty difficult! You have to be a legitimate business, get your Apple Developer account, create and write the application, create an application ID, register devices to your account, create a provisioning profile, add certain devices to the provisioning profile, then embed the provisioning file into your application. After all of that, testers still have to get your app! This used to be tricky. You’d have to email the .ipa file to your testers and get them to drop it into iTunes, plug in their iPhone and sync everytime you update your application.

TestFlight aims to make this process a ~~little~~ LOT easier. While you still have to do a lot of the grunt work described above, TestFlight removes almost all of the distribution part for you! Here is how it works. After creating the app in your SDK of choice, distribute (making a .ipa file). Upload that build file to TestFlight, select the team members you want to get the app, and their devices, and click send. You’re done!

TestFlight team members that have preregistered with your team will show up in your Team list, where you can managed their privileges and their devices.

Create a free, yes FREE TestFlight account.

Friday Pick: Read It Later

Steve — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 14:00:00 +0000

Today I want to introduce you to Read It Later, a nifty little web app that can change the way you read. Lets say that you are surfing through Twitter and see an article that you want to read, but the length of the article and your time to read it do not coincide. You could a) Skim the article and get through it, but lose valuable information, b) try to remember the URL for later, c) forget the article and pretend it never existed, or d) Read It Later.

Read is later is a free service that you use to compile articles or websites for later consumption. You can use the website (readitlaterlist.com) to compile your list, or use it via the services menu in most applications (over 300 at the time of this writing), including Twitter and Reeder. They also have plugins and extensions that run in your browser of choice that you can use to quickly add a page to your list.

Later (when you’re ready to read) you can scroll through your list and pick out the articles you wish to read. You can then mark them as read, favorite them, or delete them. When they are marked as read, they are forever saved in a list, letting you access them 6 months later when you need to remember again! There is even a Mac app called Read Later that is awesome for quickly scrolling through articles when you have a day off.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Cable Management on the cheap!

Steve — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 15:00:31 +0000

My wife found this idea on the internet and I thought that I would share it with my techie friends. At church all of our cables are organized in bins, or hanging on a pegboard wall, but at home there has been very little organization of my personal cache of cables and adapters. I had a tub where I threw everything. Who wants to come home and organize all of that too, right?

It’s a different story now, though. From the picture you can see that I used toilet paper rolls to create tubular bins for cables of the same likeness. For larger cables I used two toilet paper rolls, cut and taped together to make a double wide!

And, a bonus, I made an adapter case out of an empty egg crate! Happy organizing!

12 reasons Why Your Youth Ministry Needs an Apple TV

Steve — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 14:00:39 +0000

Since it’s introduction in September of 2010, the Apple TV has had little recognition. In June 2011, Apple announces iOS 5 which allows for AirPlay mirroring. Mirroring is where you can wirelessly mirror whatever is on your iDevice’s screen directly to an Apple TV on the same network. We’ve only been using it solidly for a few months at our church, but I strongly believe that it has the ability to completely revolutionize the way that we do media in youth ministry. Here are 12 ways that I see that happening! It sports HDMI and digital audio out (the HDMI carries audio as well), Ethernet if your WiFi is slow, and power. (Note: it does not contain an HDMI cable… make sure you buy one as well. Here are some super cheap ones!)

1. Keynote

Since the dawn of video in the church, Powerpoint, or more accurately, sermon slides have made their way to the screen. But it has never been as easy as this. Usually you have to run a cable from the projector to the computer, or have the computer in the back with a kid, waiting in eager anticipation for the next queue. No longer. Now you can create your presentations using Apple Keynote (equivalent to Microsoft Powerpoint, but MUCH easier. Available on both the Mac and iOS), put them on your iPhone 4S or iPad2 and wirelessly control your keynote from anywhere on your local network. Plus, you get all of your notes right on your iDevice’s screen. An no more relying on the kid in the back who is sleep deprived from a late night binge of Call of Duty!

2. Any Game!

Pick any game that is in the App Store and play it live. Have selected students come up to the front and compete in the best round of Angry Birds, or challenge a student at a time to a running-in-place Temple Run contest! Since the whole audience can see the action, everyone will grown when they get taken over by the 6 legged monkeys.

3. Youtube/Vimeo

We all know that 60% of youth ministry is surfing the YouTube for the funniest moments. And for those times you want to share them, you used to have to find a way to strip them from the web. Well, no longer. Just connect to the Apple TV and either AirPlay the YouTube Video, or you can have it pulled up already from the built in menu.

4. Digital Whiteboard

Sometimes you just need to draw what you’re saying. Large whiteboards are cumbersome, but an iPad mirrored to your Apple TV is instantly a whiteboard. You can draw timelines, explain difficult concepts or modernize interpretive sand-art. Some apps will even let you draw on top of pictures, so you can draw on student’s faces or Madden a play from the game you just played!

5. YouVersion (Bible app)

YouVersion, or as you may know it, the Bible App, has tons of languages, reading plans, bookmarks, notes, and even some live functionality. And with the Apple TV, you can put that all up in front of your youth group. Let them see how you mark up your digital Bible, give examples of your quite time, or compare Bible translations, on the fly.

6. Glo Bible

If you have not seen Glo Bible by Zondervan, stop what you’re reading, take a look, and come back. This can wait… Oh Yeah! Imagine talking about Paul, showing where he fits chronologically in the story, showing where he traveled, 3D virtual walkthroughs of cities that he stayed in, paintings of him from the Renaissance Period, and highlighted passages! Your sermon just became something interactive to a whole new level!

7. Stage Camera

A few weeks ago we were playing a game where a student stuck his hand in a bucket of something disgusting. But, the rest of the group couldn’t see what was happening and were losing interest. That is until we mirrored someones iPhone running the standard Apple Camera App with the Apple TV and we were able to see the hand reach in to the gooey mess! Instantly the game became really disgusting!

8. Pandora/Spotify/iTunes

Most likely you are already playing walk-in music. Well, now you have a whole new means. With Pandora, you can create a radio station, with Spotify you can create a playlist of anything, and iTunes you can run through all of your own music. But, you can carry around the music, control the volume remotely, skip songs, or stop it all together from anywhere on the network! Just make sure that you are paying for your music.

9. Flickr

With the Apple TV you can set the screensaver to stream from a Flickr stream. This is nice for your home TV to have pictures from your family vacation, but in a youth group you can have pictures of your students making silly faces graphics to promote your upcoming events. Now you have a digital signage stream that can be edited from your home computer!

10. Photostream

Scenario: You just got back from a crazy week at camp and you want to show all of your parents what a crazy fun time you had. You could sit down and create a video from all of the picture you took, or you could just set your Apple TV to read from your Photostream and it will show up to the last 1000 pictures you have taken within the last 30 days! You can even choose between several sideshow options!

11. Netflix/iTunes Movie Rentals

For your next movie night at the church, don’t hassle with lugging in all of your home entertainment system. You can rent HD movies straight from iTunes, or if you have a Netflix subscription you can play from the thousands of movies that you already have access to. No more tracking down someone who owns Chronicles of Narnia and having to apologize 3 weeks later when you realize that you lost the disc!

12. Mountain Lion Desktop Mirroring

Apple has announced that in Mountain Lion, the new Mac OS that will be coming out this summer, you will be able to mirror your desktop from your Mac to the Apple TV. In the past you needed hundreds or thousands of dollars to get your computer monitor to be seen on a TV, or really long cable runs. Now this can all be done wirelessly and it is built into the operating system. Looks like Apple is definitely going to continue supporting this line of products!

Chauvet PAR

Steve — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 14:00:56 +0000

LED technology has come a long way from the ColorBlast days. We just recently purchased a couple PAR 38s and four PAR 54s. They are relatively inexpensive; around $200 a pop. Although you can purchase a Tungsten PAR 64 for somewhere around $80, you will easily make up the difference in the cost of electricity! These PARs are only 24 and 36 watts, compared to a 575 or 700 watt lamp in a standard PAR. According to Chauvet’s website, you can daisy-chain up to 12 PARs on the same 20A circuit, which is convenient given the Edison outlet on the top of the light that provides power for the next light. Other features include the yolk of the lamp that unfolds to become a floor stand, DMX (3-pin), independent RGB control, and even an internal microphone for audio response (not sure that we will ever use that feature). I’m looking forward to never having to change gels or lamps again!

The one issue I have is the color temperature of the lamps themselves. The built in white is nowhere close to either 3200K or 5600K. But I think we can mix our own colors to get something worth capturing on video. Other than that, though, these light are totally worth it!

You can find out more info on the Chauvet PARs here and here.