10 Tech Gifts for Men this Christmas

25 Must Have Tech Gifts for Women this Christmas

With that, let me now start listing down tech gifts all kids will surely love to have this Christmas!

Mobile Phone

There’s hardly anyone without a mobile phone these days; the same applies even to kids. As young as five years old or even younger, kids will love cell phones. In fact, they also need it. Think they can’t use it much? Try getting a touch screen smart phone with apps in Android or iOS and it discover how the little ones will tinker all over the phone playing games. But of course, they can do so much more than that if you teach them how to text or at least to answer and make calls during emergencies or even for daily chit chats over the phone.

Tablet

If you believe that phones have limited screen size, then why not consider a tablet? You can be able to install more apps including those with musical, educational, and recreational themes. Kids will love listening to songs and watching their favorite videos. They can learn their ABCs, basic mathematics, and even drawing too.

Gaming Gadgets

It doesn’t necessarily have to be a game console especially if they’re too young to understand how it works; but gaming gadgets, particularly handheld ones such asPSP, Nintendo DS, game boy, iPod touch, and the like are also perfect gifts for your young techie loves. Just make sure to set the rules when it comes to play time, i.e. about 30 minutes to an hour daily and only after study time. In case you consider getting an actual console, why not add a few accessories for specific games such as a game guitar, dance revolution, and extra controls?

Digital/LED/LCD TV

How about giving your kids their own room TV? They can’t watch most of the shows you do and neither will you appreciate what they view, so they will certainly be grateful for the liberty to watch at their own expense. Just make sure to block channels which are not appropriate for children and always set the rules when it comes to viewing time like how long is it allowed and when is it possible to do so.

DVDs/CDs

No kid can resist DVDs or CDs especially if it’s a copy of their favorite artist’s album or movie. You can also buy compilation DVDs of TV show episodes they can watch over and over again.Dora, for one is irresistible for young girls of all ages while Ben 10 works wonders for young boys.

Computer/Laptop/Netbook

Either of the three will actually do as long as the purpose for purchasing the gadget is beneficial. Kids learn computers early on these days as most schools include computer subjects in their curriculum even before middle school. Your young ones can learn a lot faster with an actual computer to practice at home. Just place restrictions for Internet usage. Should you care to teach them, particularly for Facebook or other social network site membership, limit usage at child-friendly websites by applying parental control settings.

Animation and Digital Tools

Most adults still struggle through digital software, including Photoshop. But kids will find it a breeze tinkering with animation and digital tools. If they already have a computer, software like this will definitely unleash their creative side at an early age.

Digital Camera

In relation to digital software, a digital camera is definitely worthy of this list. It doesn’t have to be a DSLR type. A simple flash and shoot variety will do. I’ve seen kids as young 3 take pictures through mobile phone cameras and digital cameras. Just teach them how to maneuver the device and navigate its interface and they’d be capturing amazing photos sooner than you think.

Digital Video Recorder

A handheld camcorder or video recorder is also another tech product kids will love. Let kids record videos of themselves, their friends, everyone at school, the rest of the family, relatives, of the places they go, and their personal experiences or thoughts. Jumpstart their love for motion picture early on; who knows, you might be nurturing a future film director at home?

Music Related Products

Tech applies to musical stuff too so you can also consider purchasing music related products such as microphones, karaoke, magic sing device, electric guitar, keyboard, drums, and so on. You can even setup a music studio or room for them at home if you don’t have any yet.

MP3 Players, Headphones and Speakers

These are yet another gift idea for music loving tech kids. Make their music experience complete by creating a playlist of their favorite songs and save it on a ready to go MP3 player. You may also give a gift of speakers for their computer or headphones for mobile phones and music player or gaming devices.

Digital Microscope or Telescope

Bring out the scientist or astronomist in your kid through a digital microscope or telescope. It doesn’t have to be a fancy one or as enormous as Hubbard’s. A starter set will actually do. With these, kids will definitely enjoy exploring various life forms including those which are microscopic in size. The telescope on the other hand will have them explore the skies, particularly at night when the moon and stars are most visible.

There are countless other gift ideas you can give children this Christmas. You can be as innovative as possible and think of gadgets or gizmos which match the child’s gender, age, and personal preference. But with this list in mind, you now at least have 12 of the best tech gifts for kids this Christmas.

While Photoshop has become every graphic designer and web wizard’s best friend, it has become synonymous with photo editing and retouching. There are other programs available for these sorts of functions, but Photoshop has become the gold standard that is essentially a household name.

The photo editing ability is one of the things that excite people about Photoshop, drawing them to the program. Many people want to edit their photos, making images of themselves and their loved ones look as lovely and flawless as possible.

You can do this with Photoshop, but it isn’t easy. People spend a lot of time learning how to retouch images in a polished, professional way, and even these highly trained and very experienced individuals are known to make mistakes.

The following tips are not mistake proof, but they are edits that you can try now. These image retouching tips can help amateurs get started, making their photos more picture perfect.

Remove Dark Spots and Blemishes

This is one of the main reasons why people want to touch up their photos. If done wrong, it can look ridiculously fake and obvious. If done correctly, it can look lovely, flawless and natural.

Use the Spot Healing Brush to take care of dark spots and other small discolorations. This tool takes samples of the area around the spot you are correcting, and then it uses them to replace the area inside the brush.

You will want to adjust the brush size to make it a bit larger than the spot you are trying to edit. Position the brush over the area and single click to make the spot disappear.

Play Up the Eyes

You can give eyes more depth, making them more dramatic and noticeable quickly and easily.

To do this you will want to start by making a duplicate of the background layer and set “Soft Light” as the blending mode for this new layer. This will darken the image. Next, hide the rest of the layer except for the eyes by going to Layer > Layer Mask > Hide All. After that, on the layer mask, use a white brush to paint inside the eyes. This will reveal the more dramatic, dark eye area of the layer.

Smooth Skin with Surface Blur

Not everyone has smooth skin, but it seems that everyone you see in professional photographs does. You and your family can have perfect, smooth skin as well.

To do this, use the Surface Blur tool. Start by duplicating the original background layer. You will need to apply the Surface Blur settings to this duplicate layer, and you will want to lower the opacity of this layer 70% to create this flawless effect.

Eliminate Red Eye

This is so easy to do, there is no reason your family album should be filled with glowing red eyes! This is the number one reason why people want to edit their photos. Adobe is aware of this and knew that this feature would have to be an integral and simple feature for their image retouching and rendering program.

If you are using Photoshop, removing red eye couldn’t be easier. There is a red eye removing tool, and depending on the version you are using, it may be right there on the left tool bar for you.

To use this tool, you simply need to select it. Then you position the cursor over any red or otherwise discolored eyes and single click the area. The subject’s eyeballs will instantly become of a better, more natural color.

1.Simple Crop:

Now every one is familiar with the crop tool and the simplest function that a crop tool has to offer is to cut the images as required by the user.

Press the letter ‘ C ‘ to select the crop tool and then select the area by dragging the cursor till that point where you want to stop.If you are not happy with your selection adjust the crop area by just clicking inside the selected area and moving the area that you have selected,and then press Enter key and the image will be croped .

ORIGINAL IMAGE

SELECTING THE CROP AREA

        FINAL IMAGE

2.Hide Crop:

This is an interesting feature that crop tool offers,suppose if you have cropped and image but you are not satisfied with the image and you want your deleted pixels back then what will you do,now this can be done through a simple feature that crop tool offers i.e Hide option.Now when you select your crop on any image then in the crop menu there you will find 2 options Delete and Hide.

Now in this menu the default is delete but instead you can select the Hide option if you don’t want to delete your pixels instead you can hide those pixels and then you can get your pixels back.

Now when you have croped your image and now you are not satisfied with the positioning of the image you can just move the cropped image with the help of move tool and select the area that you require.Nice and easy.

If you want your all pixels back just go to the image option and choose reveal all you will get all your pixels back i.e you will have your original image back.

3.Adjustments Of Crop Tools:

Here i will tell you how you can adjust the layout of your crop tool to get more refined crop and nice selection.

1. Now when you have your image selected,and you want your crop to be of uniform from all four size,now instead of dragging the vertices of the crop to make it  uniform you have another simple option that lets you crop your image in a uniform size.Just hold down the ALT key and grab one of the vertices and drag it you will notice a uniform crop area will be selected.Try it.

2. The crop tool not only crops and image it can also create pixels to work.Sounds insane,yes it’s true let me Show you how through these images.

       ORIGINAL IMAGE

Now select the full image by dragging the cursor from one of the edges of the image.After selecting the full image press the ALT key and while holding one of the edges of the image drag your mouse and leave it at a point when you are satisfied that you want this much pixels to be added to your original image

AFTER SELECTING WITH CROP TOOL USING ALT KEY

Now when you hit enter you will see some white pixels will be added around your image as white is the default colour for background you can change the colour of your background as per your want.

FINAL IMAGE

As you can see now that some white pixels have been added to your image as background now you can ass some text or some other cool effects to make your image look attractive and nice.

These were some basic things you need to know while working with the Crop tool.I will show you how to create some cool effects with the help of crop tool in my next post.Till then try these techniques and tell me  did you find my article helpful.

1. First open any image that you wanna work with ,in photoshop. Here i am going to use this image for swapping purpose..

2. Now in photoshop first create a duplicate layer to work with.To make a duplicate layer select the original layer and  just press ctrl+j and a copy of the same layer will be created.

3. Now through the marquee tool select the head of the person that you want to swap with.And then again press ctrl+j so that a new layer is created with only the head content in the layer,and then move that head to that place where you want to do swapping like in this image

4.Now you have to perfectly place the head on the head to be swapped.now for that select the move tool and then press the num 5,then you will see that the opacity of the layer has been changed and then you will be able to perfectly place the head at correct place.after you are done press the num 0 button to regain the original opacity of layers.

5.Now once you have placed the face correctly,select the new layer and add a layer mask to it as in the image.

6. After adding the layer mask select the brush tool by pressing the letter B,now on the layer mask, paint out the area that you don’t want to include in the image and you will get an image like this

7. Now you have swapped one head now we will swap the other head using the same technique.I told you to create a duplicate layer so that original layer remains undisturbed.So now create a  duplicate layer of the layer1 and not the original layer.

Before you repeat the steps turn off the visibility of the masked layer for sometime and after you do all the stuff again turn it back on.

Repeat all the steps again and then after you are done turn the visibility of the layer  that i told you to turn off and then you will get a final image something like this

Isn’t it great and real fun to do..You can create really funny effects like the above image or you can do some professional work with the help of this effect.Open your mind and imagination and just go wild with this effect.Enjoy

Try it and tell me your experience.

These brushes will include ghosts skulls,gothic images,abandoned lands,ghosts figures like lady with a boy,or a girl child,or a bride’s ghost and many more spooky brushes that will make your photoshop images look ghostly.

• Brush 1
• Brush 2
• Brush 3
• Brush 4

Apply these brushes to make you images look wild and haunting.Create some innovative ideas with the help of these brushes.

Enjoy and have fun.

Photoshop CS5 has always provided it’s innovative users with so many special features and new facilities.It’s like a magic wand in the hands of a user and depends on him how he uses it.But first of all you need to learn some basics of photoshop,like working the layers,getting familiar with the tools of the photoshop and many other features provided by photoshop CS5.

There are various online tutorials for photoshop cs5.The best one are available  at VTC and LYNDA.These are video tutorials and hence it will make easy for you to understand the photoshop basics.

In this tutorial i will show you how you can create an awesome text effect using the blade2 font in photoshop.If you will follow the steps correctly then you will end up with an effect like this:

STEPS:

1.First you need to download this font style named blade2.

DOWNLOAD LINK

After you download the zip file,extract the file blade2 file and install it by just double clicking over the file.

2.Then start with a new layer with following specifiactions as shown in the image:

2.Then fill the layer with black colour,by pressing shift+f5. then you will get a pop up window like this

from here choose the black color and hit ok.Now your background layer will be coloured black.

3.Now choosing the blade2 text effect and choose the size you desire write anything you like on the background layer.

4.Now open the blending options by double clicking the text layer and use the following specifications in your options

• First choose the outer shadow and fill the various optinos as per following image:

• After this choose the bevel and emboss with following specs:

• Then the most important part is the gradient overlay,choose the gradient overlay option with following specs

After all this you will get an image like this

5.Now this is my favourite part

• first choose custom shape tool by pressing the letter U.then from the shape options choose the grass3 shape.

Now create a new layer and on that new layer create a shape like this.

after doing this go to the blending options of the layer and select the overlay mode and set the opacity to 80,and after that click on the background layer and you will get acool and shiny text effect like this

Hope it helps.