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Friday, October 14th, 2005 at 11:23 AM

I just ran across this series of killer Photoshop tutorials by Cameron Moll, detailing how to achieve “that wicked worn look” and make your images look worn, scratched, and slightly beat-up. Like any Mac fan, I love the Aqua style, but there’s something about the worn look that just gets you. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but when it’s done right, it looks great (see his blog, linked above). The last entry in the series links to a thoughtful entry at Airbag Industries on that style.

I also wholeheartedly agree with Cameron’s recommendation of the Machine Wash Photoshop filters. They allow you to instantly apply an aged look to a layer using the included Actions. If you’re looking to create that style and don’t want to spend the time doing all the work manually, definitely check out Machine Wash filters.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 14th, 2005 at 11:23 am and is filed under Photoshop. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Friday, October 14th, 2005 at 6:05 AM

I hope everyone knows about the new iPods with video by now… I’ll leave the details for the hundreds of duplicate news items in your RSS reader. What can you actually do with an iPod capable of video, and how does the quality stand up?

The Unofficial Apple Weblog has a great overview of the quality you can expect from the $1.99 television episodes. The tradeoff between size and quality is about the same as you’ve come to know from the iTunes Music Store. Media is compressed enough to be iPod-portable, but not so much that the resulting file is unusable. Apple really manages to hit the sweet spot with both audio and video. For $1.99, I can easily see myself no longer rushing home from work to catch the newest “Lost” episode. While some more show selection is desperately needed, I think the video iPod (which is now the only “iPod” device in the list — you now choose from Shuffle, Nano, or iPod) will be a huge success.

Until more content is available from Apple, you may wish spend your time and processing cycles encoding DVDs for iPod use, using two of my favorite video applications, MacTheRipper and HandBrake. Or you could encode some new (HD) movie trailers to take with you, as well.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 14th, 2005 at 6:05 am and is filed under iPod. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Thursday, October 13th, 2005 at 3:40 AM

Freeverse Software and Felt Tip Software have announced Sound Studio 3, a significant upgrade to one of my favorite Mac audio programs. Sure, you can use GarageBand to edit audio, but Sound Studio is far more lightweight. While it doesn’t support multi-track audio, sometimes you simply don’t need all that to do audio editing. For example, creating a 30-second clip of an MP3 for a podcast while fading the beginning and end, is a simple task with Sound Studio. It can juggle AIFF, AAC, MP3, WAV, and SD2 formats as necessary, and is also AppleScript-ready through Automator. For doing quick audio edits, Sound Studio is my main application, and I’m eagerly awaiting the new upgrade, due out later this month.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 13th, 2005 at 3:40 am and is filed under Apps, Mac. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Wednesday, October 12th, 2005 at 12:18 AM

From MacMegasite:

ChaosKnight has released a very nice port of Basilisk II for the PSP, called Basilisk II PSP. Basilisk II is an open-source 68k Macintosh emulator which will run systems 7.5.5 through 7.6.1 to be the easiest to run. Like the port of Bochs x86 emulator, Basilisk has the same principle. Simply put, the emulator reboots in the correct PSP folder (the one without the % sign.) The files included are Macintosh 7.5.5, which can be downloaded from apple.com as well. You will need to supply your own LEGAL copy of mac.rom for this to work.

If PSP’s weren’t so darn expensive, I would be hacking up one of them right now (Yoshi did a noteworthy WiFi antenna hack). I guess it’s all relative to how badly I want to hack new game hardware… Just wait until the Xbox 360 comes out. I’m sure I’ll be modding it within two weeks of the release. Xbox hacking allows far more room, whereas the PSP is a cramped workspace.

While I’m on a console-hacking subject, I read yesterday that a bunch of Xbox 360 developer kits were stolen in Germany. It’s a shame that some qualified developers won’t be getting devkits as soon as they thought, I’m hopeful that the machines will make their way to modchip R&D areas. Unlikely, though. I know that the SmartXX team already has a few Xbox 360 devkits and have them completely disassembled. Here’s hoping that there will be a modchip on 360 launch day! Time to get XBMC ported…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 12th, 2005 at 12:18 am and is filed under Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.