I felt a bit sluggish today due to a late start this morning and the dead weather here in Baltimore. As a pick-me-up, I messed around with a few of Photoshop CS5′s new features. One of the more useful tools I came across is the Mixer Brush, which is like the Smudge tool but smarter and more painterly. After a few minutes of use, I could tell this will be huge with the touch-up crowd. If you’ve seen some of my photography on DestroyEveryday, you know I’m more drawn to emphasizing details however gruesome they may be, but I thought I’d try the reverse with the photo above. The Mixer Brush was used on the right side while the other side was left untouched.

On another note, I’m considering a weekly Photoshop post to keep me active with it since I’ve been pretty neglectful lately—”Photoshop Friday” has a catchy sound to it. And if I start this and keep it going, should I include the process?

Anyone who owns a laptop knows the pain and suffering that comes from a lack of USB ports. I, myself, rely on the additional USB ports on the external display as well as a USB octopus. Even then, I don’t have enough. Lucky for us, the world is full of creative industrial designers who come up with perfect solutions, like InfiniteUSB. Unlucky for us, it’s still a concept. Regardless, I will gladly pick up a set when they come to fruition, as it is one of the best solutions I’ve seen yet.

via Design You Trust

I tweeted yesterday about one of Mac OSX’s best kept secrets, DigitalColor Meter, and found that the majority of responders didn’t know about it. It’s located in the .../Applications/Utilities folder and you can think of it as an Eyedropper Tool for the entire screen(s). Anything you roll over with the cursor will show up magnified in the window with its color values. You can specify whether to display the color as an 8/16-bit Hex value, 8/16-bit RGB value, or RGB percentage. There are eight more options, but with names like Tristimulus, I take it they’re not for the web-folk.

Since writing this post, I did come across some extra functionality that really comes in handy. At any time, you can press command+shift+C to copy the color value as text. The downside to this, for Photoshop users, is that it copies the hash (#) as well. This puts the value over the limit for pasting into Photoshop’s Color Picker, so an error will occur if you try. The way to somewhat get around this is to hold the color with command+shift+H. This simply locks the values so you can easily read them for later use. Lastly, command+C copies the magnified image to the clipboard. This might be handy for referencing a number of colors in a given space.

Ajaxload is a nifty tool for the Web 2.0 crowd. With a few simple steps, it will generate one of the ever-popular, animated loaders. As you can see from the menu below, there’s a whole slew of them. The bonus of Ajaxload is that you can specify the foreground and background colors, including transparent as an option.

via Ben Kutil »

Sometimes the simplest tool can be a huge help. Camouflage is a menubar app that hides files on the desktop with a single-click or hotkey-stroke. For me, this is incredibly useful for documenting when a screenshot involves the desktop. This particular scenario forces me to either clean up my desktop (a chore in itself) or use TinkerTool to quit the Finder temporarily. I can just forget about the first option and the second one doesn’t feel healthy. Now, with Camouflage, I can fade the icons with a Command+Option+Control+H—my hotkey of choice.

I’ve followed the work of James Patterson and Amit Pitaru for more than a decade now, since the early days of Flash. They certainly made a name for themselves with collaborative efforts like Insert Silence as well as their separate ventures, Presstube and Pitaru.

In 2003, a piece of 3D software titled, Rhonda, was developed by Amit. It’s been six years and they’re finally ready to release it to the world. The beta testing started earlier this week. On the Rhonda Forever website, you can pick up a copy of the beta as well as see it in action at the hands of James Patterson himself.

Since moving into my new apartment, I’ve had to order a number of things—some are necessities such as the Verizon modem, but others are just to make the place feel more like home. Regardless, I’m always excited for packages—it’s like Christmas, even if I’m expecting a box of nails.

I went looking for a delivery widget that I used before but didn’t have much luck with, hoping it would be fixed by now. I didn’t find it, but I did come across this diddy—Delivery Status. It was listed in the Apple Downloads repository, so I checked out the developer’s website. There were two surprises during that visit—1) there’s an iPhone version, and 2) there’s a beta desktop version that syncs with the iPhone app. This app keeps getting better and better.

Now, I haven’t gone through a complete delivery yet, but the modem is expected today. I’ll be sure to update and include the results. Reading through the features and change logs, it supports more services than you can name and notifies through Growl. Put it through the ropes and share your thoughts.

This is certainly old news, since I’ve known of it for quite a while—I typically hear things a bit late. I referenced it recently and was surprised no one knew about it. Joshua Corliss, the motion wizard over at AgencyNet, tweeted the third version earlier today and I figured it’d only help others to share the wealth. So, if you’re involved in iPhone design or development of any kind, this PSD is a must-have. Enjoy.

[update] – Kevin Suttle pointed me to Teehan+Lax’s Palm Pre GUI PSD. Check it out as well.

Throughout college, I saved money where I could by opting out of amenities like air conditioning and cable TV. I got around the lack of these with an abundance of Hawaiian Breeze fans and a DVI-to-RCA adapter. Now that I’m out of college, I have a bit more leniency with these comforts. I did opt for central A/C in my new apartment, but I don’t think I’ll be going for cable TV just yet.

A few months ago, I took the plunge and got a 40″ Sony Bravia HDTV—my boy, James Hall, pointed me to a steal on Slick Deals. Anyone with an HDTV knows that input through RCA doesn’t benefit whatever you’re watching, so I’ve been using a DVI-to-HDMI adapter I got from Newegg. It’s really great so far, but the only issue is audio. Since it comes from the laptop, the experience is the equivalent of watching Transformers on IMAX 3D, but using one of those corded speakers from a drive-in theater.

Now emerges Kanex, a company that’s developed a Mini DisplayPort adapter that outputs to HDMI with audio—and it works! Gizmodo wrote a review of the adapter, and by the looks of it, this device isn’t some MadCatz waste of hard-earned money. I’ll be picking one up as soon as I get back from SF—along with the long-awaited Cablox.

For a while, I was searching for a way to change the startup image. In OS 10.4, Apple indicated they were onto us hackers by requiring more than a simple switch of a PNG. Up until now, I only found Terminal-based solutions that scared the dickens out of me. BootXChanger makes it too easy by letting you switch the image through a single drag and drop. Now, you can impress your hipster friends with the 80s Apple logo, or come up with something more unique like this.

via Smoking Apples