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• [HOW TO] Links and photos in Red Bubble
  by Craig Shillington

  I thought I would do a separate and hopefully less complicated How To in regards to making links and showing Jpg files in RB. There s…

  I thought I would do a separate and hopefully less complicated How To in regards to making links and showing Jpg files in RB. There seems to be a lot of confusion as to how these things work. So find the part you are interested in learning, maybe open up and edit an old Journal Entry and practice. VBS A URL is simply the text that shows up in your Browser Window Address Bar (up the very top), the line that starts with http:// If I refer to the URL, that is what I am talking about. ALL CODE IS WRITTEN WITHOUT SPACES Some wrapping of longer lines of code will occur within this Journal Entry, regardless of what the lines look like, code is always one continuous line WITHOUT spaces TEXT LINKS Sometimes it’s nice to have a text link when we are conversing to others in Red Bubble to help people share information, or to allow them to see another web page that has something to do with the convo. Maybe you like to include songs from YouTube with your work and want to share those Videos and music with others. Anytime you want someone to be able to link to another webpage somewhere, you can make a line of text (or one word) clickable to that link and it’s really easy to do. :) All you do is wrap the text you want people to see as a link, in qoutes {“} then add a colon {:} and then the URL. So let’s say you wanted to link to my Porfolio so people can have a look at buying something off me HEHEHE ... all you need to do is open up my portfolio page in your browser to get the URL from your browsers address bar and just type the name of the link text wrapped in quotes, followed by a colon, then the url so it would look like this (with no spaces) : ” Craig Shillington’s Portfolio ” : http://www.redbubble.com/people/crackers1967/portfolio Craig Shillington’s Portfolio is wrapped in quotes, so that is the text people will see. http://www.redbubble.com/people/crackers1967/portfolio is the link we want the text to click too When you type that within Red Bubble without the spaces you get this : Craig Shillington’s Portfolio So, abbreviated – to make a text link in Red Bubble you would type this in as code: ” text ” : link Replacing the text and link for yours and no spaces. DISPLAYING JPG’S GIF’S PNG’S ETC Please try to keep the size of these files small, both in dimensions and in download size, as if you use a lot of bigger files, the pages you put them on will load more slowly and that might piss people off!! Okay, you look around and you notice somehow people are actually making it so that you can see the thumbnail photos of thier works, or others have cool little animated gifs showing. Well … if you can bring up a photo by itself in your browser, you can show it in Red Bubble!! And again, it’s really really easy. If you want to know the link to any photo you can see in your browser window, right click on the image itself (PC Users … sorry Mac users, maybe someone can help me here) and go down to properties. In the window that opens up you will see a section that has the image properties and the location (or URL). That is the link we need to show that image. I use a little rotating Note near all the links to Videos throughout my Portfolio, so I will be using that as an example here. This applies to ANY image you want to display though. First, right click on this LINK and open in a new Window or Tab. That way you can still read this and flick back to the link to practice. :) You will notice at the top of my description for the photo, I have used the Text Link method described above to link to the Video of that Song in YouTube. And right next to that link, to draw attention to the link, I have my little rotating Note :) Right Click on the little rotating Note and go to Properties. In the box that opens you will see the Image Properties and A URL to the Image. It should be this: http://home.people.net.au/ ~ casphotography/notes-15.gif That is the link to where I have the Note.gif Stored. And that is all you need to know for any image, the URL that will show just that image in your Browser. If you copy that link to your browser Address Bar (with no spaces) and hit Enter … all you should see is an empty page with the little note rotating in the top left corner. PERFECT!! If you can open any image in this way, you have the URL in the Address Bar. If you copy a link to your Address Bar and it doesn’t just show the image, something is wrong. Most Image URL will end in JPG, GIF or PNG. There are some exceptions, but there should be one of those somewhere in the URL. Okay, so we have the URL, how do we make the image show in Red Bubble. Where you want the image to be shown, paste or type the URL. Then at the very start and the very end of the URL (with no spaces) put EXCLAMATION MARKS {!} So my note would then be (without spaces): ! http://home.people.net.au/ ~ casphotography/notes-15.gif ! And in Red Bubble will look like this: So, abbreviated – to make an image show in Red Bubble you would type this in as code: ! URL ! Replacing the URL with the URL for the image and no spaces. IMAGE LINKS Okay, so we know and understand now how to make links and also how to display images in Red Bubble. If you don’t, go back and understand it because this next bit could be very confusing if you don’t ;) We know we can show an image, and we know we can make links to text. So can we make an image work as a link? YES!! VBS And it’s sorta easy if you understand what the code is doing and how it works. I will be using my Message Me button link in my profile for this example. Because that is an Image that links to my message board and so you can leave me a message ;) Here is the link to my Profile The very first button I have in there is the Message me Button. When you click on it, it takes you to my Journal Entry I set up for people to message me in. So I know the link … all I need to get now is the URL of the button. Easy, again, right click the Message Me Button and goto Properties, look at the Image Properties and the URL there … It should be this: http://home.people.net.au/ ~ casphotography/m.gif We know from above, to display an image we wrap it in Exclamation Marks, so to show that in Red Bubble we’d type (no spaces): ! http://home.people.net.au/ ~ casphotography/m.gif ! Which will show as: Okay, we have the image up and working, how do we link to it? Exactly the same way we link to text from above. Simply follow the code with a colon {:} and the link you want people to goto when they click the image. In this case my Message Board: http://www.redbubble.com/people/crackers1967/journal/show/30445 So the whole line of code would look like this (no spaces .. and ignore the word wrap, this is all one single line): ! http://home.people.net.au/ ~ casphotography/m.gif ! : http://www.redbubble.com/people/crackers1967/journal/show/30445 When typed with no spaces and on one line it looks like this: So, abbreviated – to make an image show in Red Bubble that links to a URL you would type this in as code: ! URL ! : link Replacing the URL with the URL for the image, and link for the URL of the link to click to and no spaces. View all my HOW TO’S

• [HOW TO] Sets in your Profile
  by Craig Shillington

  A lot of people are asking how to do the links to sets of photos or works in our profiles … so I thought I would outline it here for th…

  A lot of people are asking how to do the links to sets of photos or works in our profiles … so I thought I would outline it here for those of you that would like that option. First thing is to have sets in mind and tags to associate with those sets. Then … make sure you have those tags on the photos you want in each set. This way a photo can actually be in more than one set if you like :) Then …. to make the links in your profile: (I’ll use my tree tag as an example) / you type the set name followed by the link to all your photos tagged with tree like this ….. but without the spaces: ” Trees ” : http://www.redbubble.com/people/crackers1967/art/everything/tags/tree When you do this without the spaces you get this: Trees / Edit your Profile and place the set code somewhere within the About Me section. I place mine down a little lower because for some reason long lines get cut when you view your Profile on your Overview page, it looks neater down lower and only viewable when someone clicks on the more link. You should be able to copy and paste that line with the spaces and just change the word, tag name and username, then remove the spaces and go for your life. :) You can also bullet the list by placing a hash and then a space before the whole lot and it looks like this: Trees / / The easiest way to see what your username is, is to open up RedBubble and click on View your public Profile. Look in the address bar of your browser and it will show you your username at the end of the address: http://redbubble.com/people/ username View all my HOW TO’s

• [HOW TO] Buttons and links to Sets in your Profile.
  by Craig Shillington

  Okay … we have discussed how to set up Sets in your Profile, if you are not up to speed with doing that yet, I’d advise understanding a…

  Okay … we have discussed how to set up Sets in your Profile, if you are not up to speed with doing that yet, I’d advise understanding and get that working first before attempting this next step. You can view that [HOW TO] HERE At the moment my Profile looks like THIS As you can see I have used the same type of button to try to keep my profile looking neat and tidy. First thing you will want to do is decide on what STYLE you want your profile to be, as the button choice will make all the difference. I liked mine because it sorta had a Red Button feel to it. You can either make your buttons online, the site I used was Button Generator , or you might want to have a go at making your own buttons (my buttons are about 135×25 pixels). Which ever you decide to do you will need somewhere online to upload your button to, that way when people view your profile the links to the buttons will work. I used my ISP’s storage space to store my buttons, you can also use free online storage spaces such as Image Shack to store them. Once you have this sorted out and the images uploaded, you are right to move onto the step of placing the images in your profile and linking those buttons to your Sets. We already know that we can link to text by placing quotes around the text and adding a colon and the link afterwards. That’s how we made the Sets and the links to them before. So we understand that putting a link directly after a colon links whatever is before that colon to that URL. Such as: ” link text ” : http://www.thelink.com The ” linktext ” part shows the text {linktext} as a link … and it links to the URL www.thelink.com because of the use of the colon. Of course when we put these links in our profiles, there are no spaces in the line at all … that way the whole thing works. When you understand how this works, you will see now that we can actually change the TEXT part for an image. In this case, instead of showing the sets as text links, we can change that for an image of a button. In Red Bubble, if you want to show ANY image all you need to do is know the link to the image and wrap that link in Exclamation marks. Easy eh. So to show a text link, you wrap the text in quotes … to show an image you wrap the image link in !’s. The MESSAGE ME button in my profile is stored at my ISP. The link is: http://home.people.net.au/ ~ casphotography/m.gif You can copy and paste that to the address bar in your browser (remove the spaces around the Tilde { ~ }) and press enter, it will open up the Message Me button in your browser window. What you then need to figure out is what the links to YOUR buttons are going to be. You can test if you have your links right by copying the links (like mine there) into your Browser Address bar and pressing enter. If the only thing you see in your browser window is your button (and it usually ends in jpg, gif or png) then THAT is the link to THAT button. All is working well :) :) To make the button visible in Red Button, all you need to do is wrap the LINK in !’s without any spaces at all so for my Message Me button it would look like this (again, without spaces): ! http://home.people.net.au/ ~ casphotography/m.gif ! You can play with that by editing your profile and going right to the bottom and putting the code in … then viewing the public version of your profile to make sure it works. Once you are happy with that, you can then move onto linking your sets to the buttons. :) Once again we know to link to stuff all we need to do is type a colon and the link we want to link to. :) As we have all already worked out how to do the TEXT versions of sets in our profiles, we are half way there already :) All we need to do now is replace the TEXT links we have with the BUTTON links. So really it is just a matter of removing the text parts and replacing those with the button codes. I will use my Trees Set as an example. As a text link it would look like this in my profile {again, no spaces} ” Trees ” : http://www.redbubble.com/people/crackers1967/art/everything/tags/tree If you have set the Text links up to your Sets in your Profiles you will already have lines like this there. What we want to do now is replace the TEXT link for Trees, with the button. So all we do is replace the ” Trees ” bit with the button photo. In my Profile it looks like this: ! http://home.people.net.au/~casphotography/RB/Profile/treesbutton.gif ! : http://www.redbubble.com/people/crackers1967/art/everything/tags/tree That is probably not showing as one whole single line, but when you put it in your profile it is … one single line of text without spaces. Then it will look like this: So, go edit that line you put in to show your button at the bottom of your profile before. Have the Button link wrapped in !’s … then a colon {:} then the link to your set. Save and preview your Public profile and click the button and make sure it works. If it does you can now add more buttons and links. :) If you want more than one button on a line (I have 2 per line) just do each button code with a space between them. so you will have code for 2 or 3 buttons all on one line with a space between the 1st and 2nd and a space between the 2nd and 3rd button codes. It will look strange in your Profile when you are editing it because the long lines will wrap back to the start, so it will look like they are broken, but as long as you have spaces where you are meant to, and no spaces where there aren’t meant to be, all should work. Again, practice at the bottom of your profile and keep checking it till it works, then when you have it working, move the text up in the About Me box till you have it placed where you want it. I have found that placing a line of space between each line helps too. Good Luck :) :) Just a warning on using MS Word or other programs for editing text. These programs have a funny way of formatting text and as such using them will make all the code not work. IF you are going to use such a program to edit text I would suggest using MS Notepad ….. or simply type out the code in RB and copy and paste and edit within your About Me Box View all my HOW TO’S

• [HOWTO] Want to be recognized .......
  by Craig Shillington

  I just thought I would sit down and write out a few of the things I do that make my experience in Red Bubble a lot more enjoyable. I’m pu…

  I just thought I would sit down and write out a few of the things I do that make my experience in Red Bubble a lot more enjoyable. I’m putting these ideas down in a form of tips, please don’t take these as Gospel!! These are the things I do that I find helps my work get recognized. Things will be different for each of us and we all find our own place. With that said, a lot of these tips will be placing emphasis on recognition. If you wanna be noticed within the Bubble, you have to know what the best way to do that is. Hopefully you can take a little something with you from this that helps you out too :) Oh and just a sub note … I am a photographer, so a lot of my experience is with getting my works seen. Hopefully I don’t place too much emphasis on JUST that side and anyone else can apply some of these tips to whatever creative works you do :) If you can think of any more tips you use … or you are a better writer than I am (THAT MEANS MOST OF YOU!!! LOL) feel free to ADD to this and post it in your own Journal!! PLEASE!! :) Just link back to this original :) Part One – Uploading Choose what you upload carefully It’s soooooo easy to have a group of wonderful works you want to upload and share with everyone that you upload work after work after work. My advice … don’t do it. Why? Because your work will pass so quickly through other people’s Activity Monitor that by the time they look at it again, they probably would have missed a lot of them anyway. Another reason is that if you do this on a regular basis … you may actually stop a lot of people from seeing other works on their AM and so, they may even unadd you as a contact for that very reason. Assume most people are only going to have the time to comment on ONE of your uploaded works. We all have a lot of contacts in RB and like to keep up, so doing the rounds is a Quick way of visiting. It isn’t an indication of our work … it’s a matter of time restraints. Think about what you are going to upload. Have a small list of choices and pick the better 3 or 4 of them. If you have 12 really cool works you want to upload … split the uploads into Days of 4 each … or Half Days of 3 each. And always upload what you consider to be the BEST in these Groups ….... LAST. There are two main reasons for this. Usually the last thing you upload is going to be the FIRST thing others see of you. The other reason has to do with timing which I will touch on now. Choose when you upload Timing when you upload your work has such a significance on the reaction and response to it. Think about it … you are up late … it’s 3am and you just finished working on something and are so excited. So you uploaded it to the Bubble and wait. And wait and wait and wait. Hmmmmmmm. No one is there!!!! Maybe in the morning when people start getting up and load up bubble, the first few might see it … IF they get that in their AM’s. For the most part as people start getting up and posting stuff … suddenly yours starts disappearing off their AM’s and even off the Recent page on the Gallery Page. The best time to upload is when your work is going to be see by the Maximum amount of people. I find the best time for this is in the morning (Before work) or in the evening (After Dinner). It’s most likely at this time you will receive spontaneous responses. And as a last point with timing …. again … upload the 3 or 4 you have picked … timing it so that the LAST and BEST is uploaded at the time that it is going to receive maximum exposure. If you like to see your photos on the Popular pages … try to follow these tips but upload in the morning. The more views, comments and favs you get .. .the higher up the pop. lists your work is going to move .. especially in Today’s most popular list. View all my HOW TO’S

• How To Tag Your Work
  by Jo O'Brien

  Tags Tags Tags. They help people find your work, improve you chances of being featured, and google search will love you more. So lear…

  Tags Tags Tags. They help people find your work, improve you chances of being featured, and google search will love you more. So learning to do it right is a great idea. Excessive tagging does not work in your favor. You should only use tags that are obvious keywords that would connect a searcher with your work. Let me give you an example… Here is an image of a calculator (courtesy of google search) A good set of tags would be: calculator, numbers, mathematics, maths, buttons, machine, white, photograph A not so good set of tags would be: calculator, numbers, integers, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0, +, -, /, add, subtract, divide, mulitply, square root, screen, buttons, grey, black , white, maths, mathematics, science, finance, bookkeeping, nerd, office, administration, machine, technology, digital Why is the second set the weaker one? Because most of the terms tagged there only have the tiniest little thing to do with the image. This then goes on to pollute the searches of people who are actually looking for an image of a + symbol or an image of a nerdy caricature . The more polluted the search is, the more times people will just give up and go elsewhere. Anyway, hope that is some good general information for you.

• How To Organise a Meet Up
  by Jo O'Brien

  Meeting complete and utter strangers off the intern…

  Meeting complete and utter strangers off the internet is not easy, even for the most social butterflies, and even if you feel like you know them pretty well from online. The first time I did it, I was meeting 20 bubblers at some pub I’d never been to, and I was supposedly the organsier- I was a nervous wreck! So think about how best to comfort people and make them realise that not everyone on the internet is a scary monster… - meet in a public place where there are passers by / - consider a daytime meet / - ensure any activities include people / - invite attendees to bring a friend or partner along for moral support / - be clear about how to identify each other at the meet up point / - have a way for attendees to contact you/someone on the day / - touch base with attendees prior to the day so they know you really do exist and that it will be going ahead. Inviting People / Well I can tell you how not to invite people- with a vague open ended forum post like “anyone in suchandsuchatown want to meet up one weekend?” This results in three pages of umming and arring and trying to work out details. What you need to do is give it some thought and present a cohesive idea along with the message that you are flexible to other people’s ideas. / Here is an example of how I first suggested a group of us drive 3 hours out of melbourne for a night in Lorne. I suggest having the following details in your invitation post: - A date and time to meet / - A specific meet up location (somewhere well known is best) / - A suggested activity for the day/evening / - How you will identify each other / - How you will contact attendees should there be a change of plans / - How attendees should contact you/someone else should they be late etc. / - Advise people on what they should bring- lunch money, camera etc. Once you have written and posted your invitation in all the right places, (such as a relevant group) people will start to respond. Some will jump in with a big YES!, others will express disappointment at living at the other side of the world, others will ask you to change the date, some will ask you to change other details. When negotiating details, remember that more changes, the more confusing it gets. So don’t feel like you need to bend to every person who can’t make a certain date, or whatever. Some people will miss out – they can come to the next one! A few days before Let attendees know that it is in fact going ahead, confirm the details and get yourself orgainsed. If you have promised them red balloons to mark the meet up point- buy them. If you need to wash your picnic rug, do it. Just trust me on this. You will be nervous on the day itself and are more likely to forget things. Some of my suggestions for the day before are: - charge you camera batteries / - print off a list of people who are coming and any mobile numbers you have for them / - double check any reservations you have and confirm numbers / - Charge your mobile phone and ensure you have enough credit to make several calls / - If you are doing the popular red balloon thing, bring string to tie them to something / - Pack a map, even if you know the area well. It makes giving directions to others easier. / - If there is a reservation, make sure attendees know what name it is under Once you are all packed, leave everything you are taking at the front door or in a pile somewhere like that. On the Day This is the bit where people call you to cancel, rock up late, get lost, and never arrive for reasons you will never find out. - Have your mobile phone on Loud. Boy I have learned this the hard way several times over! / - Be the first person to the meetup point / - Decide how long you are prepared to hang around waiting for latecomers / - Watch out for people arriving / - Introduce yourself with a smile and if your real name is different to your username, introduce yourself with both names. / - Introduce people to each other as they arrive Then you all go off and have a bunch of fun!!! The rest takes care of itself, trust me :) Oh yeah, almost forget… the absolute most important bit of all / post all the photos in a journal post on redbubble so we can all see :)

• How To Photoshop: Navigating the Program
  by Brittany Kinney

  Hey all, / Below are a list of easy keyboard commands for Photoshop. I’m using a regular PC (Windows) but if you use a mac, all of the con…

  Hey all, / Below are a list of easy keyboard commands for Photoshop. I’m using a regular PC (Windows) but if you use a mac, all of the controls will be different…and because I don’t have a Mac within reach, I can’t get the commands for that. Sorry Mac users! Control + N = Opening a New Canvas / Control + O = Opening a new project from a different file (such as a photo) / Control + Z = Undo very last action; nothing past that. / Control + Alt + Z = Undo past actions; infinite. / Control + Shift + Z = Redo an action (that is, if you have already undone an action.) / Control + Shift + F = Fade… (This is a VERY useful tool that I just discovered about 2 minutes ago…For example, you draw something a little too light…do this command then you can make the brush stroke’s opacity darker! Again, VERY useful!) / Control + X = Cut / Control + C = Copy / Control + V = Paste / Control + Shift + V = Paste Into (Don’t know exactly what this does for sure yet but, apparently it’s useful?) / Control + I = Invert (makes a negative [or positive] of the image selected) / Control + A = Selects the whole canvas / Control + Shift + D = Reselects the part that was once selected, then deselected. / Control + D = Deselects the canvas / Control + – = Zoom Out / Control + + = Zoom In And there’s plenty more but these are the basic necessary keyboard commands for Photoshop. -Brittany

• My Best Redbubble Articles, Suggestions and Tutorials
  by Stephen Mitchell

  You’ve probably gone through a few of my articles, but did you know I’ve been writing since the first day of membership upon Redbubble?...

  You’ve probably gone through a few of my articles, but did you know I’ve been writing since the first day of membership upon Redbubble? Feel free to read through my more-interesting and knowledge-filled articles, many that will help you travel the Redbubble path with ease and understanding. If you have any comments, questions, or further information, please comment on the respective article. MY JOURNAL Running Sheet for Exhibitions [26.April.2008] / Linking to Group Rules [ 12.Apr.2008 ] / My Own Private Bubble [ 10.Mar.2008 ] / Which Group Has My Art? [ 16.Feb.2008 ] / Making a Profit Because of Redbubble [ 31.Dec.2007 ] / Redbubble vs That Other Gallery [ 31.Dec.2007 ] / Linking Photographs [ 14.Dec.2007 ] / What Makes You Think Your Art is Good Enough? [ 15.Sep.2007 ] / RedBubble Breeds Winners [ 31.Aug.2007 ] / Idea for RB Administration [ 11.Aug.2007 ] / Advantage of Tagging your Uploads [ 01.Aug.2007 ] / Artist-Linkage and Size-Disclaimer [ 19.Jul.2007 ] / [!] Idea: Change Default to Least Expensive [ 17.Jul.2007 ] / Add This To Your Cart [ 16.Jun.2007 ] / Suggestion to RB Marketing and Code Teams [ 28.May.2007 ] MY WRITING Advantage of Choosing RedBubble / ASCII Characters in your RedBubble Journal / But Wait, There Is SO Much More / Consent for Photography Not Required in Australia / Coding your RedBubble Journal / DPI Determines Resolution, Not Quality / Tip for Answering Comments / DPI – Myth, Mania, or Massive? / DPI – Myth, Mania, or Massive? v.2 / Naming Your Art / Online Purchasing : Safe or Scary? ON FORUMS Tips and Tricks I’m always writing new articles about photography, entrepreneurialism, small-business, web-development, and about other stuff I find on the “WWW” . Expect something new, exciting and enlightening added here soon…

• [HOW TO] RSS is here YEAH!!!!
  by Craig Shillington

  Well, some of you may have noticed that Red Bubble has introduced RSS Feeds to our JE’s and our Portfolios :) VBS WELL DONE RED BUBBLE!!!...

  Well, some of you may have noticed that Red Bubble has introduced RSS Feeds to our JE’s and our Portfolios :) VBS WELL DONE RED BUBBLE!!! I can’t wait for feeds on comments and a feed on our Activity Monitor. For those of you unfamiliar with Feeds … You will notice when you look at someones Portfolio or JE’s now, you will see the little Feed symbol and the words subscribe to the left of it. What this means is that if you have a Feed Reader (I will mention those a little later) you can subscribe to a feed of that page and will be notified of any updates on that page at set intervals :) So now, rather than having to manually check to see if people have updated their Journal … or added new works …. you can have all the new stuff FEED right to you automatically :) Okay … my Feed Reader of Choice is called OMEA but I have a fairly fast system with 2Gig of Ram, so for me it’s not a problem to run. It’s a very big program and takes up a LOT of resources. Anyway … I thought I would try another Lighter Feed reader from a LIST of Ten. I am currently testing RSS Bandit and as far as I can tell so far it’s a great program for keeping up in RB :) I have added the Forums .. and also added Whirli to test …. all works really well :) :) Thanks Whirli ;) You can even send comments from within the program (on Journal Entries or works) so there is no need to flip back and forth from RB in your browser and the Feed Reader :) I haven’t looked at all the options in there yet, but so far it’s doing a good job of basically keeping me informed. It will take a while to add and categorize everyone … but once done .. adding new people will be easy and I will no longer need to manually check in RB for peoples updates etc :) I’ll leave this JE now …. if anyone is interested in using RSS Bandit … I can add to this to help you set it up … most other Programs would run similar so any instructions here would probably help with those too :) :) Happy RSS’ing :) :) VBS View all my HOW TO’S

• when facts are stranger than fiction
  by Jo O'Brien

  Some elective surgery will do the trick. / A needle and thread, / Sewing it all together like a patchwork quilt. / Fool them all. / They’ll n…

  I’m still hiding. Can you find me? A work of faction / Inspired by a conversation with Bellmusker and a comment by Suzanne German on a recent work of mine. See also John Robb’s written piece, The Quilt

• [HOW TO] Portfolio banner as a Link in Red Bubble
  by Craig Shillington

  Okay … so Xavier has implemented an awesome random banner generator (which shows three works fr…

  Okay … so Xavier has implemented an awesome random banner generator (which shows three works from our portfolios) which can be used as an email signature. Read about it in the Forum If you wanna use the code for placing a clickable link in your Email Sig file (Or on a web page somewhere that uses HTML code) use your own Promote page to get the code for your banner. If you have any problems getting the Email Sig to work … please post your questions in the Forum topic about that. Now, for the profile bit you don’t need all this code you only need one part and you don’t even need to use the Widgetinator to get it …. I am going to make it easy for you ;) First you need your Username. That is the text you type to LOG ON to RedBubble, not nessecarily your Name as shown in RedBubble to others. My Username is crackers1967. My name in here is Craig Shillington. So we can’t get those confused. The easiest way to see what your username is, is to open up RedBubble and click on View your public Profile. Look in the address bar of your browser and it will show you your username at the end of the address: http://redbubble.com/people/username To get the link to the three thumbnails randomly pulled out of you portfolio, you use the following link {just put your username in place of where I have typed username http://redbubble.com/people/username/recipe:banner/username_banner.jpg If you want to test the link, simply type (or copy and paste it) in your browser address bar and if all is working you should open up a small jpg of three of your own works. If that doesn’t work, try making the second username with Caps. Try again. Hopefully then it works. When it works, THAT is the code to put in your Profile. Okay …. now that you have the address, edit your profile and where you want to show the three random photos (in the About You box) type an exclamation mark ! , then right after that (without a space) copy that address, then put another ! again without any spaces. Save your profile then view it and see if it works :) :) To turn the banner into a clickthru link … simply add a colon {:} and the link you want it to click to; after the colon (no spaces) Then if anyone clicks the banner, they will be taken to the url you put in there. :) Good luck :) View all my HOW TO’S

• New Look Profile... Thanks Craig!
  by Rhana Griffin

  Many thanks must go to Craig Shillington for his wonderful How To...

  Many thanks must go to Craig Shillington for his wonderful How To series which has enabled me to pretty up my profile and organise my pictures into sets. For those of you wanting Tshirts DONT PANIC! they are still there, I have just made them invisible so that my profile looks neater. Simply send me a bubblemail when you are ready to order and I will make them visible again. Ciao for now!

• The video montage process
  by MuscularTeeth

  Somone asked how i make the vids, i explained it to them and they said i should tell everyone. OK the process is thus; you get your…

  Somone asked how i make the vids, i explained it to them and they said i should tell everyone. OK the process is thus; you get your photos approved by me. / I go to your photos webpage and take a screenshot. / i paste it and crop it in paintshop. / i then save the name as your title and name. (eel by muscularteeth for example) / i then get into my video editing software and locate the file / i add that file to the video stream, and then edit the picture- to move, or have the tv effect, or invert it or whatever… / i also select where the picture will be; centered, to the left etc… when you see the film jig around really fast, thats me going down to each milisecond and moving the picture to a differnt spot on the screen. / then i add a title with your name and the title of the photo. / then i go back to the redbubble site, grab another photo. / and the process continues. oh the music is mine too but i wont go into how i make that – thats an entirely different process.

• Profile Page Play
  by Brett Foster

  Finally I got off my butt and decided to have a look at the design/layout options available for sprucing up the Profile Page (and others …

  Finally I got off my butt and decided to have a look at the design/layout options available for sprucing up the Profile Page (and others I guess). / I discovered a few neat tricks, thanks to all the helpful people who have blogged about this for the benefit of the rest of us, and applied a few. Take a look and let me know what you think. For me it was a little time consuming, mostly because I haven’t been tagging my images consistently from the beginning – so I had to go through them all and add tags pertinent to the categories I decided on. Once that was done however, the rest was easy. I just designed a few buttons, plugged in the code and Bob’s your Uncle! If you are looking for the code, just type “HOWTO” in the search box and check the helpful hints by Craig Shillington. From there you will find other useful links. There are still some limitations in the design rules in terms of layout but now that I’ve had a go I’ll see what else I can come up with. Cheers, / PhotoBloke™

• Basic BackYard Bird Photography
  by Leisa Hennessy

  Best Time of Year / The best time of year to photograph birds is Spring. That way you have / the opportunity to capture birds yo…

  I Originally wrote this for my friend Darren Over at Digital Photography School Blog Remember this is just the basics to help you get started in to a rewarding adventure :)

• How To Choose a Camera
  by Steven Lippis

  One of the most common questions I’ve seen in the forum is, “What camera should I buy?” / There’s no definitive answer. In the end, most c…

  One of the most common questions I’ve seen in the forum is, “What camera should I buy?” / There’s no definitive answer. In the end, most cameras on the market are decent. I’d like to think that rather than one camera being better than another, one camera is better at some things than others. A nice big dSLR is great, but can you slip it into your pocket? / A compact is handy, and great in social situations, but it’s not going to be much shop with sports or wildlife photography! / In the end, a camera is a tool and it’s important you choose the right one for the job. First up, lets look at compact cameras. / There’s plenty of these around, they’re constantly being updated, replaced and improved. Also the cheapest digital option. / Very handy for carrying with you. Can slip into a pocket and are always on hand when you need it. / One problem though is they’re slow. Slow start up, slow to take a shot, often quite a big delay between pressing the button and the image being taken, often you can lose the moment. Another is the sensor size. They have very tiny sensors, and when the manufacturers shove in as many megapixels as the larger sensor on a dSLR, the image quality can degrade. This page shows the difference in sizes between compacts, dSLRs and 35mm, also explains with tables and charts about the resolutions of these. Last, and definitely not least, image control. / There’s very little control to be had with a compact camera. / But Uncle Stevie, my compact has full manual controls! / Yes, many compact cameras do. But again, the size of the sensor comes into play here. Because the sensor is so small, the image is effectively cropped in comparison to a 35mm, or ‘full frame’ image. This is the crop factor people talk about. On a compact, this is even more profound. / Depth of field is controlled by a few factors. One is how close/far the subject is from the camera. The further away, the more depth of field. Get close, and it becomes very narrow, like in most macro shots you see. / Another is focal length. Wide angle lenses tend to have a deep depth of field, whereas telephoto, or long lenses, have quite a shallow depth. / It’s all about balancing one against the other. / 28mm on a 35mm camera is wide angle, and your subject has to be quite close to the camera for a shallow depth of field. / On a compact camera, to achieve the ‘28mm equivalent’, you have to go much, much wider. On the Canon Powershot S70, the lens is infact 5.8-20.7mm, with the 5.8 being equivalent to the wide angle 28mm. Even at the telephoto end, there’s going to be little control over depth of field. / In a way this is great for compact cameras, it means people will rarely get out of focus shots! Not so great if you’re using it as a creative control. / The other factor in controlling depth of field is the aperture, but quite often this ends up having no effect due to the extreme wide angle of the lenses in use. Somewhere in the middle ground is the dSLR-like group of cameras. / They look a lot like an SLR, have a lot of the features, but they don’t have interchangable lenses (blessing and a curse, the more a lens can do, the less it does well, but you’ll never have to worry about a dirty sensor!) of a true SLR. Their response times can be sluggish, but not as slow as a compact. The biggest downfall is the same as the compacts. The sensor. Most share the tiny sensor of a compact, running into the same issues. They often have a much greater reach with extremely long zooms, which is why they need to be a lot bigger. The dSLR market is not quite as flooded with models, but there’s still a wide choice. Some entry level models come in cheaper than some compacts, while the top of the line can be in excess of $10,000. Here budget plays a big part in deciding what to buy. If you buy a $10,000 body but can’t afford a good lens, your images will suffer. The lens is the most important part of the equation here. They’re the part you keep. Unfortunately digital camera bodies are an expensive, yet disposable item. / What do you need out of your camera? / Are you going to be shooting sports? Possibly spending time in bad weather? Shooting gigs in low light? / You need to look at what you’re doing and decide if you need weather sealing, good high ISO performance, fast FPS. / These are the major differences as you move up the camera food chain. And while it might be nice to be able to shoot at 11fps, do you NEED it? / Also, if you’re going to get big, expensive lenses, you may need a pro body designed to handle them. The entry level models are designed to work best with the more affordable light, plastic bodied lenses. / Decide what you want to do, work out what you need and then find out what will fit both your needs and budget. Film SLRs! / But Uncle Stevie, film is dead. The man in the camera shop said so. / Of course he said so. / What’s in his best interest? Selling a $2,000 digital camera that’s obsolete in 18 months, or selling a $500 film camera that’ll produce beautiful images for a lifetime, or longer, and the odd roll of film for a couple bucks? Film is far from dead. While consumer films are dropping off, companies such as Fuji have continued to improve and extend their professional film range. Recently due to great demand they brought back Velvia 50. An all new type of Provia was released. Companies that have ended film production have had their processing plants bought out by other companies who are filling the demand. / Just as print film, slide film and black and white films all have different characteristics, between each other and brands, digital is just another medium with its own characteristics. / Depending on the situation film is not more expensive than digital. So in summary. Think about what you want from your camera, both in terms of portability, function and artistic aesthetics and get the best tool for the job. Make sure you get what you need out of the camera (and yes, that may be the portability of a compact!), forget the other bells and whistles. When budget is a constraint, remember to take into consideration lens choice and other accessories such as memory cards, card readers, filters, extended warranties, etc. If you have old lenses and want to use them on your new camera, check for compatibility first. Most importantly, go into a store, handle the cameras, find one that feels comfortable to hold and use. Compare viewfinders, make sure you can see clearly, especially glasses wearers. For the most part, ignore megapixel counts. It’s become a race and a way to market new cameras, but people can and have been printing quite large images from 6mp cameras. (Keep in mind RB requires 10mp for large prints). If you want to try film, don’t be put off by the talk of it being dead. You can pick up a second hand film body for next to nothing, and trying out a couple rolls of film won’t cost much at all. Keep in mind, this advice is my opinion. Not everyone will agree with everything I’ve said. / I’ve not mentioned any particular models because they change so fast. Latest news, reviews and comparisons can be found on the DPReview website.

• RedBubble Tutorial
  by Anita Donohoe

  I am new to RedBubble and have spent a lot of time learning how to do some of the things seen here in Portfolios and Journals. There is n…

  I am new to RedBubble and have spent a lot of time learning how to do some of the things seen here in Portfolios and Journals. There is no central Tutorial at present, so I am creating a journal entry with an attempt to consolidate the information I found and create a template of basic tips. Will RedBubble consider the addition of a Tutorial link in the menu of our “my bubble” pages with all of this info and more? I hope you will find this to be useful information! / Anita === / Post a Question: / If you do not see your question in the “Learning Centre” http://www.redbubble.com/forums/2 post it as a new topic in the Learning Centre forum and someone will provide an answer! Add Copyright to your photos on RedBubble: / Click on “my bubble” / select “edit your profile” / scroll to bottom of page, / and tick the “add watermark to myworks” Edit a Photo or Information in your portfolio: / Go to MyBubble, click on Art. / Rearrange the order of your photos: / On the right of the table, you can move an image up or down, or to the top or bottom. / Statistics: / Next to that column is one that gives you the current statistics for that image. / Edit the photo, description, etc. / In the left hand column is the image, its title, availability and two buttons: edit and show public view. / Click on edit and make any changes: change the image; edit the title, description, tags, options, price and/or publication or delete the work. Edit your Journal/Blog: / Go to MyBubble, click on Blog. / All of your journal titles will appear and you can edit or delete them from here. Clickable Text: / RedBubble / Put the link name in quotation marks followed by a colon then the link HELP! / I haven’t figured out how to make the following two tasks work. Where do I find the url for an image if I don’t have a web site? / Insert an Image: / Surround the url text with exclamation points! / !image url! Make the Image a Link: / After the url for the image, add a hash mark/forward slash then the url for where you want to go and add the closing exclamation point. / !http://image url/destination url! / And I can’t make the image a link because I can’t figure out how to insert the image. Resources and Formatting Guides: / by Official Documentation / Textism Tools Textile by webgrrl / format n found by accident by Stephen Mitchell / ASCII Characters in your RedBubble Journal

• How2 Change Default Avatar (with video aid)
  by kseriphyn

  What the hell is this creature? Someone asked thi…

  What the hell is this creature? Someone asked this question (well not in this manner but close enough) and I couldn’t help but giggle. Meet the new default avatar for Red Bubble. If you’re like me and not keen to be looking a cross between a rhino and bull (I prefer to look like a cranky Samhain especially when there is so much limelight around the name at the mo), why not upload a fantastic image that is all you! If you’ve never uploaded an avatar before, it’s easy enough to do. On your “My Overview” page, click the grey [edit your profile] button towards the right side of the page. Under the right side menu titled “Things you can do:”, click the [change your portrait] button. You’ll be taken to a page that will show your current (avatar) portrait and give you an option to “Upload a New Portrait”. To upload a new portrait, click on the [Browse] button and locate an image from your pc you’d be happy to sport as your mug :0) A “File Upload” pop-up box will load. It’s just a matter of pointing to the image you want to open. Clicking on it once and clicking the [Open] button. The location path of the image will appear in the field section next to the [Browse] button Click the [Upload] button and wait for the magic to happen. When the pic has been uploaded you’ll receive a prompt saying it was successful. It’s just a matter of visiting your port and checking out your new do. Here is a visual, for those visual learners. I’m so busted for this. xxx Ronnie

• How To Photoshop: Blending Images
  by Brittany Kinney

  Below are the steps on how to blend images: 1. Open one image. (Control + O) / 2. To the right of the screen, there should be a “Layers…

  Below are the steps on how to blend images: 1. Open one image. (Control + O) / 2. To the right of the screen, there should be a “Layers” box. In it, there should be a thumbnail of the image you have open and it should say, “Background”. You’ll want to make this a regular layer so, on your keyboard, hold the “Alt” key and double click on the layer name. It should now say “Layer 0”. / 3. Now, open a second image in a DIFFERENT canvas than the first image. (Control +O) / 4. With the “Move Tool”, move the second image onto the first image. Place it where ever you’d like the images to meet. / 5. Add a Layer Mask to the layer now titled, “Layer 1”. (Layer>Add Layer Mask>Reveal All) / 6. Select the Gradient Tool (on the toolbar on left. If you still don’t know what this is, then just hit “G” on your keyboard and it will select it.) / 7. Make sure you have the black to white gradient selected. Then hold the “Shift” and drag the mouse over the image; over the part that you want people to see still. And that’s it! You can tweak it a little using the Eraser (E) tool if you’d like. Hope this helped! / -Brittany

• TUTORIAL: Add small, framed photos to your profile page
  by Patricia Montgomery

  I recommend printing these instructions so that you have them handy for reference. It is easier than switching back and forth to this sc…

  I recommend printing these instructions so that you have them handy for reference. It is easier than switching back and forth to this screen. HOW TO ADD SMALL, FRAMED PHOTOS TO YOUR PROFILE PAGE Click on “my bubble”. Click on “art” (on the 2nd row of links – not the top one). You should see “My Art” page – this is the page where you can edit your pics. Choose your photo and click on “Show Public View”. Click “Buy/Preview”. (Note: You won’t actually be buying, only previewing) Choose the frame of your choice, color, etc. When the pic of your framed photo appears on the screen, right click on the photo. A pop-up box will appear. Click on “Save Photo As” A dialog box will appear. Choose a folder or location on your computer to save the framed pic. Remember where you save it. You are done with RedBubble for now. You can close your browser window or leave it open for later. You now will need to open the saved, framed pic on your computer using a program such as Photoshop or Irfanview. You can use any software that will allow you to resize the pic. For this example, I will use Irfanview. You can download this free software by going to www.irfanview.com If you are using another program, you will need to use the resize/resample feature. Open Irfanview. Open the framed pic that you saved to your computer. Go to “Image” (top menu bar) – in the drop-down menu, choose “Resize/Resample” (or bypass these steps and simply press Ctrl-R) In the dialog box, you will need to change to a new size. For my own profile page, I chose approximately 175×141 pixels so that I could fit two side-by-side images. Go to my “profile page”: http://www.redbubble.com/people/patmonty/ to see an example. These numbers are not set in stone. You may need to tweak the numbers to suit your own needs. Save your resized pic in Irfanview, but be sure to remember where you have saved it. Close Irfanview and open RedBubble in your browser window. Now you are going to upload the resized pic to RedBubble. IMPORTANT: Be sure to mark “This work is not for sale” AND “Hide this work from others” When you upload, the resized pic will be private and only can be viewed by you. Once uploaded, you can right click on the private, resized pic to copy the URL address. Copy the address to your profile page, add the two (!) exclamation points and you have the smaller, framed image visible to the public. If you are new to RedBubble, I am going to post a second tutorial explaining how to copy a URL address and add the two (!) exclamation points to feature any pic on your profile page. I hope this is helpful. I would be remiss if I did not give credit to my dear friend, Gracey as she is the one who nudged me to join RedBubble. She has been both patient and generous with instructions on how to navigate RB and how to do tasks such as this. Have a blessed day! / Patricia

• Top 12 - How To
  by George Lenz

  All I did was go through my entries and pick the top12 with the most views. / tag then with something. / list the public view and copy the …

  All I did was go through my entries and pick the top12 with the most views. / tag then with something. / list the public view and copy the link into you profile, like. top 12 http://www.redbubble.com/people/gemlenz/art/everything/tags/top10 Just put quotes around top 12 followed by a colon. that’s it. of course you have to maintain the list over time. G.

• [HOW TO ?] get notifications of posts in GROUP FORUMS
  by Mike Finley

  I host moderate and/or participate in a fairly wide range of forum systems, and found one thing conspicuously absent in the group forums …

  I host moderate and/or participate in a fairly wide range of forum systems, and found one thing conspicuously absent in the group forums here on red-bubble – the ability to get notification of posts in a forum or topic you are interested in. The problem is compounded by the fact that each group has its own separate forum, each of which you have to navigate to. There is an RSS feed I grumbled to one of the group leaders about this, and was told that there was in fact an RSS feed for the forums. This seemed promising, as i use RSS feeds on one of my own sites to notify when someone posts a new image, or a new exhibition date. (I really don’t like having to go chasing round websites to see if anything has been added!) (For an overview of RSS on redbubble see Craig Shillington’s RSS is here journal entry. It includes a lot of useful information on setting up an RSS reader, which I won’t repeat!) Feeds and Group Forums There is a separate feed for each forum within a group, but as Craig has already commented there is no useful indication on the page that an RSS feed is present. (You can tell if you know what to look for – if you look at the page address in the browser toolbar, you’ll see an orange icon on the righthand side if there is an RSS feed.) If you subscribe to the feed on the forum you are interested in, following Craig’s instructions, you will get ‘notified’ of new messages or topics in that forum. Thsi isn’t much of a gain unless you already have a newsfeed reader in use, or you are going to monitor several different forums in different groups. Its a big gain for me, since I use Google reader on my iGoogle page, so I get a quick check whenever I open a new browser window. (and, as I said, I’m already using it to monitor other sites). problems Unfortunately, there are some bugs in the current feed implementation – the structure doesn’t follow the standard, and nor does it follow recommendations for maximum / interoperability with readers. (These bugs have been reported to redbubble support). At present, I can’t get the feed to work correctly inside an email rss client, which would possibly be more useful – I’ll recheck this when the current bugs are fixed. status I’ve checked the current feed using the Google reader and using bloglines and it works satisfactorily in both. I haven’t checked any of Craig’s recommendations Problem solved? well, not really, but its a useful halfway step (for me at least), and provides a possible starting point. I’ll be happy to try to sort out any queries on the above … and I’d be delighted if someone else tells me I’ve wasted my time and gives me a better solution :smile: hope this helps someone!

• Spookee's House of Learning Part 1: Hair- making custom brushes
  by Spookee

  Alright, here’s the first of a few tutorials I have saved up on my “artistic method” (pompous and pretentious to call it that, I know- bu…

  Alright, here’s the first of a few tutorials I have saved up on my “artistic method” (pompous and pretentious to call it that, I know- but ‘random ways of doing stuff’ doesn’t give off a good vibe). The first of which is going to be on creating a custom brush to paint hair with. / This tutorial is geared mostly towards Photoshop 7.0 because that is what I mostly use for computer generated images. Any settings I give in this tutorial are not the be-all, end-all. They are more of a guideline… like the Pirate’s Code. 1) Once you have Photoshop opened up, go to File, New. In the New window use these settings: / Width: 60 pixels / Height: 80 pixels / Resolution: Any / Mode: RGB / Contents: White Click “Okay”. This will open up a new, tiny window for you to create your brush in. 2) Create your standard sized document (for me this is anywhere from 8 inches x 10 inches to 16×20 inches. Go ahead and minimize this for right now, you won’t need it until later on. 3) In the tiny window, change your brush to a 1pix hard edged brush and make a few random clicks in that space. Go ahead and zoom in to about 500% so you can easily see the brush and marks you make. Make about 2 – 5 random spots and then create a new layer. 4) On your new layer, chose a 2 or 3pix soft edged brush and make 1 – 3 random spots. Try not to put them in the same X (horizontal) or Y (vertical) Axis at first. We’re just making a simple brush here and don’t want to get too carried away. 5) Merge the layers into one (Ctrl+E to Merge Down, Shift+Ctrl+E to Merge All) and reduce the Magnification to 100%. 6) Select the Marquee Tool- this is either the hashed-out rectangle or hashed-out circle on your tool bar. Select the rectangular Marquee and draw a box around your brushes. 7) With your soon-to-be brush selected, go to Edit, Define Brush. A window will pop up and ask for a name. Let’s call it HairBrush 1a. 8) Now, remember that standard sized document we made earlier and set off to the side? Time to bring it up. We’re going to test out our new brush. Open your brush palette and scroll all the way to the bottom, you should see your newly created brush’s name or thumbnail just waiting for you. Select the brush and make a stroke along your document. 8.1) Your brush right now is probably too small and “skippy” at this point, so we’re going to edit it: Open up your Brushes (Window, Brushes) and click on Brush Tip Shape. Use the Compass (Circle with Cross in it) to adjust the angle of your brush and reduce the spacing to 5% or less. Adjust the size to what you feel comfortable with as a Starting point (for me, usually around 50). / 8.1.a) Click on Shape Dynamics and beneath Size Jitter, select the option that best suits you- since I use a Wacom Tablet, I set the Size Control Option for Pen Pressure. / At this point, we are done editing our Custom Brush Specs. Move back to your Brush Palette and click on the turned pages square beneath the Left pointing Triangle. Name your Newly edited HairBrush something like HairBrush1. Select the prior brush (Not the one you just made) and delete it, you don’t need it anymore. CONGRATULATIONS!!! You just created your first custom Hair brush for Photoshop! The next tutorial will guide you along on painting out hair for your models!

• Photoshop Tip #1: Where to get brushes?
  by bchrisdesigns

  Okay, so you’ve seen some amazing work online and wondered where the artist got all those astounding background effects or how they did t…

  Okay, so you’ve seen some amazing work online and wondered where the artist got all those astounding background effects or how they did that cool layered effect. Well, as surprising as it may sound, some of those effects were done using a very common Photoshop preset: Brushes. You may be asking yourself, don’t I already have brushes installed with my Photoshop CS3 (or CS2) software? Well, yes, you do. But those are the basics. There are a ton of awesome people out there in internet land who are making additional brushes (and other plugins) for you to use with your software. These plugins are very easy to download and install. I will try to give you a short rundown of what to expect when installing these brushes. For more information as to how to use them or for more detailed installation information or installation for a MAC OS, please consult the very wonderful Photoshopsupport.com, a very neat index of everything Photoshop! (Please note: The following instructions are very, very simplistic because I wanted even the novice Photoshop user to be able to use these tools. I know there are a bunch of different ways to do these things (even some that are easier), but I wanted to put it in basic terms without all the fancy language and extra steps because I remember how it was when I first started teaching myself to use the Adobe programs. Plus, this is not intended to be a full fledged tutorial.) The first step is to download some really cool brushes from an online provider. Some brush sets you will have to pay for, others are free with some restrictions, and others are completely free. Make sure you read the website’s policy before you use them. You can view my Photoshop CS3 (and CS2) Brushes journal entry to visit the websites where I have downloaded most of my brushes from. Most of them have free areas or are completely free and all you have to do is link back to them. Once you have chosen the brush set to download, simply download it to your computer. Because the files are normally saved in a Zip file, I start off by downloading the file to my Desktop first and then moving them over after (this is to avoid confusion). However, if you feel comfortable unzipping them right into the proper file, then by all means go-ahead-with-your-bad-self! After you have downloaded the Zip file to your Desktop, you will need a program (such as WinRAR, which is what I use) to unzip the file. At this point, you may be asking where you unzip the file to? Well, inside the Zip file may be a read me (.txt) file and other junk (which may be of interest to you) and there should also be a brush (.abr) file, which is the one you want to unzip. You can unzip the brush file onto your Desktop and then move it over manually, or you can unzip it to the Photoshop directory itself. Regardless of which method yo use, your ultimate goal is to get that .abr brush file into a specific folder in your Photoshop program’s file. For brushes, the file you will want to place your .abr brush files into is the “Brush” file within the “Presets” file. So, how do you get there? Open your My Computer and find the drive which has the folder “Program FIles”. Now, open “Program Files” and then find the folder labeled “Adobe”. Next, open the “Adobe” folder and you will see ALL of the Adobe programs, which are installed on your system. Locate the “Adobe Photoshop CS3” (or CS2) folder and open it. Find the “Presets” folder and open it. Finally, you will see a folder called “Brushes”. Open it. You can now see ALL of the brushes that are installed to use with your Photoshop program. This “Brushes” folder is where you want to place all of your downloaded .abr brush files. So, the quick breakdown to find the “Brushes” folder is: Program Files >>> Adobe >>> Adobe Photoshop CS3 (or CS2) >>> Presets >>> Brushes Once you have unzipped the files or drag-and-dropped them into this file folder, you can close the folders. You will also need to re-start your Photoshop program in order for the brushes to be finalized and installed and ready for use (sometimes, you have to re-start your computer as well). After you have re-booted your software, open a blank file and click on the “Brush Tool” or simply press its keyboard shortcut ( B ) to activate it. Now, right click anywhere on the page and your brush palette should appear (this is where you control the brush size/hardness, etc.) and in the upper right hand corner you should see a little black triangle with a circle around it. Click on that little triangle/circle icon and…. whaaaaa-la! Your newly installed brushes are there just waiting for you to experiment with them! All you have to do is click on a preset and it will ask you if you would like to load those brushes. Click “Ok” and they will appear in your brush palette waiting to be used and abused! So, go have fun with your new brushes and get creative! The last step, of course, is to add your comments below! Add your brush tips (pun intended) below so that we can all learn from each other! Cheers!