How to Sharpen you Photoshop Photo

Photoshop CS is one of the most advanced photo-editing software available

It’s a powerful tool, enabling you to remove blemishes, fix red eye or sharpen and image.  The list of things you can do with Photoshop CS is endless; that is, if you know how to do it.  While Photoshop CS is a powerful and advanced program, it can also be complicated for the new user.  In this article I’ll explain how to perform one of the basic photo editing tasks; sharpening a photo, you’ll be making albums in no time.

How to Sharpen a Photo:
 We can’t all afford a super high end digital camera, so occasionally our pictures are going to come out a bit blurry.  Sharpening an image in Photoshop CS is easy, just follow these simple steps.
1) From the top of the page select the “Filter” menu, drag down to “Sharpen” and then select “Unsharp Mask”.
2) The “Amount” slide bar is what you use to decrease or increase the contrast of the edges in the photo.  150% is usually ideal, however if you have a granular photo, you might consider a lower percentage amount.
3) The “Radius” slide bar can be used to adjust the thickness of the edges that have been sharpened.
4) The “Threshold” slide bar is used to create differences in shade.  Usually lower settings, fewer than 20 are ideal. 
I often notice that using the filter to sharpen my photo’s leaves me with very rough and grainy images.  Return to the “Filter” menu, scroll down to “Blur” and then select “Smart Blur”.  Making slight adjustment to the “Radius” and “Threshold” will give your photo a softer, smoother look.
Because different camera’s take different quality pictures, it may be necessary for you to experiment a bit with your percentages.  Although it can be complicated, learning how to edit your photos with Photoshop CS is knowledge you’ll always be thankful for.

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Free FTP Software

FTP is short for ‘file transfer protocol’ and is used when transferring files from one place to another over the internet. This means you are able to upload the files on your local machine to a place online with little effort. You are also able to transfer files from one local machine to another local machine, so long as an internet connection is available from both locations.

Some things to consider when transferring your files via FTP are:

• Passwords and any files sent in plain text, which means if someone intercepts the files while in transfer, there isn’t any encryption to keep the contents private.
• Multiple connections can be used, which usually leads to firewall confusion.

You may think that secure FTP could solve the privacy issue, but the name is misleading. Commonly known as secure FTP, it is run over an SSH (Secure Shell) connection, which only secures the control channel – not the data channel where the transfers actually take place. Because of this, the files you send are still sent in plain text and ready for the reading if someone should decide they want to take a look at your intercepted files.

If you are looking for a truly secure transferring system, you should opt for SSH File Transfer Protocol (or SFTP). Not to be confused with secure FTP, it is your only real option if keeping your files private is important to you and your business.

Some free FTP clients you might want to consider are:

1. SmartFTP (free for education or home use)

This FTP program allows for secure FTP, but only works in a Windows-based environment. Though SFTP is not an option with this program, it features firewall support, and allows you to choose from 10 different languages. You are also able to edit the chmod settings of files from right inside the program.

2. Cyberduck FTP, SFTP for Mac OS X

It is used in Mac OS X and features drag and drop transfers. It also supports a great deal of languages from around the world and includes secure FTP and SFTP options.

3. FileZilla

It is a Windows based program that offers secure FTP and SFTP if needed. It also features drag and drop while transferring files and is easy to navigate the screens for both your remote and local files.

4. gFTP

This program works in a Linux, Unix or Berkley Software Distribution (BSD) environment. It allows for secure FTP as well as SFTP and has been translated into 41 languages so far.

5. KFTPGrabber

It allows for both secure FTP and SFTP and works in the Linux, Unix and Berkley Software Distribution (BSD) environments. It also features tabs which can help immensely when transferring files from different locations at the same time.

6. Lftp

It is also used in the Linux, Unix and Berkley Software Distribution (BSD) environments but does not allow for secure FTP or SFTP. Transfers can be set up to occur at a certain time in the future, and transfer queues are an option in needed. This FTP program can be set up to be fully scripted, rather than requiring human interaction if you wish.

7. NcFTP

Though this FTP program is rather old, and doesn’t feature the graphical interface that most of the newer ones do, it is still around and kept up to date. It can run on nearly every operating system because of the ‘command-line’ interface it uses, but doesn’t allow for secure FTP or SFTP.

8. OneButton FTP

This FTP program doesn’t allow for secure FTP or SFTP and only runs on the Mac OS X.

9. Fetch (free for education)

This is another program that only runs on the Mac OS X, and it allows for secure FTP, but not SFTP. One helpful feature that has been added to the program gives you the ability to edit files without downloading and re-uploading them. Instead, you are able to edit files straight on the server.

Also see this very detailed comparison of free ftp client software at wikipedia

Microsoft did a good job with the Zune

For approximately 200 dollars (U.S.), you get a 30GB MP3 player with several additional features. If you’ve narrowed down your choice to the Zune or an iPod, you should go with the Zune. This product is, despite its bulky size, superior to Apple’s line of players in almost every way. Here’s why.

The Zune holds 30GB of music, which is more than what most music lovers own on CD and MP3 combined. Unless you’ve been collecting CDs and digital files for several years, the odds are good that you’ll have plenty of space on your Zune for videos or pictures.

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Download Top 3 Registry Cleaners

• RegCure of ParetoLogic (TechJocks Pick!)
• Registry Mechanic of PCTools
• Registry Booster of Uniblue

The Portable Document Format (PDF)

Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format created by Adobe Systems Inc., and supported in Adobe Acrobat, Adobe reader, and many other third-party PDF reading and processing software.

The PDF is a text based document format, which grew up to include any type of multimedia. The primary aim of PDF is to render files like articles, e-books, etc., as a printable document. Other document formats like HTML may not be quite friendly with printers. Therefore, their outputs usually go askew when printed. The PDF documents are created by digital printing (usually from documents in another format). It is not an easily editable format.

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Here is what MS Access does and Why you need it

For anyone that has found him/herself under the gun who needs to consolidate, store, gather, isolate or manipulate information then report against it to a group of stakeholders, Microsoft Access is the application to use. 

It can be purchased as an add-on to the Microsoft Office Professional package.  If you foresee yourself managing a neighborhood contact list or downloading information from a company’s mainframe system, you can

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Link MS Access Tables to External Databases: Here’s the Macro

There are times when information needed is contained in other Access databases.  For example, there may be one database that contains customer service information while another database contains customer finance information.  

The administrator may not want all of the information to reside in one database because the two databases are used by two different groups.

If information is linked from a primary database to a secondary database, when updates occur in the original table in the primary database the information automatically updates in the linked table in the secondary database.  So, it is not necessary to re-link the tables in order to receive new information.

To create a macro that automatically links tables in two different databases, do the following:

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