Photoshop offers several methods to turn an image black and white. For instance, you can go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Black & White and that will automatically generate the desired effect. But, if you want a little more control and mastery of Photoshop, you will want to use the Channels panel.

When you open an image in Photoshop, “channels” automatically generate. These channels parcel the colors of your image, creating RGB (red, green, blue) color channels for the three primary colors and grayscale channels for lights and darks. Today, we’re focusing on RGB.

Baby Steps

You can’t do much without an image, so open that up to get started. We will be experimenting with a photo of midtown Manhattan. Locate your panel, which typically pre-populates with the Layers, Color and even our Channels panel in many versions of Photoshop. Click on the Channels panel. Immediately, you will see the RGB channels.

Photoshop’s Channels panel divvies the colors of your image into the three primary colors: red, green and blue. Feel free to experiment with toggling the visibility of these colors by clicking on their respective eyeballs in the panel. Remember, when you remove a color’s visibility, the other two will dominate the image. You can create interesting color schemes just by removing red, green or blue from an image.

Going Grey

If you have experimented with the RGB colors enough, you may have stumbled across a black and white effect at some point. If you left only one color visible–be it red, blue or green–the result will be a black and white image. In our sample, we left the green channel visible.

Tip: Red exists in abundance in faces and skin. So, if you’re using a family portrait or glamour shots, you might want to leave the red channel visible over the others.

You could quit now, but chances are that your image could be better. Before getting into fine-tuning your image, it would be best to first look at your black and white image with the red, blue and green channels isolated. If you look at specific points of your image (especially points saturated with red, blue or green) you will see subtle, yet pivotal, changes in the image’s black and white effect.

In our next blog, we will show you how to bring out the best in your black and white by optimizing the black and white levels. Until then, have fun turning your photos into timeless, classic moments using this effect.

How do you know your website gets the job done? Do you get emails or comments from viewers? Did your mom say it looks great? No disrespect to mom, but without a reporting tool like Google Analytics, measuring the success of a website is dodgy at best.

Google Analytics offers free reporting and metric tools for just about any website. Reviewing metrics on a weekly or monthly basis informs you as to how much traffic you’re getting and where traffic comes from. Properly analyzing website metrics can help you focus on content that viewers enjoy. It also helps you understand what’s not working, so you can make adjustments.

Even if the sight of a pie chart makes you queasy, Google Analytics makes things simple enough that you can interpret the data in meaningful ways. This isn’t a reenactment of grade school horror stories. All you need is a Google account and a website; we can guide you from there.

Setup

After creating a Google account, you will need to add your website to your account. From the Google Analytics Home screen, simply click on the Admin button in the top toolbar and select “+ New Account.” From there the instructions are straightforward. One of the last steps asks you to add a Tracking ID to your website. The tracking ID acts like a tracking beacon, telling Google Analytics what to keep an eye on. Google offers step-by-step instructions to install tracking code on your website. If you’re worrying about reading code, relax. Thankfully, you just need to copy/paste the code, and don’t stress the details too much.

With your website fully integrated with Google Analytics, you can start using the report platform’s more interesting tools…

Goals

If you read our prior post, “Easy Traffic-Building Tips for Your Website,” you might remember that planning should be one of your top priorities. Well, Google Analytics lets you not only make goals, but track them as well. While within the Admin tool, click on your website in the account listings. Keep clicking on the website until you get to the Profiles page. Here, Google created a Goals tab. There are four preset goal types: URL Destination, Visit Duration, Page/Visit and Event.

Going back to our traffic-building tips blog, creating goals can help keep you accountable, especially when Google sends you reports. This physical evidence will hopefully give you extra motivation to move past planning and focus on persistent content strategies to achieve your goals.

Reports

Google Analytics offers many, many ways to view and collate metrics. While logged in to the Analytics site, you can use preset reporting tools using the Reporting tab. As an introduction to Google Analytics, we’ll focus on standard reporting tools, but the truly ambitious can create custom reports under the Customization tab in the toolbar atop the Analytics page.

The Overview tab in the left sidebar offers plenty of information to dive into. From Overview, you can select what kind of data you want to focus on. A drop-down tab (see image above) lets you select your analytic filters. For explanations of each filter, simply roll your mouse over the question mark icon.

To print or save reports on your computer, simply click the Export drop-down, and you’re home free. We told you it was simple! If you don’t care for printing reports from, say, Microsoft Excel or Google Spreadsheets, you can add your favorite metrics to a dashboard. While viewing a particular metric, click “Add to Dashboard” and follow Google’s lead from there.

Keep Metrics Within Perspective

While every website is different, some baseline goals might help you start your journey measuring metrics and goals. For instance, bounce rate measures how many people leave your from the Home page. According to Inc.com, a 50% bounce rate is average, so don’t let that get you down. Visit duration should be another important metric to watch, as it measures how long visitors stay under the warmth of your website’s glowing radiance. A one-minute duration should be an achievable goal for new websites. But, this number shows how engaged your visitors are with content, so the higher the better. A three minute duration, for example, is excellent.

Now that you know the basics of Google Analytics, we hope that you’re at least motivated enough to set up Google Analytics and boost your site’s performance beyond what you’ve seen in this post’s screenshots. That guy can really use some help!

In the past few months, it’s been a good problem to have for the Digital Workshop. As our volume of students has increased dramatically, we’ve been trying to figure out how to better handle our multiple systems internally.

One of the most common issues that come with having multiple systems is they don’t talk nicely to each other. By “talk,” I mean data does not transfer easily between them.

For example, a system for human resources data may export a text file of employee info that a payment tracking system doesn’t understand. We may be able to import data into the payment tracking system, but only if it’s set up properly. We are then forced to figure out ways to manipulate the data to prepare it for import.

Microsoft Excel is the industry standard program for data manipulation. When dealing with this type of scenario, Excel has built-in tools to manipulate text, dates, numerical data and more.

One of the best examples of Excel’s power is in dealing with names that are improperly formatted and need to be moved from one system to another.

Let’s say one system generates names in the order of “last name, first name.” However, your other system needs the name data as two normalized fields, such as “last name” and “first name.” At this point, you need to write a formula to split the original data into two values.

The only constant we know about this scenario is that the first and last name values are separated by a comma. When we can recognize a constant of any kind, it helps us shape how to build our formula.

Using Excel’s “Find” function, we can find the starting position of one text string located inside of another. In this case, we use Find to determine where the comma is located. We’ll call that value X.

Next, we can take the value of X and use it nested in the “Left” function, which returns a value that counts the number of X characters from the Left side of the value and returns a result.

After combining Find and Left, all that will remain is the “last name” value including the comma. Subtract one from the value of X and you’ll get a field with the last name by itself, ready for import.

If you give it a try, Excel can help simplify data transfer in a number of ways like this. If you have a tech question you need answered — including more about Excel — visit Facebook.com/fcdigitalworkshop and ask. I’ll answer some of your questions in upcoming columns.

[Orginally published in The Coloradoan on 3/22/13]

With the announcement of iCloud in 2011, Apple became the first technology company to offer seamless integration across devices. Coupled with the emergence of the iPad as a viable tools and the continued popularity of the iPhone, this integration has proven to be invaluable to Mac users. In this quick tutorial, we will go over how to set up your integration between devices and what features will be available to you after you are finished.

While setting up your new Mac, be sure to enable its iCloud service. This quick and simple set up will allow all of your Apple devices to communicate with one another.  Owners of an Apple mobile device but not a Mac computer will also be happy to know that you can access iCloud from a PC after downloading the iCloud dock.

iCloud gives any new Mac user 5gb of complimentary cloud storage. Users can upgrade their cloud storage if their needs are greater. Ten gigs are available for $20 a year, twenty gigs for $40 a year, or fifty gigs for $50 a year (I wouldn’t recommend any of these options as there are plenty of other options available for a much more reasonable cost). iCloud setting are completely customizable from the Mac’s settings menu. From this menu, you can choose what information you would like to store in the cloud.

One of the most useful features of iCloud integration is the “Find My Mac” feature. After enabling this feature on your phone, iPad, or Mac, you will be able to locate your device from anywhere if you have misplaced it or feel that it has been stolen.

You can use your mobile device or computer to locate your devices (IMPORTANT: Make sure you have the Find My iPhone app downloaded on your phone and iPad). If your device is connected to a Wi-fi or 3G/4G network, the application will use GPS to pinpoint your devices.

From these screens, users will have several options available to them. If the phone is simply lost, you may play a sound to help find the phone. This sound will play regardless of whether the phone is in silent mode or not. If the phone is truly lost or stolen, Apple integrated “Lost Mode”. Lost Mode allows users several very useful features for when your phone is gone. If users have neglected all conventional common sense and advice and not implemented a passcode, they may do so through lost mode. This will lock out whoever may have the phone. They may then also send a message with a phone number in which the thief (or kind gentleman that picked it up off a park bench) may call you at. Lastly, users may set up email updates in which they will be notified anytime the phone changes GPS locations. If all else fails and the phone is truly gone, users may remotely wipe their data from the phone so information doesn’t fall into malicious hands.

Much of the rest of Apple’s integration will look familiar to users who have iPhones or iPads.

As you can see, the taskbar of my Mac and the home screen of my iPhone both show that I have three reminders. In a nutshell, this is exactly how the rest of the iCloud integration works. Essentially, any feature that is present on both OS X and iOS will integrate between devices. A note that I write on my iPad will instantly be present on my phone and my Mac. An appointment that I schedule on my calendar through my iPhone will then be present on both my iPad’s and Mac’s calendars. Users can also set up Photostream, in which any photo taken on a device will be available across devices.

Lastly, much like Google Drive and Skydrive, iCloud allows users the ability to access documents anywhere. The absolute best part of using iCloud for documents is its ability to instantly convert document between formats. If your machine at work is a PC and you need to access an important document that is saved as a Pages document, iCloud will allow you to convert. Once a document is uploaded to iCloud, simply click Document >> Download >> Word and voila, users may now access the document from their PC.

Photo courtesy of groovypost.com

File & Edit Menus

Let’s start simple. Looking at the Photoshop interface, you’ll notice the File and Edit menus in the main navigation. If you have ever used computer software before, then you should be familiar with these menus.

When should you look for tools in the File subhead? Well, what’s the definition of “file?” A file can be any document type. It can also be defined as a place to hold documents. So, whether you need to create a new document or move an existing document into Photoshop, File is the first and last place to look.

Oh, you can also save here, but you already knew that, didn’t you?

The Edit menu appears in many programs besides Photoshop, but it offers different tools depending on the software. Like other programs, tools that literally edit your document, like the Undo, Cut, Copy and Paste reside here. Simple enough. Other popular tools like Fill and Stroke are trickier animals, though.

Unlike other effects that add elements to a layer, such as a shadow or highlight, Fill subtracts from a layer’s visibility. Like an editor with a red pen, it cuts down on visibility. Stroke fills selections with any color and thickness. So, imagine that editor’s pen again, but as a pen that can make a mark in any shape  color and thickness, and you mastered Stroke.

Select Menu

Making a selection is much like pointing at something. You’re essentially telling Photoshop, “Hey, check this out.” Photoshop responds by making your selection the objects you can change. The Select menu solely handles the magical dashed line of your selection.

This menu holds useful tools like Deselect and Grow. For those frustrating moments when you can’t get rid of a selection box, the Deselect tool, well, deselects. Useful for creating borders around text or other objects, Grow makes a selection area bigger. Isn’t logic grand! If you’re really on your game, you’ll realize that you can use the Stroke tool in the aforementioned Edit menu to paint your selection.

Though more of an intermediate or advanced function, Edit in Quick Mask Mode comes in handy when you want to create a specific, intricate selection. A good way to remember this is to think of a real mask. Wearing a mask hides your face. Well, this tool automatically makes everything “hidden” under a pink mask, and you can use a brush or pencil to reveal what you want selected.

Image Menu

Having a plan will save you time and stress. For example, establishing how big of a document you need should be one of the first things on your check-off list. So, the Image menu might be one of the first places you visit when starting a project, as many of its tools alter the properties of your document on a macro level. For example, with Canvas Size you grow or shrink an entire document. With Image Size you adjust the size of a graphic or photo on top of the canvas. The Mode submenu—which should only be used when you know exactly what you’re doing—converts the color mode of your design.

Layer Menu

Most projects should use multiple layers, and you can manage the tiers of your design in the Layer menu. Most people will use the Layer panel instead of this menu, but if you don’t recognize the icons in the panel, this menu will do the trick.

The basic tools, New, Duplicate Layer, Delete, Merge Layers and Flatten Layers, all help piece together a design that won’t topple over like a tilted cake. Only two of these tools, Merge Layers and Flatten Layers, should give you trouble. In truth, the differences between these tools are so simple that it’s easier to bluntly describe them rather than offer imagery or logic. Merge Layers joins only layers you specify, while Flatten Layers squishes everything into a single layer.

For a more detailed explanation on how layers work, read our past blog on layers.

Filter Menu

When you put something through a filter, it comes out with changed properties. For example, running water through a filter can remove chemicals, bacteria or other icky substances. Photoshop’s filters work in the opposite direction. They add an effect on top of what was previously visible. There are simply too many filters to run down in any one blog. But, if you want to add a cool effect to your design, start by browsing through the Filter menu.

1. Evernote

Evernote is truly a note-taker’s dream. Simply speaking, Evernote allows users the ability to create and organize notebooks. Evernote’s true greatness is in its ability to be shared seamlessly across platforms. Any note jotted down on your Mac will instantly be synced to any device in which you have an Evernote application installed.

Of course, you don’t have to be on your Mac to take notes. You can snap pictures with your phone and save them to Evernote. If you don’t want to lug your laptop around, you can make notes on your tablet and then access them from your Mac at a later time. Users may also appreciate the ability to take voice notes and store them for use at another time.

The notebook tool is useful itself, but the Evernote team is always looking for ways to improve their product. With application extensions like the Evernote Web Clipper, users can quickly clip web articles or other information that may not have time to read currently, but can view it in Evernote at a more convenient time.

After installing the plug-in (make sure you download the correct one for your browser of choice), an Evernote symbol will appear next to the address bar in your browser. By clicking this icon, Evernote will smart-select the text from the page and then prompt the user to add tags, text, and specify which notebook you would like the text to be saved in. If you want to only clip a specific piece of text, highlight it first and then click the Evernote icon.

2. Found

Files get lost all of the time. Inevitably, over the course of a computer’s life, downloads, documents, .pdfs, and .jpegs all accumulate and disappear. With Found, a double-tap of the control key allows the user to search instantly for all potentially buried files. While the Spotlight feature on a Mac does a serviceable job searching for files on the Mac itself, Found allows users the ability to search all files on a Mac as well as on Dropbox, Google Drive, Gmail, and Evernote.

After searching for a keyword, Found finds files that most closely relate to your search string. You can also preview all of the documents without having to switch windows.

3. Dropbox

You couldn’t really make a must-have apps list without including Dropbox. You could also through Google Drive into this category and not really lose anything. In a previous article, we discussed the pros and cons of both Dropbox and Google Drive so definitely check that one out if you are interested in having one or the other. The primary benefit of Dropbox is that it allows users the ability to access important files anywhere an Internet connection is present. After download applications on any portable device you may own and your Mac, you will always have access to your important files.

Dropbox’s web interface (above) is straightforward and easy to use. Its desktop interface (below) works just like an ordinary folder on your Mac. You can drag files and folders to Dropbox to add. You may even want to copy folders into Dropbox so that they are automatically backed up in the cloud every time you add something.

Dropbox’s mobile interface will open all documents regarding format. Some things may be lost due to formatting differences, but you will at least be able to view most documents.

You can also set up your mobile Dropbox to instantly upload any photos taken on your phone so that you can access them from your desktop.

4. Spotify

If you aren’t using Spotify currently, it is time to start doing so. Spotify is a free music streaming service. While Pandora has long been the monster in this category, Spotify outshines it in nearly every category. Spotify’s greatest feature is its ability to stream individual songs. While Pandora is great, everyone has experienced the massive draughts in enjoyable music while it tries to accurately define you through music. Sometimes you aren’t looking for new music, you know exactly what you want to hear.

Spotify also suggests artists similar to what you are listening to, and I have found many of these suggestions to be spot on. While Pandora caps listening and does not offer a desktop application until you upgrade, Spotify offers unlimited streaming and the useful desktop act.  Spotify also offers an application for mobile devices however, most of the features that are so useful on the desktop application are not free on the mobile app. Spotify does offer a radio feature that is similar to Pandora for free.

Some courses, including Adobe Photoshop and InDesign, will also be offered on weekends.

For an up-to-date look at our new scheduling formats, please visit fortcollins.digitalworkshopcenters.com/calendar and navigate to the month of April.

I know only one guy who still doesn’t have a cellphone. He’s a holdout from a different generation, but he’ll have to cave eventually.

In many homes, including mine, cellphones have replaced land lines because they’re easier to manage and more functional. Smartphones have also become the new norm. According to the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, 46 percent of Americans now own the mobile devices.

But with new technology also comes new problems. The top issue with smartphones tends to be their short battery life. When you become a power user, you’re on your phone at every work break, red light, bathroom stop and car ride. Some spouses communicate through social media status updates on their smartphones. It’s not the most healthy means of communication, but it happens.

But there are many ways to prolong your smartphone’s battery life. First, start simple.

Look at what applications are running in the background and start turning things off you don’t use. If you own an iPhone, a quick double-click on the home button will show you what’s running.

A lot of unsuspecting users have Bluetooth, WiFi or other apps running that they don’t need.

Next, check the brightness setting of your screen. Sometimes it’s set to the highest setting by default. Turn that brightness down and you’ll save some more battery life. Furthermore, you can check the delay of how many seconds will pass before your phone’s display shuts off when you’re not using it. Reducing that delay will also save some juice.

Another easy trick is to check to see if your phone has a battery-saving mode that’s intended to automatically help power users. This should handle the internal processes that might be hogging up resources.

If you try all of these and still have issues, you need to look into ways to get more power while on the go.

Work stations and power stations are devices made for people to recharge their gadgets while in the field. They basically have a battery of their own, which allows you to pull power from the power station to the phone when you’re otherwise out of options.

My favorite is the Powerstick, available at Powerstick.com. It can be used through normal USB cords, so most phones are covered. It has charging capabilities, and some models even have flash drive memory storage built into them.

They run about $50 and can be really handy for charging and storage in a compact package.

If you can’t put the phone down, you might as well find a way to make the battery last longer. Or go back to the old days and learn how to function without a cellphone. That can’t be as much fun as Angry Birds while camping, but my one friend without a phone might disagree.

[Originally published in The Coloradoan on 3/2/13]

Adobe Photoshop might be a tool, but it is also a toy. Believe it or not, it is more of a toy than graphic designers let on.

When I was a kid, I often pictured myself under the cowls of my favorite comic book characters. I had Spider-Man’s dorkiness, reflexes and flexibility. Wolverine and I share a grizzly case of hairy arms. We might be past those days of pretending we had a superhero costume under the mattress, but that doesn’t mean we have to lose our imaginations. In fact, those childhood fantasies could lead to an inspiring design. So, why not use Photoshop to have a little bit of fun?

In the right hands, Photoshop can give life to your imagination. For example, with just a few adjustments, you can take an ordinary picture and turn it into a comic strip.

From Ordinary Beginnings…

Just like any photo alteration you use Photoshop for, the first step to giving a photo comic-book appeal is to open the image in Adobe Photoshop and create a duplicate layer of the Background layer. This enables you to not only compare changes with the original image, it also gives you a cushion if you want to start over. To create a duplicate layer, simply select the Duplicate Layer icon in the Layers palette.

A Hero’s Transformation

Comics are a colorful art form that use high color contrasts. The first adjustments to your photo will bring more color out of the photo. To do this, scroll to Image > Adjustments > Levels… in the top navigation bar.

Feel free to play around with the three Input Level value boxes. There are no universally great values to enter, so play around until you are satisfied with your colors. Remember to check your adjustments against the original Background layer in Photoshop’s Layers palette; this will make your color adjustments much more noticeable.

No Grain, No Gain

Now that you set the mood of the photo with enhanced light or dark levels, we will imitate the textured look of comic pages. In Photoshop’s navigation bar, go to Filter > Artistic > Film Grain. From here, there are three slider scales where you can manually manipulate the “graininess” of your photo.

Just like adjusting the color levels, play with the film grain values to get a feel for how they work. It may be best to use an intensity level of 10, but ultimately it’s up to you. If you’re photo looks odd, don’t worry. It will soon emerge as the comic it was born to be.

Tip: The various filters found with Film Grain, such as Watercolor or Plastic Wrap, offer quick alternate effects for your designs. Select one and find out. They don’t bite!

A Hero Emerges

Just like Bruce Banner’s metamorphosis into the Hulk, your image might look pretty gnarly. But, have no fear. Our next step, adding pixelation, transforms the photograph into its new form.

Before adding pixelation, you may want to create another duplicate copy of your image to work on. After, go back to the Filter dropdown and find Pixelate > Color Halftone. Set the Max Radius to 4 and leave the rest. This should give your photo the look of old-school comics. Hulk like pixelation.

From Ordinary to Extraordinary

The last step helps emphasize the pixelated effect your photo just acquired. Right-click within the document and select Blending Options from the quick menu. Then, find the Blend Mode dropdown list and select Darken. Now, your comic effect is ready for comic book shops across the nation. Okay, that’s probably an exaggeration, but it should impress your friends or colleagues.