Working with Photoshop Color Range

Photoshop guys are very familiar with the color range option of Adobe Photoshop. Color range command is a great tool for selecting the areas of an image based on sampled color. And it's somewhat similar to Magic Wand Tool. In Magic Wand Tool you need to manually click on the areas of an image that needs to be selected. But if you use the color range option, you just need to choose the sample color. And Photoshop will make the selection by itself! 

This tutorial applies to all running versions of Adobe Photoshop including CS4, CS5 and CS6. But I've prepared the tutorial using Photoshop CS5. All the images of this post will be based on Photoshop CS5. 

Color Range

Color Range belongs to the Selection part of Photoshop. You will find it under the Select Menu. Run Photoshop from your PC > Open an image from your hard disk > Go to the Select menu > Choose Color Range. You will get the following image: 

Have you noticed Marks PC Logo on color range window? Here the white part is currently selected. If you would like to expand the selection area then click on the pencil button from the right side with plus mark. Now go to your image and hit on the part that you want to add to your selection. 

Make sure Sapmled Colors is enabled in the Select option. 

You can also increase/ decrease the amount of Fuziness adjust the selection. If you make any wrong selection or if you'd like to remove something from your selection then choose the Pencil button with negative sign. Then hit on the part of image you want to deslect. 

Eyedropper Tools

The three tools just below the Save button is know as eyedropper tools. The left one is called Eydropper, middle one is Add to Sample and the right one is Substract from Sample. 

Fuziness and Range

I've told earlier that Fuziness will control the amount of selection. By increasing and decreasing the range, you can control the amount of selection. And Range will control how much area of the image will be selected. 

To be honest, color range command is somewhat difficult to explain. You need to practice it by yourselft. If you click on the options, increase or decrease the value of different fields, you can easily understand. So, try to explore! 

Stay with Marks PC Solution to get more interesting IT topics!

Quantify your Site by Quantcast

Hello bloggers! Hope you're doing fine in blogging. Today I'm gonna write a review on Quantcast. Actually quantcast is a great site for audience measurement tool. You can collect huge information through Google Analytics. But I think Google Analytics is too heavy and sometimes it's really difficult to use. In that case, quantcast is more comfortable and convenient for the webmasters. 


Quantcast is also capable of showing the real time situation of your site worldwide! Yes! Just like Google Analytics, quantcast can fetch your real time visitors through world map. Thus you can see who is in your site right now. 

Do you use Web Rank Toolbar? I've found quantcast from Web Rank Toolbar. Earlier whenever I opened Web Rank Toolbar in Iron Browser, I saw my site is not ranked by quantcast. Because quantcast only measures your site when you set up its code in your site. 

Then I implemented quantcast code in my site and get it quantified! See the current status below: 

Or you can directly visit quantcast to check the status of Marks PC Solution. Hit on the  quantcast image button: 

If you would like to qantify your site, follow the method below:

Open a new tab in your browser and type - 

https://www.quantcast.com/markspcsolution.com

Just replace the red part of the URL with yours. Now go to this address. Check your site's rank if available. And also look upper right corner. You will see - Not quantified. If your site is already qantified then you will see Quantified button. 



How to get Quantified? 

In order to get quantified, you must have an account with quantcast. I know most of you have no account qith quantcast. First open an account there and follow the steps below. 

• Go to Quantcast Home. 

• Look at the right panel - Add a Website. Hit on it. 

• A new window named General Tag will pop up. 

• Enter your site's URL. ie. http://www.markspcsolution.com

• Copy the code from Your Tag and paste it just before the </body> tag in your site.

• Now hit on the Submit Site button. 

Wait for a few days. You will get an email notification when your site gets quantified. 

Code Implementation Help for Blogger

Directly go to Blogger Dahsboard/ Control Panel > Now go to Template > Edit HTML > Press Ctrl + F within HTML Layout > type </body> > Place the copied code just before the ending body tag. That's it.


You can also check - Working with New HTML Template Editor. Here you will learn, how to work with the new HTML template editor of blogger. 



Real Time Status


To check the real time you have to enter this URL - 

https://www.quantcast.com/labs/real-time/site/

Now after the site/, enter your site's address - markspcsolution.com

Check my Real Time Status

 

Stay with Marks PC Solution to get more interesting IT topics!

Working with Photoshop Stroke

Photoshop Stroke belongs to layer style. You can add stroke outside of an image, text or shape. When you apply stroke over something, it looks like a border or outline. You can also choose different colors for stroke. And you can also adjust the size, position and opacity while applying stroke. 

Last month I wrote about how to work with Fill & Opacity in Photoshop. I think you should also have a look to this tutorial. It will be helpful for you. 

Photoshop Stroke

Look at the two images below side by side. The left one has no outline. But the right one has a border outside of it. 

No stroke has been applied on the left image. And the right image has a stroke outside of it. You can also use stroke with texts and shapes. Stroke can highlight something. Sometimes after applying stroke over something, you can minimize the fill. In that time, you will get stroke highlighted and the inside dimmed! Learn more . . . 

How to Apply Stroke?

If you wanna apply stroke over an image then open it. Or create a new document and then type something or take any shape on which you wanna apply stroke. Now make sure you're on the right layer I mean your image or text is selected. Also make sure that your Layer window is turned on. Now go to the strong as shown in the image below. 

Hit on the fx (Add a layer style) at the end of layer panel and choose Stroke. Now you will get the Layer Style window. Look at the Stroke options below:

Adjust the size and look at the effect of your stroke outside the image or text. This is very important. Sometimes 1 px doesn't make any sense. Though it depends on the situation I prefer 2 or 3 px. Certainly a fat stroke will not make any sense. 

Keep Position - Outside, Blend Mode - Normal, Fill Type - Color and Opacity - as your wish. If you minimize the opacity from 100% to 60 or 70%, then your stroke color will be darken somewhat. 

And finally choose a brilliant color for the stroke. Hit on the color box and select different colors to test the result. After choosing the color, hit on the OK button. 

You can also explore some additional options from Layer Style window. Suppose Drop Shadow, Gradient Overlay, Satin, Bevel and Emboss these are really cool options here. These can turn your normal image into an outstanding one. And these are really awesome for creating superb text! 

After applying stroke, also adjust the Fill and Opacity of the layer. These control the transparency of your image. Adjusting the transparency will give you a completely different look. 

Stay with Marks PC Solution to get more interesting IT topics!

Delete All Emails from Yahoo Inbox!!

By the grace of Facebook, your inbox is getting fat everyday. If your Yahoo Inbox are filled with thousand of unnecessary messages, then it could be difficult for you to find the important mails. Gmail users can easily delete all emails from inbox because it has option to select all messages at the same time. 

Like Gmail, Yahoo has also the Select All option. But the Select All option of Yahoo can't select the whole inbox. It is capable of selecting the loaded messages only. It could be 50, 100, 200 or how much messages you've loaded at a time. If you wanna delete a large volume of messages from Yahoo inbox, then you have to be little bit tricky! 

Today, I'm gonna discuss how to quickly delete all messages from Yahoo Mail inbox. 

Before you start - 

Make sure you're using the latest version of your browser and latest interface of Yahoo Mail. Firefox or Internet Explorer is optimized for Yahoo Mail. Chrome users could get a message to change the browser. And definitely you need a better net connection while running this task.

Deleting All Messages of Yahoo Inbox

• Sign in to Yahoo and open your Yahoo Mail Inbox. Never press Esc. Let the mailbox load completely. 

• By default, 50 messages will be loaded at a time. 

• If you scroll down, another 50 messages will be loaded. Thus continue scrolling to the bottom. 

• If you get bored then delete the already loaded messages. Hit on the Select All button and press the Delete key.

• After pressing the Delete button, you will get the following notificaiton.

• Hit OK to delete all the selected messages. 

If you just continue scrolling down for 2/3 minutes, I believe you will be able to delete more than 5000 emails at the same time. 

Thus if your inbox has more than 10000 emails, I don't think you need more than 7/8 minutes to delete them. :) 

Now look at my inbox below - 

My inbox is blank. And there are more than 2000 mails in my Trash box. And it took a very short time to delete all messages from the Yahoo inbox by using the above method! 

Stay with Marks PC Solution to get more interesting IT topics!

Create Sample Barcode using Photoshop !!

In this post, I'm gonna publish a funny tutorial of Adobe Photoshop. Now I will show you how to create a sample barcode (fake) by Photoshop. It will not be a real one but look like an original barcode. And maybe all of you know that original barcodes are machine readable. A real barcode includes product information like country of origin, manufacture and expiry date etc. 

I'm using Adobe Photoshop CS5 for this tutorial. But so far I know, any version of Adobe Photoshop will produce the same result for you. Okay let's start - 

• Run Adobe Photoshop and open a new file with following settings

• Choose Width 250 px, Height 100 px, Resolution 72, RGB Color Mode with 32 bit, White Background and hit OK. 

• Now you will get a white rectangle in the screen. 

• Go to the Filter Menu > Noise > Add Noise . . . > Amount 400 > Distribution - Gaussian > Select Monochromatic > Hit OK. 

• You white rectangle will take the following look. 

• Again go to the Filter Menu > Blur > Motion Blur . . . > Angle - 90 degree > Distance - 999 pixels > Hit OK. 

• Look, I've just cut the bottom part of the image with Rentangular Marquee Tool. Choose Rectangular Marquee Tool from the toolbar. Now click and drag as my image shows above leaving a small portion from left and right part. Hit on the delete button and choose white color. 

• Press T or simply open the Type Tool > Choose Arial font with 10/12 pt size > Type some digits randomly as below.

We're almost done. But you can't save it! Because at the very beginning, you chose 32 bit color mode. But if you want to save the image as JPG or PNG, you must select 8 bit color. Then why I suggested to use 32 bit? Because 32 bit will give you a better look which 8 bit or 16 bit can't. 

If you choose 8 bit or 16 bit color, there will be no problem. You can directly save it as JPG or PNG. But the quality will fall somewhat. 

Then How to Save? 

• Look at the layer panel. Possible there are two layers - Text and Background. Press Shift key > select both the layers > Click right mouse button > hit on Convert to Smart Object.

• Now press Ctrl + A > Ctrl + C > Ctrl + N > In the Color Mode - Choose RGB and 8 bit > Hit OK.

• Press Ctrl + S > Select either JPG or PNG > Hit OK.

I prefer PNG due to its brilliant quality. 

Note: If you avoid using 32 bit color mode while opening the new document you will not face any problem while saving it. Simply use 8 bit when you create the document at the beginning. Then you can easily save it just after completing the barcode. But in that case, the bars will not be so clear. 

Do you like this tutorial? :) 

Stay with Marks PC Solution to get more interesting IT topics!

How to Create Bootable Windows Disk?

Hello Windows lovers? How are you? Today I am gonna share how to copy a bootable Windows disk I mean how to back up a Windows CD/ DVD disk. Suppose you purchased a Windows from Microsoft costing $200 and it doesn't work anymore after installing Windows for few times. Is it fair? Not at all - let's punish Microsoft!!

Necessary Tools

• Windows Installation CD/ DVD (Maybe Windows 8, 7 or XP)

• Blank Recordable CD/ DVD as per your requirement (CD for Windows XP Only)

• At least one DVD Writer (Or two if available)

• Burning Software like Nero or Infra Recorder (I'm gonna use Infra)

• And of course a PC user with sufficient operating knowledge! 

And you should know, if you simply copy a Windows disk and burn it to another blank disk, then you will get something on that disk. But it will not be usable. Even if you're able to start installing Windows from running condition, it will be stopped installing after reboot. That means your disk will not be bootable. And you will not be able to set up Windows from a non bootable disk. So you have to create a data disk which will be bootable. Hope you got my point. 

Here, for the purpose of this tutorial, I'm gonna use Windows 8 Pro and Infra Recorder as burning software. So I will use the word Windows 8 and Infra Recorder evrywhere. But it applies for other versions of Windows too. 

You can also use Nero. But always remember, whatever you do, you have to create a data disk.

Let's Start

• Insert your Windows 8 Disk into the DVD Drive

• Now run Infra Recorder (Please download if you don't have it. It's free)

• Go to the Menu bar > Actions > Copy Disk > To a Disk Image . . . 

Now you will get another window as below - 

Preparing the ISO File

Now select your source file I mean the Windows 8 Disk location. Normally it detects your drive automatically. Now manually choose the destination of your Windows Image file (ISO file), name it as Windows 8.iso and hit OK. Now copying will be started. Wait for the task to be finished. It may take few minutes. After completing the task, Windows disk will be ejected automatically. And you will get an iso image of your Windows.


Now insert a blank DVD in the drive. The size of a single layer DVD is usually 4.7 GB. Try to use a good disk. Otherwise it will not be durable. 


Burning the Image to Blank DVD

Go to the Infra Recorder again and choose Burn Image from Actions menu. Locate Windows 8.iso from your hard disk and open it. Choose the drive which contains blank DVD and hit OK. And the burning process will be started immediately. 


You can also burn through Windows 8. No third party software is needed. If you have previously saved copy of a Windows iso image then you don't need Nero or Infra Recorder. Simply click right mouse button over the Windows.iso file and choose Burn Disk Image. Choose your DVD drive and start burning! 

Caution

• Make sure that your master disk is okay and free of scratches. 

• Use quality blank disk. 

• Before inserting the disk to the drive, gently clean it with a soft tissue paper. 

• Any interruption in the power supply during this operation is not acceptable. 

If you face any problem, please inform me. 

Stay with Marks PC Solution to get more interesting IT topics!