Open a new document that is 1680×1050. Fill the base layer with black. Now add a gradient overlay. Set the start color to #0a1f3a and the end color to #133855.

Next download Asset01 here. Add it to our document and scale it to fit in the document. The this part does not have to be porportionate so make it fit snuggly inside. Then go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Blur this layer about 5 – 10 pixels. Then Grab you magic wand tool with a tolerance of 50. Next make a selection of the white area and copy it to a new layer. hide this layer. Then set the second to hard light and the fill to 50%.

Now make you hidden layer visible again. Not add a Gaussian Blur to it as well. Only this time make the blur 60 – 70 pixels. Then set the layer to luminosity.

Using your rectangular marquee tool Make a selection of the bottom of the wallpaper starting at 840. Fill the selection with black. Set this layer fill to 0 and add a White to Transparent gradient. Set the gradient blend to overlay and the opacity to 20%.

Now using your pen tool make 4 arching lines on the right hand side. Since this section is more abstract in nature make the lines anyway you like that looks good to you. Then select your brush tool and select the 1 pixel brush. Then go back to your pent tool and right click in the walpaper and select strock path. Make sure Simulate pressure IS selected. Set this layer to overlay.

Duplicate the layer and add a 5 pixel gaussian blur. Set the layer fill to 30% and the Blend to Vivid Light. Then move the layer over 10 – 20 pixels.

Duplicate the layer. Blur the layer another 5 pixels.

No duplicate the first pen layer 3 time, blur each 15 pixels. Set the top one to 70% fill, the second to 50%, and the last to 30%.

Make a new layer. Select the Single Row marquee tool and make a selection at the top of our white gradient layer. Fill the selection with white. Then go to Edit > Transform > Rotate 90° CC. Now go to Image > Canvas Size and chage the height to 2000 this will not bother our end result, we are just doing this so we edit the whole line at once. Now go to Filter > Stylize > Wind… . Select Blast from the Right first and hit OK. Then hit CTRL+F 7 times. Again go to Filter > Stylize > Wind… . This time select Wind from the Right. Again duplicate it 7 times. Finally go back to the wind filter and select stagger and hit OK. Now rotate this back so the tallest side is facing up. Now duplicate this layer and hide it. Next one the visible layer add a 30 pixel gaussian blur. Set the layer to 50% and the style to overlay.

Make a selection of the visible layer. Then go to Selection > Modify > Contract 10px and hit OK. Then copy the selection to a new layer.

Follow the last step again on the new layer.

Now unhide the hiden layer and set it to overlay. And you are done.

Here is my final version. Send me a comment to you version and I will post it here.

Open your main image.

Move the image to a larger canvas. For mine, I moved it in the top right so I had some room to spare. (Keep in mind we will be cutting down the image even more once everything is in place.)

Now, crop as much out as you can. I also used the Blur Tool around the edges. I erased some of the hat because we will be adding a new one.

Go to Image > Adjustments > Desaturate.

I added some space to the height to be able to fit the witch’s hat in.

Move it to our main image. Try to make it the correct size then crop it out as best as you can.

Move your pot over.

Again, crop it out and make it the correct size.

On a new layer, go to Filter > Render > Clouds.

I lowered the opacity of this layer to about 70%.

Take your brush tool, use a Blur brush and lower the opacity and just start going over until you get the achieved look.

Then if you want, take the Burn tool and go around the outside of the girl. Of course you will want to lower the Exposure of the burn tool, you don’t want it to stand out too much.

I also tool the Dodge tool and went over the girl some so she lightened up a little.

Then I cropped my image down to whatever size I wanted.

Ok lets give the pot some more smoke. You want it to of course look a little like something is boiling over. I took the brush tool again, with a Soft round brush and lowered the opacity and went over the top of the pot.

I also added an Outer Glow. Don’t forget, this is easy to fix if you mess up, by using the eraser or adding more with the brush.

You can do the corners how you want but what I did is:

On a new layer…. Take your Elliptical Marquee tool and make a selection. Go to Select > Inverse. You should have this:

Get a Soft Round Brush again. You probably want a bigger one this time. And Start working on the corners:

Play with the opacity and brush size until you get what you want.

I also used the Blur tool to get rid of some of the lines. I wanted some more around the edges so I fixed that with the brush tool also.

And that’s it!

Or, you could add a little color if you wanted to.

The deal would provide Force.com with an Adobe Flash Builder, which in turn allows for easier deployment of Flash applications on the cloud. The new environment would extend to Salesforce.com’s CRM apps as well. The collaboration would assist in building business applications and even desktop apps that run offline.

Salesforce.com is hoping with the new deal, Force.com will see a wider use. As it stands now, Force.com has approximately 63,000 clients, and over 120,000 apps.

The technical aspect of the deal will have Flash maintaining apps on the front end, with Saleforce.com’s programming language running the backend. ActionScript and MXML would be two languages utilized in development.

There have been many reactions to this deal. The most popular thought is that with this deal Force.com will be looked at more than just a CRM extension. Dave Gruber, an Adobe platform business manager explains, “The other big use case of this offering will be for the Salesforce.com installed base to add rich data visualization to their applications and extend those applications with richer workflow”

On the Force.com blog, Jon Mountjoy lists some of the new features of the Adobe Flash Builder:

- Online and offline data synchronization and management

- A local data store, letting you create apps that work even when they’re not connected

- When you do connect (hungry and parched), you can make use of the conflict resolution service to help sync the changes back to Force.com app.

- The IDE lets you compose the applications effortlessly too, and includes a gamut of user interface components for presenting, and visualizing your data – including charting and animation.

As of now the Adobe Flash Builder is being released as a ‘developer preview’. Meaning, that Force.com is wanting developers to get on there and explore some of it’s functionality. However, it is still not ready for producing work related apps.

Silverlight’s starting to become more and more common online – Microsoft’s baking it into Bing and all other sorts of stuff – so the juxtaposition of it and ASP.NET tends to elevate the web application framework.  Think of it as relevance by association.

As for the ASP.NET details, Infragistics stated in a press release, “The new WebHierarchicalDataGrid leverages the power of ASP.NET to deliver the best user experience available in any ASP.NET hierarchical grid. With high performance and flexibility, the new data grid is perfect for line of business applications scenarios featuring multiple child band, pay to play model, animations, load on demand and much more.”

Also, according to the company, “WebEditors, WebMonthCalendar, and WebDataPicker new controls as well as the enhanced controls in this release provide extraordinarily sophisticated functionality as demanded by the application.  Each control includes advanced capabilities such as CSS support and one setting global styling.”

It looks like NetAdvantage for .NET will cost around $1,200, or $1,700 for people who prefer to receive priority support.

First I will start a new document at 540X800px.

Place text in the canvas like this:

First with the word GO I will drag my picture of the green light in behind the text.

Now cut out the image in the shape of the “GO” font.

TO do this hold down ctrl on your keyboard and click on the prview icon beside the GO

That will make a selection around the word Go

With the selection made around the word Go click on the green light image in your layer palette and copy and paste the selection back in.

I will do the same thing with the other font. For the “TO” I found an image of people diving on the coast.

And for “BEACH”

I wasn’t exactly sure what to use for “THE” so I just use a picture of some sand.

For the “STOP” I used a red light and the “WORKING” text I used a constuction worker walking away.

That is the basic concept, this can be used in many different ways I just wanted to give you the idea!

The program involves some rather important corporations, including Citi (which possessed $1.93 trillion in assets in 2008), Royal Dutch Shell (which had $282 billion at the same point in time), and Speranza (which has partnered with Microsoft, among other big companies).

As for what took place, a press release explained, “The scope of the pilot included a Shell corporate signer initiating instructions from a Speranza application and digitally signing using Citi-issued high assurance digital identities.  The messages were successfully tested for receipt and validation at Citi’s end.”

Rajesh Mehta, Citi’s Head of Treasury and Trade Solutions in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, then stated, “We are delighted that we have been able to complete this first phase in the Swift eBAM XML pilot programme with our colleagues from Shell and will now look to continue our work in this space on the second phase in the programme.”

So stay tuned for more news about XML keeping everyone’s bank accounts safe and sound.

After finishing my post about Marten & Monty’s differing views on the Oracle acquisition of MySQL via Sun, I read that Richard Stallman (RMS) had published an open letter on the topic.  Matt Asay tweeted:

“Has anyone read this RMS/KEI/ORG ltr? It’s living in dreamland. ORCL buying MySQL to prevent “erosion” of its core DB biz? What erosion???”

Since Matt and I agree on much more today than 2 years ago, I began reading the open letter with less than an open mind.  However, since I haven’t really followed Oracle’s database business, I decided to look into Oracle’s financial reports to confirm or reject the “erosion” claim.  I have to say, RMS may not have a black belt in pragmatism, but he’s right.  Note however, I don’t think this fact changes Oracle’s likelihood of shepherding MySQL appropriately.  More on this point later in this post.

I’ve plotted two revenue growth lines for Oracle over the past two years and a quarter.  The blue line represents Oracle’s total revenue growth for fiscal year 2008, 2009 and for the first quarter of fiscal 2010.  Oracle had a great fiscal 2008, with nearly 25 percent year to year revenue growth.  More recently, Oracle’s total revenue declined by 5.2 percent in the first quarter ended August 31, 2009.  Not a shocking story considering the economy and Oracle’s $20 billion plus yearly revenue base.

The red line however is where it gets interesting.  Oracle reports database and middleware revenue together.  This category is largely made up of Oracle’s database products and Oracle middleware products resulting from the BEA acquisition.  However, even before the BEA acquisition, IDC estimated Oracle’s database revenue to be nearly 9 times larger than BEA’s middleware revenue.  So, for our purposes, we can assume that Oracle’s “database and middleware” segment is extremely sensitive to Oracle’s database sales.  The red line represents new license sales of database and middleware revenue reported by Oracle.  New license revenue is closely watched because it shows the vendor’s ability to attract new customers and new business.  As the red line shows, Oracle’s core database and middleware business is facing significant challenges in attracting new business.  A 0.5 percent decline in fiscal year 2009 could be considered an aberration, but following it up with a 22 percent decline in the first quarter of fiscal 2010 is alarming.  Erosion is clearly demonstrated by the red line below.

As I previously mentioned, the erosion in core database revenue is not reason enough to think that Oracle will try to systematically damage MySQL’s technology, future or user base.  The free-to-low cost and easy to use database genie is out of the bottle.  If MySQL were to become less viable after an Oracle acquisition, another database would take its place.  It may take years, but it’ll happen.  Even if MySQL were to disappear tomorrow, the competition from open source and free closed source databases would continue to target Oracle’s new license database and middleware revenue.  Should the acquisition be approved, it’s in Oracle’s interest to ensure that MySQL users remain MySQL users that Oracle can sell other parts of the Oracle portfolio into.

Comments

We will go from this plain picture to a fun Halloween picture:

Open your image.

Make a couple copies of the background layer.

On one layer, leave as is.

On the next, go to Image > Adjustments > Desaturate. Now set the opacity to between 50-60%. I did this so my picture had just a tad of color and wasn’t completely black and white.

On the third layer, take either the magnetic lasso or pen tool or whatever you wish and trace around the mouth, when you have it traced, right click and cut it. You can trash the original part of this layer and keep the mouth.

On mine, I wanted the lips a little more red so I played with the Brightness and Contrast, and the Color Balance.

Now, on a new layer, take your brush tool, pick a red color and draw a drip from her mouth.

Take your blur tool around the edges.

Now take your Burn tool and go over some of the drip.

Now take the Dodge tool, and make some parts lighter.

Let’s add effects.

Drop Shadow

Inner Shadow

Bevel

You should have this:

Now for the eyes.

Take one of your lasso tools, I used the polygonal this time, and go around one of the eyes.

Now go to Create New Fill Or Adjustment Layer at the bottom of your layers palette and click Color Balance.

Obviously, just slide your color over to red. And just duplicate this layer and move it to the other eye.

Another way to do the eyes is simply by creating a new layer with two ovals and making them red, then reduce the opacity, either way works.

Lets add something to the background. A spider web would work. For this I just took a picture of a web…

…and moved it to my picture I am working on. I reduced the opacity to about 7%. Yours might be different, I just wanted a hint of it. And for me, the easiest way to do this was to just erase the parts that covered my main picture.

That leaves me with this:

I went back through with the Burn and Sharpen tools on her lips to roughen them up some.

You might even want to add a spider:

Or, since she does have blood dripping, we could add some fangs. To do this, I took a picture of vampire teeth…

…and cropped them out, and fitted them to her mouth. I erased enough where they looked somewhat rounded to fit her. Instead of having them bright white, I added a yellow and white gradient overlay.

Also, I used my Blur and Burn tools around the teeth to make them look a little better since her mouth isn’t open.

Next, I added some red eyeshadow. I just wanted a slight color above her eyes. So, on a new layer, I took a Soft Round Brush, painted her eyelids red, and lowered the opacity to around 10%.

Before:

After:

The full view:

If you want you can add the spider:

And a red or black stroke:

This easy tutorial will show you some ways to use simple tools to blend in images to make someone look like a cyborg.

First I will use this picture of a woman’s face.

Then I will copy a part of rust off of this picture and put it on her face. I will make it black and white first by using the keyboard shorcut ctrl+shift+u.

Change its blending mode to darken and use a soft brush to erase around the edges to blend it in better.

Next I will add the circuit look by using this picture of a circuit board.

Drag it in the document and size it down over the rust.

With the circuitboard layer selected hold down ctrl and click on the preview icon beside the rust layer. This will make an outline in the shape of the rust layer.

Cut and paste the selection of the circuit board back in and use a soft eraser brush to blend in the edges. Set its opacity at 63%.

Then use those same steps to do the same on other parts of her face and shoulders.

I used a different picture of a blue circuit board for the part on her head and nose.

Next make a selection around her left eye and copy and paste it back in the document.

Then I will put a small lens in her eye from a camera picture

Put that layer behind the eye layer you just made.

Then with the eye layer use the hue/saturation tool to make it a bright blue color.

Then set the eye layer on color dodge as the blending mode

Do the same thing with the other eye and thats it!