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How to do a hard reset on iPhone, iPad and iPod
Every once in a while, an app freezes on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. You can try force quitting the app by holding the icon down in the app switcher at the bottom, but sometimes an app freezes so hard that you aren’t able to force quit. That’s when a hard reset can come to the rescue.
To perform a hard reset, do the following:
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- Hold down the power button until the Slide to Power Off message appears
- When the message appears, release the power button
- Now hold the Home button at the bottom of the device until the problematic app quits
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This tip is extremely helpful when on occasion you come across a rogue game or suspect app on the App Store!
The easiest way to extract (mask) objects from images
The situation is common; you want to remove the background from an image and the subject/foreground object is a person. The trick is masking things like hair, glasses, and other subtle areas that can make or break the final result.There have been numerous Photoshop plugins and stand-alone applications over the years that claim to do the job quickly and easily with stunning results. However, it has been my experience with most of these methods that they simply don’t work, or are more difficult than masking the objects manually in Photoshop.
I recently came across Decompose from metakine software, who’s tagline for the app is “Extract objects from images with ease.” Indeed, they promise “easy and flawless extraction of elements from pictures in order to use them to make composite images.” Those are some bold statements, so I decided to give it a shot to see if things have improved in the years since I’ve used other masking applications such as OnOne’s Perfect Mask (which crashed every time I tried to use it for the purpose of comparison in this article, so I’ve left it out).
For the purpose of this article, I’m not going to go into the controls and features of Decompose. Instead, I’m only going to focus on the results. (more…)
Yo momma is a shitty designer note pad
Get rid of the new window animation in Lion Mail for a speed boost
Among many of the changes to the Mail application that Lion brought was an animation when you reply or create a new mail window. It’s a nice touch, but on an older Mac such as my original Mac Pro, it becomes a slow, annoying, and frivolous feature. Here’s how you can turn it off.
Fire up the Terminal and copy/paste the following text (and hit return):
defaults write com.apple.Mail DisableReplyAnimations -bool YES
This will turn off the animation when opening new windows in Mail. If you ever want it back, simply replace YES at the end with NO.
Free font: Otama e.p.
V-Moda offers fully-customized over-the-ear headphones
V-Moda, makers of numerous headphones of all types, is offering the Crossfade LP Custom, which is an over-the-ear headphone set which you can customize to suit your personal style.
Customize to suit your style
Not only can you choose the overall base color and style of the headphone frame, but you can choose the color of the ear pad color, and the shield color of the earpieces. But it doesn’t stop there. You can also select from a handful of custom imprints for the shield, or upload your own custom artwork. Very slick!
The Crossfade LP Custom headphones cost just $199 (down from $250), and you can preview your custom design before you buy.
iPhone photos appearing sideways when you display them on the computer? You’re holding it wrong!
If you use your iPhone to take photos and import them onto your computer or send them via email, you may have come across an issue where the photos display sideways or upside down on the computer or the recipient’s email. It’s frustrating for most users because they’re not sure why it’s happening. The reality is that there’s nothing wrong with your phone.
If Steve Jobs were alive today, he would simply tell you that “you’re holding it wrong!”
The iPhone supports an Orientation Tag in the image EXIF data under iOS 4 and above. It stores the information that tells the display the device what direction the photo was taken and how to display it properly. The problem is that most software doesn’t implement the Orientation Tag.
Until all Windows and Mac developers update their software to read the Orientation Tag, the solution is to make sure that you hold your iPhone with the home button either at the bottom for portrait photos, or to the right for landscape shots.
Photoshop CS6 Sneak Peek #6
This latest sneak peek offers a look at Photoshop’s new Iris Blur feature, which by all indications will render any “Bokeh” filters by 3rd parties virtually obsolete for the average designer.
That being said, Bokeh 2 from Alien Skin offers a lot of control over the bokeh filter process, as well as numerous other features that I don’t see in this video – so I suspect photographers and designers who want a richer feature set may still find value in the Alien Skin plugin.
