Nova effect action with Photoshop

Here it is an action I used to get something like a nova explosion.
You will never get same results twice.

Nova effect

Download the action and enjoy. It creates a new document.
Give me feeback if you like it (well, even if you dislike it… but you won’t be published)

July 30, 2006 | Filed Under Photoshop | 4 Comments

Photo to impressionist painting action with Photoshop

From Wikipedia: Impressionism was a 19th century art movement that began as a loose association of Paris-based artists who began publicly exhibiting their art in the 1860s. The name of the movement is derived from Claude Monet’s Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant). Critic Louis Leroy inadvertently coined the term in a satiric review published in Le Charivari.

With this action, you will be able to transform a photo into a impressionist painting like Monet ones.

Before

Before impressionism

After

After impressionism

Download the action and enjoy, don’t forget to give me feedback.

July 30, 2006 | Filed Under Photoshop | 6 Comments

Mouse wheel handler in Javascript

I found this very very interesting script by Adomas PaltanaviÄius to determine if you are using mousewheel.

It returns a delta value, +1 or -1, according to scroll direction.

Scroll mouse wheel to see delta here.

I am publishing it here, and very soon I will start to use it to code games, form handlers, and so on.

Meanwhile, check the original script.

It needs some improvements due to some strange delta values on some browsers.

PLAIN TEXT

HTML:

<html>
<head>
<script type="text/javascript">
function handle(delta) {
    var s = delta + ": ";
    if (delta <0)
        s += "down";
    else
        s += "up";
    document.getElementById('delta').innerHTML = s;
}
 
function wheel(event){
    var delta = 0;
    if (!event) event = window.event;
    if (event.wheelDelta) {
        delta = event.wheelDelta/120; 
        if (window.opera) delta = -delta;
    } else if (event.detail) {
        delta = -event.detail/3;
    }
    if (delta)
        handle(delta);
}
 
/* Initialization code. */
if (window.addEventListener)
    window.addEventListener('DOMMouseScroll', wheel, false);
window.onmousewheel = document.onmousewheel = wheel;
 
</script>
</head>
<body>
<div id="delta">Scroll mouse wheel to see delta here.</div>
</body>
</html>

Do you have an idea about how to use mouse wheel handling? Let me know, and I will (try to) code it.

July 29, 2006 | Filed Under Javascript | 6 Comments

Vignette effect action for Photoshop

Again, I am focusing about vignette/sketch creation wiht photoshop.

This action works well only on images with high contrast, and the final effect is quite good, in my opinion.

Before

Before effect

After

After effect

Before

Before effect

After

After effect

Download the action and enjoy... leave me feedback and send me your artworks to be published on the site.

July 28, 2006 | Filed Under Photoshop | 1 Comment

Strip non alphanumeric characters from a string with php

Very simple and useful code, but hard to find in the internet.
You may need it when you code an user authentication script and want to prevent the user to hack it with ascii injection.
I will use regular expressions because it is the quickest way, and we want to be quick (almost) everytime...

PLAIN TEXT

PHP:

<?php
$string_to_be_stripped = "Hi, I am a string and I need to be stripped...";
$new_string = ereg_replace("[^A-Za-z0-9]", "", $string_to_be_stripped );
?>

$new_string content will be: Hi I am a string and I need to be stripped without any coma or stop.

Enjoy.

July 27, 2006 | Filed Under Php | 23 Comments

Enhanced country selection with Css and Javascript

How many times you had to choose your country in a form, with a old, simple popup?

Time to change the way you choose your country (or anything else) with a bit of Css and Javascript.

I am showing the example in a iframe not to mess with WordPress styles.

As you can see, when you move the mouse over the text input, a list with (almost) every world country and flag appears, and when you click on a country, its ISO code is displayed into the text input.
When you move the mouse out of the country list, it closes.

How can it be made? Read more

July 23, 2006 | Filed Under Css, Javascript, Tutorials | 12 Comments

Enhanced sepia image effect action for Photoshop

I think normal "sepia" effect is too used in Photoshop, so I tried to enhance the effect and I produced an action that works quite well (in my opinion).
Just run on a photo, as usual.

Before

Before enhanced sepia effect