:: graffi’s rants & raves ::

Incase you’ve been wondering about the lack of updates and rather ratty-looking appearance of the main graficalicus.com homepage (or even if you haven’t), it’s been in a state of disrepair for some time now. Many of the entries there are outdated, the menu system isn’t as robust as I’d like, and it’s difficult to find the tutorials, images, videos and other things that have been accumulating there over the past decade or so.

To remedy that, I’ve been redesigning and redeveloping the main site, and getting the articles, tips & tutorials back up to speed and presentable.

For a sneak peek, take a look here.  Leave a comment or critique - I’d love to hear your feedback on where it is so far.

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Thisis a fast-n-easy technique (made even faster-n-easier with the little action download at the bottom of this post) to create a quick ad page background, or a scrap page background, or just a way to build a collage of your images.  I can make the action for you, but how to use it is up to you!

It starts with the image you’d like to use for the start of your background. 

Open your image in Elements and then press [Ctrl]+[Shift]+[U] to quickly desaturate it.  You should have a black & white image in about two seconds! Run a subtle Gaussian Blur on this layer (Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur) to just make it a bit soft.  I’m not giving any parameters here, because every image will require a different setting (and the action below will prompt you to accept a default or change it).

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