Hot Software Posts

News: Playin' with Colors; I Call It Blue Sunday

I used, I think 4 images for this one. They were mostly partial works begun for making masks. I tinted them using others filters in different ranges and then sandwiched them together as transparencies. From there I worked the colors and transparencies together to get close to my desired effect. After that I hand colored some areas of some of the layers to finish it off.

How To: Fix Unmatched Song Errors and Duplicate Playlists in iTunes Match

Apple's iTunes Match service is a great feature for people who have large libraries or want to sync their music across a lot of different devices. It lets you store any song in your library that exists in the iTunes Store on the cloud, even songs you imported from CDs, and even improves the quality of some of them. But, like any new service, it's not without its problems, and the fact that it costs $25 a year makes those problems seem even worse. Among the issues that users reported, unmatche...

How To: Convert Videos to Different Formats for Free with Format Factory

In my last article, I discussed how you could download almost any video from almost any video sharing site using the free NetVideoHunter add-on in Mozilla Firefox. Now in this article, I will discuss how to convert those videos you’ve downloaded to any format—also for free. Most of the time, the videos you download with NetVideoHunter are in FLV (Flash video) format, which is something that not all video players can play. That’s why I made this article.

How To: Download Any Online Flash Video (FLV)

Have you ever browsed the web, watched a video, then wanted to download it? Well, there's a fabulous program that does just that, simply and easily. It's called VideoCacheView by NirSoft. The program basically extracts the FLV video directly from your browser's temporary folders. It's very user-friendly, and great for downloading virtually any online video.

How To: Setup a playlist in iTunes to organize your music

Music today is easily and readily downloaded, and because of that, many of us end up with giant music collections. If you're using iTunes, you can organize your music into specific playlists so that you always have what you want to listen to easily accessible. Take a look at this guide on how to create an iTunes playlist.

How To: Extract Images and Text From PDF Files

Since PDF files are so popular in both our daily life and work, we see them everywhere. And sometimes we find there are terrfic images or text in the PDF files and we want to save them as seperate files for future use, such as in a presentation or post. Here's the question: how can we save those elements from the non-editable file formats?

How To: Use GarageBand to Reduce the Vocals in a Song

GarageBand is a powerful tool for Mac OS X that lets you edit and tweak audio tracks. One of the many audio editing capabiltiies of the program is the ability to reduce the vocals in a song. Take a look at this guide on how to edit the song's vocals so they aren't so loud using the AUGraphicEQ tool.

How To: Edit a raw photo file using Adobe Photoshop

If you're new to Adobe Photoshop, editing photos can be a bit intimidating, especially when dealing with raw file formats. But with the help of this Photoshop tutorial, you'll be able to fix up your raw photos without any problems. Gavin Hoey walks you through his steps of Camera Raw in CS5, using an awesome picture of Matisyahu as an example, tweaking and fixing the pic using the crop, white balance, temperature and noise tools.

How To: Create a lightning bolt effect using After Effects and the Trapcode Suite

The Trapcode suite is a set of plug-ins for After Effects that allow video artists to create a variety of effects for inclusion in video and film productions. This particular guide demonstrates the power of Trapcode Particular and Trapcode 3D Stroke. Specifically, Wes Ball from OddBall Animation reveals how Trapcode was used in the creation of 'Eye of the Storm' - a music video by Lovett which can be seen here.

News: Hate Final Cut Pro X? Try Adobe Premiere Pro or Avid Media Composer

It's no secret. Professional video editors everywhere are irate at the newest edition to Apple's popular non-linear video editing software, Final Cut Pro X. As of right now, Final Cut Pro X has 503 five-star ratings in the Mac App Store. Not bad. But it also has 671 one-star ratings and 414 users who aren't sure what they think. It's such a bad update that it even earned itself a skit on Conan.

How To: Make a Website Out of Chocolate

Sorry guys, despite the headline, this one isn't an actual How To. But the process behind the creation of Portuguese brewer Sagres' chocolate crafted website is fascinating, and we would gladly welcome any lengthy step-by-step tutorial. Created in promotion of the brewery's new chocolate flavored stout, the company's ad agency—Grand Union Portugal—gave Victor Nunes, world famous chocolatier and artistic director of Óbidos International Chocolate Festival, the task of creating a site completel...

How To: Transfer an iTunes Library from PC to Mac

How to transfer iTunes from PC to Mac You want to switch from PC to Mac and you want to take your iTunes library with you? There are several ways to move iTunes from your Windows PC to your new Mac. You can manually move all your iTunes contents to an external hard drive and from it to your Mac, or you can use a software like CopyTrans TuneSwift that does the job for you. Let's start with the easier way!