One of the most singularly powerful and useful aspects of Adobe Photoshop is the brush sets. What makes this so portent is the dynamics that are possible with many of the tools when paired with the stylus of a WACOM. The size adjustment and opacity changes that occur depending on the pressure you apply to the pen makes for a near perfect imitation of traditional art techniques. Brush sets however are the patterns in which you are laying your strokes down with, regardless of the tool you use to do this. These brush sets are typically just referred to as brushes though they can be applied to many of the tools in Photoshop. The default brush is some size of rounded pattern with either a hard or soft edge. This default brush is usually enough to suit most situation you are dealing with, but if you are trying to imitate a paintbrush, pallet knife, chalk/charcoal, pastels, etc. it is often not acceptable. The best ways to mimic these mediums is to use differently textured brushes.

In traditional art these methods are also affected by what you are applying them to. Wood obviously would cause a different effect than paper should you write on it with a pen. The same applies to different grades of paper, boards, canvases, etc. to mimic this typically some sort of patterned or faux texture is applied to the layer beneath the one that the actual “art� is being produced on to simulate the correct canvas type. Generally though, the brush itself can produce the desired effect. Because of this versatility and flexibility the brush is, in my opinion, the most important aspect of Photoshop. Knowing how and when to use it is the next.

For several months we have been receiving Website Magazine (The Magazine for Website Success) in our office. I’m not sure how we originally started to receive it… although I assume somebody signed up for it. Anyway, I’m mentioning it today as the current issue (which we received this week) encourages readers to recommend the magazine to others.

This magazine provides a great deal of information on tools for web success. This month’s articles including topics such as blogging, search engine strategy, local search tools, building natural links, and site security. They also have several regular columns and news briefs.

As you work to grow the success of your online venture, I encourage you to check out Website Magazine. Reading the magazine will give you insights to consider as you continue to evolve your website.

Oh, and the best news??? If you qualify (basically meaning that you really are in the business), they will provide your subscription for free (they make their money from their advertisers).

Click the following link to apply for a free subscription:

Free Website Trade Publication >> Website Magazine

Cheers,

Andrew

Here is some more information on the upgrade that I’m sure that you were waiting for:

1. When can you upgrade your account?
You can either login into your account and you can request for an early upgrade or you can either wait for Yahoo to upgrade it for you.
2. How long does it take to upgrade your account?
It takes 8 hours to upgrade. Your ads will still be active, but you just can’t make any changes until the upgrade has been made.
3. What should you do once the upgrade has been completed?
You should make yourself familiar with all of the new features and check on your bids to make sure that everything looks correct.

Click on the link below for more information on the sponsored search upgrade:
Upgrade Center

OK we get this question a lot and occassionally our customers look at their stats, but many don’t really know how useful they can be. If you aren’t doing a lot of promotion or advertising of your site then we are looking at statistics for what we call “natural progression.” What does this mean? Well it means are you getting more users month to month? Are they going up and where are they coming from? One of the things users need to understand is that stats can be confusing, but there are things we can do to make them more useful and readable:

1. We can group categories of items into one block – like your images so instead of seeings stats on hundreds of images (which noone cares about) we can group these so that hits on the images show as one whole item instead of 100 individual ones
2. We can hide or eliminate groups of items – for instance noone cares how many hits their style sheet got
3. We can really adjust and group just about any part of your stats system – we use webalizer (www.webalizer.com) which is a great tool and very customizable.

If you ARE doing a lot of advertising and online ad placement etc. – even newspaper or magazine ads we can help their too:

1. We can use false URLs that showup in your stats, but really just take your users to an existing page. What does this do?
2. It really helps you see what your ads are doing and how they are doing – take for example Ford Motor company – you occassionally see ads on TV where they list a url like: www.ford.com/newcars07 or something like that. If you go out to their site you see the url is actually www.ford.com/newcars.asp or something like that. Why do they do that? To see how many users come from their TV commercials compared to other advertising.

So what’s the point? The point is if you want to know how effective your advertising is we can help, whether that be TV ads, magazine ads, etc. AND we can assist you in reading your statistical information and making it an important part of your advertising and sales analysis tools.

If you don’t currently use your website to gather statistical information about your adveritsing then you should get in touch with our website success department today!

Visionary Web and Visionary Computers have closed their doors today due to the awful weather ravaging the midwest. At this time we have somewhat like 6 inches of snow on the ground and are expected to get another 6 -10 inches before tomorrow morning.

Visionary would like to wish everyone well during the storm. Stay in and stay warm.

Are you ready for the yahoo upgrade? Here are just a few things you should do before you do the upgrade:

1. Create categories for your keywords in your campaign
2. Create a title and a description for each category

For example if you are selling specific books you may want to put that into the “Books” category. The reason in doing this is because you will then have a separate campaign for each of your keywords that you have associated with those categories. If you don’t associate the keywords with a category then it will just be put into a single campaign and you might like the way it is organized.

More to come…

Our economic development friends in Cass County have recently announced this years Youth Entrepreneurial Fair and the annual Business Planning Contest.

SUCCEED: Stimulating Unlimited Cass County Entrepreneurs & Economic Development is a program sponsored by several Cass County area economic development related organizations including: Area Five Agency, Logansport/Cass County Chamber of Commerce, Cass County, City of Logansport, Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana, Logansport-Cass County Economic Development Foundation, Small Business Development Center, and SCORE Chapter 615.

The winner of this year’s Business Planning Contest will win a new website developed by Visionary Web in addition to a range of other prizes. We are looking forward to working with the winning business.

To get involved in the Fair or the Contest, visit the SUCCEED website: http://www.succeedcc.com

I am not the type to make goals, especially long term ones. I am however a very driven and determined person, who once my mind is set on something, am not easily dissuaded or distracted from seeing that thing a reality. This is one of those times where I have made up my mind and will see it to fruition, call it a “goal� if you want. To elaborate on the ambiguous introduction, I have a cousin stationed with the Air Force in Tokyo Japan for the next three or four years. He has previously been stationed in Okinawa for several years and while there met and married a local woman and they have had a son. Since he has been stationed in Japan for so long the military will most likely station him either in the states or in Europe somewhere after this last stint in Tokyo. Now, there are only a few countries that I want to visit in my lifetime, Japan and Scotland being the top choices. Since I currently have family in Japan it is only logical to want to go there while I know someone in the area. And it seems that my widow of opportunity is gradually closing it also bears to reason that if I truly want to go while I have family there, I should do it quick! This brings me to my “goal�. In the next 3 years I WILL go to Tokyo, Japan to visit my cousin and tour a county that helps inspire much of my profession. I’m not looking forward to the several thousand dollars it will cost to do this and the fourteen hour plane ride to get there. Learning some Japanese won’t be a big deal, that’s something that I’ve wanted to do for a while and this trip gives me a good excuse to be serious about it. All that doesn’t matter though… I am on my way to Japan!