I wanted to share yet another little gem of information which, if you haven’t discovered it yet, will change your Flickr-addict lives (if you are, in fact, a Flickr addict that is).

Two things before we begin:

1. You must use the FireFox browser in order for what I’m about to tell you to work. You can download it here: www.mozilla.com. You can feel free to download either the current stable version 2, or the beta FireFox3 version. I use FireFox 3. If you don’t, or have never used, the FireFox browser before — I’d recommend, at the very least, giving it a try. It’s wonderful and in my opinion, much more intuitive than the current IE7. Bonus! — FireFox DOES work with Mac OSX, as does everything I am about to tell you. So users with Macs, feel free to indulge yourselves as well!

2. Brace yourself. This is seriously ~life changing~. *ungh! giggidy!*

———————————

Now, let me begin by explaining one quick thing.

How many of you out there, really hate submitting a picture to one Flickr group at a time?

*raises hand* I do!!!

I often find myself wanting to submit a photo to 30 groups at a time, and find that I generally had to sit there and click that stupid “Send to Group” button over…and over…and over. It’s mind numbing and unBELIEVABLY counter-productive. Which brings me to what I want to tell you about today.

The Greasemonkey plugin for FireFox, and the Flickr Multi-Group Sender script. You will need to download both in order for them to work.
“What do they do?” Well, I’m glad you asked!

Someone I used to be dear friends with introduced this to me last year some time, and I haven’t been able to live without it since. I imagine, if you take the time to set it up, you will have the same reaction. THIS IS HOW FLICKR WAS MEANT TO BE USED!!! DO YOU HEAR ME YAHOO?!?! Now, down to the nitty gritty:

1. Download FireFox!

For those of you who want the stable FireFox2:
Click here
For those of you who want the beta FireFox3:
Click here

Note: I’ve been using FireFox3 since its beta release, and have encountered no problems.

There are Windows, Mac OSX and Linux options on both downloads, so rememeber to download whichever you need!

Now!

2. Download the Greasemonkey Plugin for Firefox!

If you downloaded FireFox 2:
Install the plugin here.
Note: This plugin will claim that it works for Firefox2-3. It’s lying! If you download the latest version of FireFox 3, then follow the instructions below:

If you downloaded FireFox 3:
Right-click and save this file to your hard drive! Once you have it downloaded, open FireFox and double-click the XPI file. It will install the plugin to your Firefox browser. Note: If this *DOES NOT WORK*, please let me know! I have a working xpi script at home, I can host it on my website if I need to.

Once the plugin is successfully installed, a little monkey will appear in the bottom right hand corner of your status bar at the bottom of the Firefox browser. This is how you know the plugin is installed correctly.

NOW!!! (again!)

3. Download the Flickr Multi Group Sender script for Greasemonkey.

This is the easiest step of them all. Simply go to this page, click the black box in the upper right corner that says “Install This Script”, and it will install the script to Greasemonkey (you should get a little message next to the monkeyhead that says “Script Installed Successfully”).

Once that is done, close and restart FireFox.

4. This is the part where your life changes.

Go to your Flickr profile and click on any one of your pictures in your stream. NOW… hit the dreaded “Send to Group” button. A scripted window should appear with a list of all of your groups. You can hold the control button to select multiple groups (up to 30 of them, I believe). Once you have selected all of the groups you’d like to submit your photo to, click the “Add Photo” button, and watch as this nifty little script begins sending this one photo to all of the groups that you selected, ALL AT ONCE! There are other things you can do with this script (such as save lists of groups you’ve selected), but I’ll let you guys read up on the script to learn how to use those.

—————————————

So, there you have it! No more submitting photos to one group at a time. I hope this is useful to some of you out there!!! I sure know it’s been life changing for me. LOL

If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the comment stream. I’ll try to answer them as best I can!

Just thought I’d throw that disclaimer out there before I started explaining.

I’ve zipped up every last one of my Photoshop brushes and uploaded them to my web host. Don’t ask me why, I actually have no idea (it took 2 hours to upload them all). Considering every brush in this zip file can be found on Deviant Art, some people may just consider this “eliminating the need to browse”. However, I often get asked where certain brushes can be found, etc. So… to better answer that question, I will simply give you a direct link: you can find them all right here (you *MUST* right click and SAVE to download the zip from my blog).

I am sure by now, most of you know the drill. You should unzip this zip file into your Adobe/Presets/Brushes folder. The zip file contains sixty-two (62) categorized folders of “types of brushes” (what can I say? I’m a hyper organized freak — it’s a flaw). The categories include such gems as:

Abstract
Coffee (rings/stains)
Clouds
Eyelashes
Fractals
Grass
Glowies
Hair (pieces and drawing)
Lightning
Mist
Moons
Smoke
Space
Sparklies
Stars
Tears
Water
Wings…

…among many others. It is nearly 1 gig of brushes uncompressed, so be sure that you have ample space on your hard drive.

Download the brushes here.

First thing you will need to do is unzip this folder into your Brushes presets folder in your Adobe Photoshop directory. This folder is generally located here: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop X\Presets\Brushes. When you unzip this archive, you will see 62 folders, each titled appropriately, unzipped into your Brushes presets folder.

Once you’ve done that, open Photoshop and follow along!

1. Click on your Brush tool in the menu bar on the left side of your screen.

2. Above this menu bar, you will see a small icon of the brush you currently have selected, with a small arrow to the right. Click on that arrow.

3. By clicking on this arrow you have brought up a list of your available brushes, and a slider bar called Master Diameter, among other things. To the right of this “Master Diameter” slider is another small, circled arrow. Click this arrow.

4. A list will expand. Now, you’ll notice that this list is quite huge, and undoubtedly consumes your entire screen. In the very first column of this list, there is an option called “Replace Brushes”. Click this.

5. A window will open allowing you to browse to your newly installed brushes. Browse to your Presets/Brushes folder, where you will see all 62 folders that you just unzipped. Open one of these folders and select any brush set you like. Once you have selected one, click the “Load” button. This will replace all of your current brushes in the list with the newly selected set of brushes.

“But wait! How do I get my default list of Photoshop brushes back, Ryker? You know, the one with the hard brushes, the soft brushes, and those annoying leaves that never go where you want them to?”

6. To reset your brushes to the Photoshop defaults, Repeat steps 1 through 4 above **HOWEVER** — instead of choose “Replace Brushes” from the list, choose “Reset Brushes”. This will reset your brush list to the Photoshop defaults.

I hope this isn’t too confusing! Happy downloading!

PS: I’m sure a filing system which is intuitive to ME, may not necessarily be intuitive for YOU. Hopefully, all of the folders in this file will be easily labeled enough that you’ll be able to find what you’re looking for. Enjoy!

Whew! I finished this video about 30 seconds before I started sneezing uncontrollably, so… forgive me if I sound a little congested! Why do I keep doing these when I’m sick I wonder? Huh. Anyway!

I came to the realization this morning that I’ve been promising this tutorial for a while, and I suck, my apologies for not getting it out here sooner.

This video actually sucks in comparison to my other tutorial videos (quality wise, not intellect wise :P), because for some reason my computer was going all hokey this morning and not letting me produce the video as a flash file… so here it is as a Quicktime video with shitty quality. But… que sera sera. At least it will explain how to combine the shots! :P

Hope you guys find this a little useful. :) Any questions, feel free to IM me!

Check out the tutorial video here!

PS: It’s going to be about 45 minutes before the video is actually live… it’s a 200mb file (damn MOV files) and still uploading while I run to work! <3

Here is my latest installment: a quick and dirty drop shadow technique to use and master for your enjoyment.

This will show you a very, very simple and basic technique on how to create a drop shadow from a green screen snapshot. Hopefully someone finds this useful!!!

View the tutorial here.

The next tutorial in my ever-growing list of tutorials… This one will teach you how to use Avimator to make custom poses for your avatar. Keep in mind I said poses… not animations. :P

View the tutorial here.

It’s about 15 minutes long and around 45mbs, so it might take a little while to download depending on your connection speed… but it goes over the basics of using Avimator to make poses for Second Life. Forgive me for being a little flustered in it… lots of stuff going on tonight. :P If you’re confused or have questions, feel free to Flickr mail me or IM me or email me at rykerbeck@gmail.com. I’ll do my best to help you out, if I can.

Hope you guys enjoy! :) <3