Perez Studios

I came across an article today when I was getting caught up on some RSS feeds and one that got my attention was from the Digital Photography School.  It mentions the fact that today, photographers cant just be photographers.  They have to master so many different areas in order to stay in the game and keep up with the rest of the competition.  I, myself try to keep up with things and it seems to overwhelm me with my full-time job and my part-time life. 

I thought this article was a great read and I recommend you all read it as well.

Here is the link to the article.

Thanks for reading!

Semper Fidelis,

Manuel Perez

Adobe released Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 recently and I must say I was looking forward to some of the improvements in the new version.  Some of the new features are:

• Superior noise reduction
• Accelerated performance
• Lens correction
• Support for DSLR video files
• Flickr integration
• Image watermarking
• Easy-to-share slide show videos with music
• Easy image importing
• Tethered shooting
• Perspective correction
• Film grain simulation
• More flexible print packages

To see an introduction video on how to use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 you can watch it on Adobe TV.

Thanks for reading!

Sincerely,

Manuel Perez

I have been pretty busy and haven’t had a chance to post on the blog.  Things have been crazy.  I tried applying for a job closer to home but didn’t have much luck with that!  I will have to keep trying.  I have a couple of things that are on my plate at the moment.  I had a wedding Saturday that I did and plan to upload some photos from that just as soon as I can.  Last week I went on a field trip with my daughter’s class to Columbia in California.  It was a nice place and a lot of history.  I heard the teachers say how glad they were the weather was cooler than it usually is because it could have gotten hot. 

Here is a photo of the old school house at the top of the hill.  I threw it in Photoshop to add some effects to it.  I had this other shot in mind but there were some people in the way and the rest of our group was leaving me behind. 

That all for today.  Thanks for reading.

Manuel Perez

This is another cool program that I learned about while attending the Central Valley CUE conference in Fresno, CA.  The program is called Cooliris and it allows you to create a slideshow wall with a set of photos either from your hard drive or your social network such as facebook/flickr.  It works pretty cool and they even have an express version that allows you to create quick walls that you can get the code from and post on just about any social network.

Thanks for reading.

Manuel Perez

I have been pretty busy lately.  I am just about almost finished with some major projects.  On Saturday I had a chance to attend the Central Valley CUE Conference in Fresno, CA.  I must say it was pretty interesting the things I got to see and experience.  One of the things that interested me was a workshop that Brian Bridges from California Learning Resource Network (CLRN) gave on some Open Source programs out there.  The one above is called Wordle and it allows you to type in a bunch of words or add an address of your blog and it will look at all the keywords and put them in a layout for you.  Look at the photo above and see how cool it looks.  It even allows you to remove words that might not make sense or you just don’t want them in there. 

I am planning on bringing you some more info from the CVCUE conference.  Let me just play with them some more and I will let you know.  I haven’t heard back from anyone on the model interviews.  I will try to begin next month about midway through the month.   If you have any ideas please feel free to share them. 

Thanks for reading,

Manuel Perez

I am working on building a new PC and I must say it gets pricey when you want to add things like redundancy.  I have been purchasing most of the parts from New Egg which is really great with the prices.  In fact I think just about all of the parts came from New Egg except for the processor which I got from my friend.  Nothing fancy on the cpu but my friend is going to over clock it for me.  Here is what we have in it so far.

This does not count all the taxes and shipping for all the different times I had to buy this and then realized I needed this.  That is always a pain.  I plan on installing Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit on the OS.  I also have a 120GB SATA drive that I plan on hosting my OS on and using the 4 – 1.5TB drives in a RAID 5 configuration and use it to store my music, photos and documents on.  I will have another 1.5TB drive that I plan on using for Backups which I know I will have to upgrade that soon to keep all the backups on.  Thankfully I use Storage Craft to do all my backups and I must say it is the coolest way for backups. 

If anyone has any feedback I would appreciate it.  I am hoping to have this system up and running by next Friday since I have a Photography Gig coming up.  Wish me luck folks!

Well, after all the reinstalls after reinstalls, I decided to go with Windows Vista Ultimate 32.  I tried running Vista Ultimate 64 but a lot of my programs didn’t like the 64bit environment.  I then tried going to Windows 7 Ultimate 64 and the same thing.  I then went down to Windows XP 64 and the same thing.  I thought this is great!  I have 8GB of RAM and wont be able to use it all because I am going to have to go to Windows Vista Ultimate 32.  So I took out 2 sticks of 2GB, bringing me down to 4GB and after installing iTunes and importing all my music the system kept crashing.  So I thought I should put the memory back in and see how it runs.  It ran a lot smoother after the whole 8GB of RAM was in there. 

I then began installing all of my programs again.  I am about 75% complete with installing all my programs.  I just finished the big Adobe programs and will begin the little ones later on tonight.  I am going to take my computer in to get it readjusted with the memory changes so that I can take out the 4GB and get it over clocked just a bit more.  I was burning a CD for my wife yesterday and I must say the thing flies.  I started playing the first song on the list of songs on the CD and before it finished playing the song it was finished burning the entire disc. 

The system is running on an Intel Core 2 6700 CPU @2.66GHz over clocked at 3.20GHz.  The 8GB of RAM is fast.  I am waiting to come up with some money to buy an add in card for the RAID.  I plan on running a RAID 5 with the (4) Seagate 1.5TB 7200.11 Drives.  The motherboard supports 6 SATA devices but Vista doesn’t support RAID in the OS. 

I would love to hear back from everyone to see what they think or if they have any advice on this computer technology subject.

I have come across a dilemma with the new computer build.  Turns out that Windows Vista does not support a RAID 5 setup in the OS.  I can go out and buy a RAID controller and use the (4) 1.5TB drives in a RAID 5 configuration to have redundancy on the drives or I can upgrade to Windows 7.  I am for sure that I don’t want to downgrade to Windows XP because I have been down that route and don’t want to go back.  I like all the features built into Windows Vista Ultimate and would love to have them. 

I am thinking about purchasing the RAID controller card next month when I come across some more money but was thinking about just going to Windows 7 because it supports the RAID 5 in the OS.  I haven’t had much time to play with Windows 7 yet and wanted to get some feedback from you techies out there and see what you thought of Windows 7 Ultimate. 

I have to have a 64 bit OS because I have 8GB of RAM.  If anyone else has other ideas I am all ears! 

Thanks for reading!

Hey Everyone,

I just wanted to share with you the new look of Perez Studios.  I was getting tired of the old look of the old site so I decided it was time for a new theme.  The good thing about a new theme is its super easy with the Word Press Engine running your site. 

I have been using Word Press for a couple of years now to manage my blog site and I must say that it makes things easy.  It allows me to choose from a bunch of layouts and themes and with the click of a button, I have a new theme and look without having to know too much coding. 

Above you see a screenshot of the old look which was Layers 1.1.1.  I liked it but the black on the screen and the words weren’t pleasing to the eye on the black background. 

Above you see a screenshot of the new look which is iNove 2.3.  I like it that it has a white background but still has the look of the black on top.  I had to do some research to figure out how to manipulate the width of the css because it was too narrow and when you viewed the upcoming events it would shrink the calendar and not display it all. 

I went to this site to view tips on how to manipulate the css. 

Let me know what you think of the new look and if you have any ideas.

If you are interested in setting up a Word Press site then visit their website for more tips.  If you would like me to build one for you then I can do that as well.  I created a couple for some organizations and it is quick and easy.  The Word Press engine runs on a SQL database which is very quick to setup and keeps your entire website organized and running smooth. 

Call me for a free quote on setting up a website utilizing Word Press for you or your organization.

Here are some websites I did that run Word Press.

Mendota Pentecostal Church of God

Mary Allen’s Country Colors

While doing some research on the web on Adobe Lightroom, I came across a site from Adobe that is called Adobe TV.  The site actually has videos that show you how to use the Adobe programs.  I was amazed at all the helpful information that they have for viewers and what is even better is that it is all free.  I studied up on Adobe Lightroom and have been playing with the program to familiarize myself with the program.  I was amazed how Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop work hand in hand together to automate photos.  I even learned how catalogs work.  If you want to learn more or share your experience with Adobe TV then please do so.