Quick post, this time no Flash but a Photoshop action that saves me a lot of time. First of all, I don’t use slides in Photoshop, but often I just make a selection, copy/paste that in a new window and then press ctrl-alt-shift-s to ’save for the web’. I am doing this a lot of times when slicing objects. Since a while now I use an action for that. I hope this will help you too work faster. Key thing you have to remember is to create a selection and press F2..

It automatically does the copy/new/paste+’save for the web’ for you.

Download photoshop-action

I’ve updated my Image class. It is irritating flashsites break the right-click contextmenu. Well, I can’t fix that and Adobe should look at that, but I think it would nice to add some of the browser – features to my image class.

Currently I have these options added to the Image class:

View image
Views image in new window/tab. I used NavigateToURL to make this happen.

Save Image as..
Saves image on your computer. I used my ImageClass.saveLocal() to make this happen. This is only available within FP10, but I think this is no problem anymore because < a href = "http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html" > 93 % (September 2009) has FlashPlayer 10, so most people have it, and I don’t support outdated software

Copy Image location
Copies the url to the clipboard, using System.setClipboard(url). It’s a pity I can’t create a ‘Copy Image’ function, because pushing bitmapdata into the clipboard is only supported in AIR.

Send Image
Sends the url to the mail-client, using “mailto:&body=” + src. Also a pity; I can’t add the image directly into the mail.

How to enable the contextmenu:

I still love this class, I use it a lot. I want to encourage you to please add these kind of usability things to your apps / websites. And share them! Yes, it takes some extra time to create/add it, because this IS the finishing touch, but a lot of people will like this kind of features.

Download
Check out the Image class atgooglecode

Quick post: Smashing Magazine posted an article about Algorithmic and Code Generated Artworks. Some of my artworks are on that list. I love the way they describe the code generated artworks:

The most interesting thing we like about art is that it is independent of any medium; an artist can express himself without any limitations or restrictions by creating a wonderful and creative piece of art. A creative artist can come up with an inspirational and motivational thought and put that in their artwork in such a way that it becomes a masterpiece that dazzles our mind.

In this post we present some amazing examples of Code Generated, Algorithmic Abstract Artworks and CG Artworks. There are some really interesting platforms and libraries; by using them, artists can create unusual artworks. Most popular among these libraries are Flash Scripting, Generator.x, Processing (Java Based), openFrameworks (C Based) and for creating CG Art, artists are often using 3D Max, Maya, Zbrush, V Ray, Photoshop etc.

Hopefully, you’ll love them and will find them creative or inspirational. Please explore the further works of the artists linked below and also feel free to suggest other artworks in the comments to this post.

Smashing Magazine is a weblog dedicated to web-developers and designers and is a great resource with great links and inspirational articles.

Check it out: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/08/21/45-amazing-examples-of-code-generated-and-3d-cg-artworks/

This was the first hello world post on blog.stroep.nl. I’m very proud to blog for more than a year, but tomorrow is my real birthday

I installed the ‘Hyper cache‘-plugin yesterday. It minifies my output-html and posts are saved as static files on the server and the plugin enables gzip-compression. It automatically clears cache and starts over after one day. I don’t like to promote shit, but this plugin rocks!

Minifiy html profit

Well, this doesn’t change the world. But check this out:

G-zip compression profit

Do you see? My content is 305 KB without compression. Now it is served as 180 KB! Anyway; G-zip compression is very good if you need to safe bandwidth, but don’t forget you have some higher server load. I guess it also uses some more CPU at the client side. If you want to learn more about g-zip compression, it is already better explained on betterExplained.com.

Sending compressed data is very interesting. I think the world would be better place if every wordpress-installation has a cache plugin.

Since I’ve never updated my blog; Today was the day. Now I use Wordpress 2.8 too. It took half an hour to backup my old files and setup the new one, so it was easier than I thought. The admin looks great!

Since I have a PRO account at flickr.com, I have nice stats.
Today I’ve reached 100.000 hits!!

Some history
This was my first image on flickr, still a little bit proud of it.
And.. this image provides the most hits:

The first image was uploaded on March 26, 2008. Today it is May 16, 2009, Lets say one year later. I never imagined I would have that many hits, just with images..? I mean, this website+blog doesn’t reach that amount. I know some factors that could help reach a lot of hits and/or people. I love to share that with you, because it has some interesting facts.

1. Use groups
Groups help you to spread your images. It’s not only useful to submit your images to the groups, but it is also a great place to find cool/related images that you like too. I joint a lot of groups, mostly to explore and find generative arts, fractal images and new digital artworks. Some groups put the images from the group upon their or different websites. Every body can put images from a group or from yourself or from another person on his website (it could depends on the image-rights and it should link back). I found some groups which have successful websites, so I guess that would help too. Imagine when I post an image to a group it appears on multiple websites O, how I love social networks.

2. Love your contacts
I have found a lot of people who liked my art. They hitted the favorite button or they post comments. I really like that, I read them all Sometimes people even ask some questions about the art with a PM. I add all those people to my contact list, just because I love them and I can follow their works too. There are a lot of talented people on flickr and I like to be connected with people who like flash and create generative arts too. I like to comment and explore new works from others too, it is mostly very inspiring. It is handy to have a netwerk in your social netwerk, right?

3. Enjoy being linked
The internet is full of images that are copy/pasted from other sites. Flickr is a great place to find images and put it on your site/webblog. Well, people do this with your images too. Just be proud, and enjoy seeing your images on different websites. In your stats you can see which sites have linked your works. Especially the Google logo render is a big hit on blogs with posts about our big friend.

Funny sidestory;  As you already know; my name is mark knol. There are a lot of posts about Google Knol on the internet (the Google wikipedia thing). Some who use the Google logo render thinks it is funny my name is the same as the Google service and the image is the Google logo LOL

4. Keep making images
I guess it is also important to create a lot of great images and become better. You can drop experiments in your account too and ask other members for their opinion. A social netwerk should be social, right? So let us keep posting and creating new creative things too.

Well, that’s it. Keep on rocking. Thanks guys.