Feature of the Week – IT Connect

SMU Employees: Free access to Lynda.com online training.

Did you know that you have free access to over 267,000 online video tutorials with Lynda.com?

Lynda.com is a leading online learning company that helps anyone learn business, software, technology and creative skills at any level of expertise so they can achieve personal and professional goals. Members have access to the Lynda.com video library of engaging, top-quality courses taught by recognized industry experts.

Features of Lynda.com include:

Assessments

Take related assessments before and after completing a course to evaluate what instruction the user has already mastered and how much they have learned.

Enhanced Playlists

Share playlists with colleagues to recommend courses. You can even share your playlist on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn to show associates what courses you have personally completed.

Access Webinars:

In addition to online training you can enroll in an upcoming webinar or view previously recorded sessions.

To learn more about Lynda.com and to request a Lynda.com license, click here: http://www.smu.edu/BusinessFinance/OIT/Services/Lynda

Creating Animated GIF’s in Photoshop

by Moez Janmohammad

This brief tutorial shows you have to take a 5-10 second video and convert it to a GIF with Adobe Photoshop.

Illustrator Image Trace Tutorial

By Moez Janmohammad

Most images come in specific sizes, where the file contains each pixel’s information. This means that when a user scales the image to be larger, the program “fills in” the missing information, often making it look blurred or pixelated. A solution to this is a vector image, which contains mathematical expressions instead of pixel data. It uses those expressions to “build” the image, and since it isn’t pixel-dependent, a user can scale the image to be larger or smaller while keeping the lines clean and crisp. An easy way to convert an image to a vector format is to use Illustrator’s Image Trace. With one button, a user can have a vector image from any source format.

Camera RAW

By Moez Janmohammad

Introducing Feature of the Week, where we highlight a feature of a program and give a basic tutorial on how it works. This week we’re focusing on Camera RAW in the Adobe Creative Suite. Camera RAW is one of the single most powerful tools in a photographer’s arsenal, and often one of the most overlooked tools in the Adobe Creative Suite. It gives the user extensive control of the post processing of an image, allowing them to edit exposure and distortion before going into Photoshop to make more advanced edits.