![]() ![]() Depending on your specific needs and role you’ll be able to find the online timer that’s right for you! 7. ![]() The tools below run the gamut from barebones and simple to more powerful and insightful. The 7 best online timers for freelancers, workers, and managers Let’s run through our list of the top 7 online work timers that will help you stay focused and productive all day long. So which online timer meets all these needs? Find a better work-life balance and reduce overwork.Clearly see your current habits and routines (and help you build better ones).Identify time-wasting processes or distractions.However, the best online timers don’t just track your time but also give you in-depth insights that can help you: Online timers help track your progress and set daily goals, even if you aren’t checking anything off your to-do list. “Most of us make advances small and large every single day, but we fail to notice them because we lack a method for acknowledging our progress. Yet it’s not always easy to recognize the progress you make each day. When you don’t feel like you’re making progress on meaningful work it’s easy to become unmotivated, easily distracted, and prone to procrastination. Your mood can be a silent productivity killer. But even more importantly, online timers help keep you motivated throughout the day. Work and productivity timers provide focus, structure, and accountability to your workday. One of the best things you can do for you or your team’s productivity is to track your time. ![]()
0 Comments
![]() Speedlights: while the shutter is open, press the Speedlight’s Flash button. Move the light around during the entire exposure so you don’t end up with hot spots. There are two ways to paint with light: using a constant light source such as a flashlight or with a Speedlight.Ĭonstant light source: while the shutter is open, use a constant light source to illuminate the foreground. Painting with Light is another technique that can be used if the foreground is close enough. High Dynamic Range (HDR): One technique is to take multiple shots, bracketing or varying the actual exposure time, and merge them as HDR which you can composite with the final image of the properly exposed sky. The foreground can also be lit using a variety of techniques. Depending upon the subject, the foreground as a silhouette may enhance the overall image, or detail in the foreground may complement the night sky. Using a wide-angle or fisheye lens, you can also incorporate the foreground into your images. Other times she’ll use multiple exposure to expose for the moon and stars separately. At times, she will bracket the exposure and composite two frames together, so the final image will have both the moon and the stars properly exposed. There are two techniques Diana uses when photographing the moon and stars in one scene. ![]() “On dark nights, I only light paint foreground elements when it makes artistic sense,” she says, noting that she tries to make the foreground look as natural as possible in most cases. Increase the ISO as needed for a good exposure.ĭiana says she’ll often let the foreground be lit by moon light on nights when the moon is bright enough because there is enough detail and light to add to the image. Any more time than that and the stars will begin to blur. ![]() To photograph the stars in the sky as pinpoints of light, start with as wide an f/stop as your lens allows, and shutter speed of about 20 seconds. This allows for long exposures of the night sky that will pick up the fainter light of the Milky Way for example. A telescope mount moves the camera/telescope as the earth rotates. “Enthusiasts of astrophotography may choose to invest in special equipment for tracking the stars as the earth moves,” explains Deborah. ![]() “If a scene has a lot going on in the foreground, stars represented as pinpoints may complement the scene, rather than overwhelm it.” “The subject will often determine if I pursue star trails or pinpoints of light,” explains Deborah. We also asked our in-house movie making guru and senior technical manager, Steve Heiner to give us tips for making great time lapse movies of the stars. We spoke with three photographers-Pete Saloutos, Deborah Sandidge and Diana Robinson-to find out their techniques for great photos of the night sky. There are a variety of techniques that can be used to create dynamic photographs of the night sky, including capturing the stars as pinpoints of light, as star trails and by creating time-lapse movies of the stars as they move across the sky during the course of an evening. ![]() ![]() ![]() The game was released on Februin Japan, Augin North America, and Octoin Australia by Atlus, and in Europe the following day by Rising Star Games. Unless something better comes along, I guess I’m playing these two games for the rest of the year.Luminous Arc is a tactical role-playing game developed by Imageepoch for the Nintendo DS, and the first in the Luminous Arc series. I’m playing this side by side with Tokyo Xanadu eX+ but Tokyo Xanadu is not exciting enough to deserve my full focus so there’s still room in my heart for an SRPG. Really, if they just wouldn’t talk and bicker so much and if they would let me fight more than once or twice an hour I would be quite happy.ĭoes that mean LA: Infinity has been un-dropped? Eh, yeah, I guess. Right now it’s just adequate, but adequate is good enough for me when it comes to SRPGs. My characters are averaging level 17 and don’t feel too strong yet, so there’s still plenty of room for Luminous Arc Infinity‘s battle system to blow me away. In practice I am told it’s best to leave everyone on their default paths so it’s not as exciting as it seems at first. more MAG instead of ATK, that kind of thing. In theory there are 4 kinds of builds: Variety, Pure, Cool and Beauty, which affect what kind of growths and skills you get e.g. Characters level up normally, but they also get growths through a skill tree. Lest you forget what kind of game we’re dealing with here.ĥ. And his accessories all decrease his wait time, so depending on how things go, Xird could be a formidable ally after he grows a bit. So far it’s just a few things like giving them VP, healing, Aura Points, etc but he’s also been learning status attacks like Sleep for the enemies. What he can do is fondle the girls to give them stat boosts before battle and pop in with all kinds of supports whenever his turn rolls around. The main character can’t fight because he’s cursed. They’re much easier to fulfill than those in Summon Night but the rewards aren’t that great so it doesn’t matter if you do them or not.Ĥ. Usually it’s not healing too much, defeating a number of enemies with the idol of the day, that sort of thing. You get extra items by fulfilling certain conditions. Brave clear conditions borrowed from the Summon Night series. But they’re super useful regardless because elemental strengths and weaknesses seem to matter a lot in this game.ģ. Duo attacks also build affection between the girls, which does… something. But if Xiorker is standing next to her, she can borrow a flame attack to strike an enemy who is weak to fire. ![]() For example since Aqua is a water mage, she can’t use fire attacks. ![]() That means you borrow attacks from allies standing nearby. Stella Glow and Shining Blade did much better in that regard.Ģ. I’ve collected 6 idols so far and haven’t heard a single one sing outside the opening sequence. Which… kind of defeats the purpose of having a game about singing idols. However, strangely enough, you don’t get any special music or voice sounds when the idol sings. Calling also accumulates Voice Points which you can use to trigger EX Arts and EX Attacks. It’s good to spend the first turn of the game when all idols are clustered together getting buffed before moving out. Another idol can join in for a duet, or even more for a trio, quartet or quintet. An idol stands on a spot and sings and everyone in range gets a buff. The interesting things to note about this battle system are:ġ. Pressing buttons helps a bit, but not much. ![]() But I still crave a fast-forward button because it takes so long for turns to go round and attacks to play out. These isometric RPGs are always a little slow, and at least Luminous Arc Infinity isn’t as bad as the original Luminous Arc or some others I’ve played. Now that I’m about 5:30 hours into the game, the tutorials have all but ceased and more battle options are available so there’s more playing and less reading. So that decision alone has cut my stress in half. This means I’m missing out on a lot of “immersion” and “world-building” but I hate that stuff anyway so it’s all good. It’s just moved from “Bad” to “Mediocre, but playable.” The crazy amount of talking in every single scene is still a huge problem, but I’ve solved it by skipping all the text in everything except story quests. Verdict: It’s better than I had initially feared. So after dismissing Luminous Arc Infinity after only one hour, I decided I wasn’t being fair to it and decided to give it another chance. Sometimes a game just sucks and I have no choice, but I rarely feel good about it. I didn’t want to either rush through games or play a little bit just to say I’d played them. I didn’t have any clear goals when I started this blog years ago, but one thing I knew was that I wanted to give every game a fair chance. ![]() ![]() ![]() Alternatively, players can select the Random Missions Generator to create levels with unique parameters. Its campaign can be experienced through four levels of difficulty: Amateur, Gun for Hire, Consultant, and Soldier of Fortune. In the campaign, the player must complete a series of levels that encompass Soldier of Fortune II's storyline, reprising their role as special operative John Mullins from the first installment. Soldier of Fortune II is a shooter game played from the first-person perspective. It is revealed throughout the course of the game that a mole inside The Shop may be feeding information to the terrorists. Prometheus then plans to blackmail the G8 countries at a summit in Switzerland for billions of dollars. The virus, called Romulus, is followed by a computer virus called Remus which is programmed to delete files on any computer in the world, in this case, files relating to Prometheus and Romulus, so an anti-virus cannot be formulated. The theme of the Double Helix is germ warfare, as the mercenary Mullins and his new partner Madeline Taylor travel to Colombia to investigate a viral outbreak in a small town, only to link it to a shadowy organization called Prometheus. The multiplayer mode had five different gametypes, and playing through the single-player story, a player could choose from four different levels of difficulty.Īn unrelated sequel titled Soldier of Fortune: Payback, made by Cauldron HQ, was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2007. This time around, the theme was germ warfare rather than nuclear terrorism. Like the first game in the series, Double Helix pushed the boundaries of depictions of gore and violence, and is considered more graphic and realistic than most in the first-person genre. Based on criticisms of the original game, Raven Software developed Soldier of Fortune II to be a more "realistic" game, with more modern tactical shooters like Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis (2001) and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (1998) serving as inspirations, rather than Quake (1996). Once again, Raven hired John Mullins to act as a consultant on the game. It was developed using the id Tech 3 engine as opposed to the original's id Tech 2, and published in 2002. Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix is a first-person shooter video game developed by Raven Software, the sequel to Soldier of Fortune. ![]() ![]() ![]() Press Option-Delete (PC: Alt-Backspace) to fill the selected area with the blue color. Then use the Eyedropper tool (I) to sample the blue color from the sky area. ![]() STEP TWO: Use the Rectangular Marquee tool (M) to create a selection of the empty area above the image. This changes the layer from a smart object to a regular pixel layer. Then go to the Layers panel and Right-click on the layer thumbnail and choose Rasterize Layer from the context menu. ![]() That leaves plenty of space for creating the starry sky. Position the landscape fairly low so the horizon is at about the bottom third of the image. Drag the preview image from the Libraries panel (Window>Libraries) into your new document. If you’d like to download the low-res watermarked versions of this image to follow along, click this link, log in with your Adobe ID, and click the Save to Library button. After clicking Create, go to File>Place Embedded and choose a landscape background. Set both the Width and Height to 1000 pixels and the Resolution to 300 ppi. STEP ONE: Open Photoshop and go to File>New to create a New document. In any case, this project will dive into crafting your own version of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. It doesn’t even come close to that! Rather, it tries to simulate some of the color usage and brushstrokes that it detects in works from those artists. ![]() This feature isn’t attempting to create replicas or reproductions of the paintings by famous artists in history. It’s important to govern some expectations here. The idea behind the technology is really quite amazing and it can be used to create some interesting effects quickly. This filter uses an image from a famous artist as “inspiration” to apply a similar style to your image. If you're excited about the future we're building and want to be a part of it, please reach out.Photoshop’s Neural Filters include a fascinating filter called Style Transfer. We invite youto join us in exploring the immense potential of generative models. We have ambitious goals for Genmo, and we know that achieving them requires a collective effort. Join Us in Building the Future of Creativity We envision a future where a creative copilot can help you augment your stories with generations across modalities. Enabling superhuman storytelling: Musicians already use Genmo to create music videos.Safe and responsible AI: Our creative copilot will actively steer users away from generating content that may be harmful.Genmo Chat can help everyone realize their ideas and create the content that they would like to see. Empowering creators of all levels: Good ideas can come from anyone, but not everyone has the skills to bring them to life.We are building Genmo to transform the way we as people create content across modalities. We believe that collaboration is the missing piece from current generative AI models. A Collaborative Future for Creative General Intelligence By using natural language, users can instruct Genmo to perform various tasks, including generating new images from descriptions, editing existing images, or even creating looping videos. Current CapabilitiesĪs a creative assistant, Genmo supports a wide range of tools, such as text-to-image, image editing, image enhancement, video generation, and more. This will allow for more seamless collaboration between users and their creative copilot, ultimately leading to better and more useful results. To bridge the gap between humans and generative tools, we're working on improving our models' understanding of user intent and context. ![]() ![]() ![]() This will only be achieved when the most disadvantaged girls are supported to enter and complete pre-primary and primary education. UNICEF works with communities, Governments and partners to remove barriers to girls’ education and promote gender equality in education – even in the most challenging settings.īecause investing in girls’ secondary education is one of the most transformative development strategies, we prioritize efforts that enable all girls to complete secondary education and develop the knowledge and skills they need for life and work. ![]() In others, teaching practices are not gender-responsive and result in gender gaps in learning and skills development. In some places, schools do not meet the safety, hygiene or sanitation needs of girls. Poor families often favour boys when investing in education. Barriers to girls’ education – like poverty, child marriage and gender-based violence – vary among countries and communities. At the secondary level, the gap widens: 42 per cent of countries have achieved gender parity in lower secondary education, and 24 per cent in upper secondary education. Only 49 per cent of countries have achieved gender parity in primary education. Worldwide, 129 million girls are out of school. In countries affected by conflict, girls are more than twice as likely to be out of school than girls living in non-affected countries. ![]() Despite evidence demonstrating how central girls’ education is to development, gender disparities in education persist.Īround the world, 129 million girls are out of school, including 32 million of primary school age, 30 million of lower-secondary school age, and 67 million of upper-secondary school age. ![]() ![]() ![]() And thanks to the platform’s user-friendly design, the search for content is a fluid and efficient experience.īecoming a premium Freepik member will gain you access to premium content, a higher download cap per day, and no need for attribution. All this means it’s a haven for video producers who are in need of a reliable source for high-demand visual content. Freepik Videosįreepik is a pioneering stock website that provides free-to-use 4K and HD stock video footage with the additional support of a huge library of stock images, fonts, and vector designs. The videos are put under different categories like rocks, night, street, sky, sun and many more for easy browsing. Pexels Videos by them is a video library that brings together Creative Commons Zero licensed stock videos from different sources at one place. Many of you would have heard of and used Pexels, a free stock photo site for commercial use images. On downloading, you’ll get the videos in. You will find no-copyright video clips from various categories such as architecture, fashion, people, places, travel and with different effects including slow motion, time-lapse and animations. ![]() These videos are royalty free and can even be used for free in commercial projects. They also have a huge library of CC0 licensed HD and 4K videos contributed by videographers from around the world. Pixabay is one of our top free image sites that we go to when we need images for our own work. ![]() Always make sure you read the terms and conditions regarding their usage before downloading stock videos and footages from these sites. Most of these video sites offer watermark-free videos and stock footages. While some require you to give attribution. Some of these sites offer royalty free videos that you can download and use in commercial projects for free. In this post, we bring to you a collection of websites where you can find high quality free stock videos and footages to create an immersive visual experience in your own web design projects. Not only do these videos engage visitors and improve user retention time on a website, they also add a ‘wow’ factor to the overall look of the site and leave users with a unique and memorable experience. Obviously how you use them and what you create is down to your creativity.Using video backgrounds in website headers has emerged as a popular trend in web design. These looping video clips add more dynamism to a web page as compared to standard images. Not only can they save you time, but they also allow you to create new styles for your projects easily. In short, free motion graphics templates are a great way of growing the tools available to you as an animator. This could include stylized effects like color tints, glows, textures, etc Add Effectsįinally, you can also add extra effects to the motion graphics templates allowing you to customize them further. Try to find sets that are still similar in style and that complement each other. Meaning, you shouldn’t use loads of different motion graphics templates. ![]() Secondly, the key to great animation is consistency. Build a Libraryįirstly, the best thing about free motion graphics templates is that you can build a library ready to use across all your projects.Īs mentioned, plugins and templates like these can save you a lot of time creating animations from scratch. Tips For Using Free Motion Graphics TemplatesĪs with all effects, there are a few things you should consider when using free motion graphics templates. It includes download, shop, sale, timer, and message icons, with full-color control, and is simple to use. This pack of 20 beautiful and minimal line icon animations is perfect for use in presentation and typography-style videos. It could even be used by brands and businesses. The range of bright and bold designs makes it great for YouTubers and content creators. This social media motion graphics template pack contains 50 elements and backgrounds, perfect for your digital content platforms. ![]() |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |