Rob Oresteen Photography

I had the privilege of using design|house “Straight Punch” actions on my last wedding. It popped almost every image and worked seamlessly into my work flow. It was so easy to dial it in. Needless to say the bride was thrilled with her images. I’m sold on design house. And that was just one of the actions.

Andy Armstrong is a rising star in the Photoshop post-processing world. The bar is raised.

design|house by Andy Armstrong is a collection of Photoshop actions, brushes, custom shapes, and styles, as well as hi-res backgrounds, wallpapers, textures, digital mats, and photo objects. He’s also recently released a set of greeting card templates and magazine cover templates for modern photographers. If you get a chance, go check it out. You can see design|house at http://www.getdesignhouse.com. There’s a whole bunch of video tutorials in the d|h learning center too.

A Spanish Teacher was explaining to her class that in Spanish, unlike English, nouns are designated as either masculine or feminine.
‘House’ for instance, is feminine: ‘la casa.’
‘Pencil,’ however, is masculine: ‘el lapiz.’
Then …a student asked, ‘What gender is ‘computer’?’

Instead of giving the answer, the teacher split the class into two groups, male and female, and asked them to decide for themselves whether ‘computer’ should be a masculine or a feminine noun. Each group was asked to give four reasons for its recommendation.

The men’s group decided that ‘computer’ should definitely be of the feminine gender (’la computadora’), because:
1. No one but their creator understands their internal logic;
2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else;
3. Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for possible later retrieval; and
4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.

The women’s group, however, concluded that computers should be masculine (’el computador’), because:
1. In order to do anything with them, you have to turn them on;
2. They have a lot of data but still can’t think for themselves;
3. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they ARE the problem; and
4. As soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you had waited a little longer, you could have gotten a better model.