How cameras work and how to take good pictures using them. Instructor: Marc Levoy
Course description
An introduction to the scientific, artistic, and computing aspects of digital photography. Topics include lenses and optics, light and sensors, optical effects in nature, perspective and depth of field, sampling and noise, the camera as a computing platform, image processing and editing, and computational photography. We will also survey the history of photography, look at the work of famous photographers, and talk about composing strong photographs.
This course is based on CS 178 (Digital Photography), which I taught at Stanford from 2009 through 2014. I revised and taught the course again at Google in Spring of 2016, and these web pages are from the Google version. The course consists of 18 lectures. The topics, with dates, are given in the course schedule. The lectures were delivered live on Google’s Mountain View campus, broadcast live to Google offices around the world, and recorded for later playback. The videos linked into these web pages are from those recordings, edited slightly to remove discussion of Google internal projects. Keynote slides from these lectures were converted to PDF files and linked into the schedule after each lecture.
I am making these materials freely available, but some of the photographs included in the lectures are individually copyrighted. It should be fine for teachers to re-use this material under fair use, but other uses may be protected. If you re-use the material in substantially the same form it is given here, I would appreciate an acknowledgement.
Pat Scott isn’t afraid to try new things. At nearly 98 years old, she’s a wiz with Photoshop and loves using mobile apps to draw portraits of her friends.
While it’s common to imagine people her age playing bridge or bingo, you can often find Pat in her office diligently playing with Photoshop, retouching images and designing greeting cards for loved ones. Or you may see her sneaking photographs of her neighbors and friends so she can duck away and use those photos to draw portraits on her iPad. Pat doesn’t call herself an artist, but she’s been making art her entire life. She moved from the dark room to the iPhone and from paint to digital when she moved into her two-bedroom apartment in a retirement community—and didn’t want to ruin the carpet.
I wanted to send out an update about CreativePublic’s YouTube Channel. I am planning on adding new content over the next month with new videos. From this point forward, all video related content will be published on my YouTube channel.
The purpose of reviving this channel is to help bring education on design business to a wider audience and being able to start a conversation with my site members. This will be a great platform for all of us to engage about design business, including how to price your projects to selling your design services and more.
Launching a product that has insufficient demand and targeting the wrong audience are among the most common reasons for a business to fail. A less common reason they go under, but one certain to kill a business that makes them, are tax mistakes. Small errors can be corrected if discovered soon enough, but many common tax mistakes literally compound with interest and fees until the firm is shut down. Here are the three most common tax mistakes small businesses make.
Not Handling Withholding Correctly
Unless you are running a company with only contractors and partners, your company needs to withhold income taxes, Social Security taxes and FICA taxes for your employees. Failing to do so will result in penalties. Withholding the money without sending it on to the IRS leads to major problems, and if they think it was done deliberately, you risk criminal charges. Conversely, failing to segregate the tax withholding funds in a separate account could result in someone spending the tax withholding funds by accident. A tax expert with an accredited master in taxation can assist you with this.
Not Handling Sales Taxes Properly
Find out if you need to deal with sales tax before you start selling your product or service. If you are obligated to collect sales tax, you will probably have to register for a sales tax permit. Then you have to set up your online shopping cart and cash registers to charge the right amount of sales tax for every transaction. Complicating matters are the complex rules regarding what is taxed and at what rate.
For example, many states exempt food from the sales tax, but disagree on what is classified as food. Thus the salted peanuts sold by your store aren’t taxed, but chocolate coated and honey roasted peanuts probably are. If you’re selling a variety of taxed and untaxed products, you’ll need an inventory management system that can track the tax rate based on the product’s inventory number.
Online shopping carts typically don’t have a sales tax associated with the purchase unless the buyer is in your same state or you’re lucky enough to live in a state that doesn’t charge sales tax, but you still need to track the sale amount for income tax purposes later. Someone who has earned an online master in taxation degree can help you do this.
Failing to Send 1099s
Even if you set up your business so that it consists entirely of partners and contractors, you can’t avoid filling out at least a few tax forms each year. You are legally required to send 1099 forms every year to individuals and partnerships you pay each year. You are required to send a 1099 form to both the contractor and the IRS if the transactions totaled over $600 over the course of the year.
Keep your personal and professional finances separate from the start to protect yourself. Piercing the corporate veil to pay your bills out of the business account puts you at risk personally in case of business failure, while trying to pay today’s bills out of the tax withholding accounts risks criminal prosecution.
As a freelancer, owning a smartphone is a necessity; You have to be reachable, able to access data, and able to work at any given moment. However, if you’re still unsure of how a smartphone is good for business, check out these six smart ways to use your smartphone in freelancing.
Being connected to the internet wherever you go is crucial to many freelancers. Having internet access on the go lets you check emails, get directions, pull up files, and more. Sure you can get connected by grabbing your laptop and connecting to free Wi-Fi at your favorite coffee shop, but you may also have business needs come up in your car, the park, or at a restaurant. If you get a great cell phone that is hooked up to a good network, you’ll never again be stuck without internet service. Consider connecting with T-Mobile as it has an expansive network and provides uninterrupted service nationwide, making it perfect for your freelance business.
Close Contact with Clients
A freelancer depends on winning over enough clients to stay constantly busy and earn a living. You can’t win over clients if they can’t reach you, and a smartphone ensures you’re always available to your customers and potential clients. In addition to making you easily accessible by phone, a smartphone gives you always-on access to texting and email. No freelancer can be without a cell phone and expect to be successful.
Professional Voicemail
When you can’t get to the phone to answer calls from your clients, it is important to present a professional front. All smartphones allow you to set up a voicemail account. You can customize the greeting with as few or many details as you choose. Customers will be grateful for the clarity in knowing who they are leaving a message for and any other details you share. Remember, for your voicemail to be an effective freelancing tool, you need to return calls promptly.
Mobile Portfolio
Imagine showing up at a potential client’s office to show them your work, and for whatever reason, your computer won’t turn on — there isn’t anything more frustrating or embarrassing. But, if you bring along your smartphone, you can connect to your files and display your work through a mobile portfolio. A mobile portfolio is also useful when you unexpectedly make a connection and want to show them your work on the spot.
Accept Payments
Years ago if you wanted to accept credit or debit card payments from customers, your only option was to have a merchant account set up with your bank and acquire all the equipment necessary to process payments. Today, all you need is a smartphone. Download a payment app, go through the setup, and you are ready to go. You can also order products such as Square that make it even easier and allow you to swipe your customer’s card right on your smartphone.
Stay Organized
Working as a freelancer requires a significant level of organization; you need to maintain a schedule, keep track of work and to-do items, log mileage, track your time using time tracking software, and much more. The easiest way for you to stay organized is to make use of all the organizational tools and apps available for your smartphone. Calendars are useful for scheduling appointments and blocking out time for work to get done, and they sync to your computer making it easy to know your schedule wherever you are. Lots of to-do apps are available, and some of them even allow you to check or scratch done items off the list, which appeases all the A-type personalities. You can find any and every organizational tool you need for your smartphone — for ease, just make sure the apps you use also sync up with your computer.
Sure there are many other ways that your smartphone benefits your freelance business, but these six will get you started. Once you put these tips to use, you will want to find other smart ways to work your smartphone into freelancing.
The rapid upheaval of the graphic design industry from the 1950s to the 1990s was monumental. Introduction of the desktop computer revolutionised paste-up boards in studios to PDFs on laptops.
