PS tutor: Orange skin Porche

Read full tutorial here on how to design it from scratch using photoshop: http://alfoart.com/gold_car_1.html

MS Excel: formulas that make your work easier

# To return a latest value of a column. (the column can not have empty cells between 1st value and last value)

=INDEX(H8:H14,COUNT(H8:H14))


in this formula, the range H8 to H14 we will get the latest value or the bottom most value in the correspondent cell that hold this formula.

Explanation:
count formula here counts the number of cells that has values.
using index formula, we find the index value within the given range, in this case H8:H14, and we want the index value of the 5th cell that is from top to down (the last cell with the values), which is the value given from Count formula.

Gas price has its effect on indivituals: financial perspective

Fair enough gas prices are going up day by day even though we saw a slight decrease of the price in past week or so. But gas prices has shown an exponential growth overall, rather average price graph over past 8 years.

I have been keeping track of grocery expenses in a spread sheet. In the past few months I was able to identify this increase in gas price clearly showing off in my spread sheet. Over past three months, April, May, & June; the groceries price per day per item value showed a clear integrated increase in my analysis of the expenses.

Even though you went to the grocery store and didnt identify much of a increase in food prices or even good prices, overall it has gone up. As you may know gas price increase causing good/food item prices to go up as in forms of transportation of goods, storage, etc.

There is a heavy need for alternative fuel source that we can rely on just like gas with less pollution and cost efficient.

Read more about environmental effects of gasoline prices and depletion of resources at http://apenvirom.blogspot.com/

Economy: A bigger-than-expected drop in existing home sales and Ford's worst earnings report ever weighed on the market

Having passed a House vote, the housing bill -- revised with provisions for more explicit government guarantees of the mortgage agency portfolios -- is now headed for a Senate vote, which could come as early as Thursday.

Bill Gross, managing director of bond house Pimco, weighed in on the housing bill currently before Congress, calling the legislation that is designed to lower the cost of mortgage credit "the best way to begin the long journey back to normalcy" in the housing market.

New York Fed President Timothy Geithner, speaking before the House Financial Services Committee, warned that strong financial supervision will be needed to reduce the moral hazard of recent Fed and government backstops such as the Bear Stearns bailout and expanded capabilities of the Treasury and Fed to support the government-sponsored agencies.

Oil prices rebounded from their lows despite ongoing concerns about demand destruction as government data showed higher refined product supplies on Wednesday. August WTI crude oil futures settled $1.05 cents higher at $125.49 a barrel on Thursday.

Source: David Bogoslaw
Full Article: http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/jul2008

Photoshop enpowerment: presentom

Newest experiment with Photoshop and Illustrator vector floral designs and its use effectively to generate eye catching graphic content. Such floral content could also be found as brush format, if you are interested in creating this type of a graphic with the minimum of effort.

This post contain copy right material, prohibited from reproducing or using without presentom's permission. This Graphic is exclusively a property of ashPresentom.

Chicago Skyline 2

© ashPresentom All Rights reserved.

Chicago Skyline : fire sky

(© ashPresentom All Rights Reserved. You may not reproduce or use this graphic for any other purposes without the permission from ashPresentom.)

This is the original graphic used to generate the above fire sky of chicago.

Photoshop: how to design a Fireball

In this video I explain how to design a stunning looking fireball using Adobe Photoshop CS3.

Photoshop Enpowerment: fountain to fireball cannon

Turning a dull scene of the Fountain to a highly charged Fireball Cannon... do you think it was possible? It seems so when you look at it for a while... but here it is how I did it...

Business USA: The Housing Abyss

The housing crisis is entering a new and frightening stage. On June 24, Standard & Poor's announced that the S&P/Case-Shiller 20-City Home Price Index had fallen more than 15% in April from a year earlier. Adjusted for inflation, the decline is the biggest since 1940-42, according to data collected by Yale University economist Robert Shiller.

The risk for the financial system and the economy is that the price drop, already horrifying, will start feeding on itself. When home values fall low enough, hard-pressed homeowners become less able or less willing to keep paying their mortgages. That forces lenders to repossess homes and then dump them back on the market at fire-sale prices, which depresses prices further and leads to even more foreclosures.

That process has already started in parts of Arizona, California, Florida, and Nevada. The drop in those markets "is being fueled with jet fuel," says James L. Smith, executive vice-president for portfolio services at Fiserv (FISY), a Brookfield (Wis.) company. His unit works with borrowers to restructure delinquent mortgage loans. Smith worries that instead of settling at a reasonable price level, "we're going to blow past [it] without even looking back."

Efforts by the private sector and government to stop the slide before it gets out of control haven't done the job. Poorly designed mortgage securities rife with conflicts of interest, as well as legal disputes over priority between creditors, are forcing many homes into foreclosure needlessly, accelerating the market decline.

Sure, Congress is expected soon to pass a huge legislative package aimed at preventing needless foreclosures and stimulating first-time home purchases. But many analysts and advocates are already warning that more dramatic measures will ultimately be required. "The depth of pain is not being registered in D.C.," says Mike Shea, executive director of nonprofit advocacy group ACORN Housing in Chicago.

That's not everyone's assessment, of course. Some economists and politicians say that policymakers need to focus on keeping inflation under control in the face of soaring food and fuel prices. They say that the effects of the housing bust will be modest and that low prices will attract new buyers. "We're seeing people go into the market that weren't there before," says Alfred A. DelliBovi, president of the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York. The Federal Reserve, which has already cut the federal funds rate to 2% without managing to save the housing market, hinted on June 25 that no further rate cuts are in store, warning that inflation risks have risen while the risk of slower growth has "diminished somewhat."

by Peter Coy and Mara Der Hovanesian
Full Story: http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/08_27/b4091032364818.htm