Letter from Lynda  | | Hello, everyone! This month, read about our latest releases and news, and enjoy discovering new knowledge, techniques, and ideas. We’ve also got some new site features to share, which were developed directly from member feedback. | Three new photography courses  Ben Long brings us another insightful and engaging course: Shooting and Processing High Dynamic Range Photographs (HDR). No camera can match the human eye’s dynamic range. Ben shows how to take multiple photos of a subject using different exposure settings, then explains how to merge those shots into one photo that has a broader tonal range.
 With today’s inexpensive strobes and their ability to be triggered wirelessly from numerous popular digital SLR cameras, getting great lighting is more convenient than ever: no heavy light boxes, no need to haul trunks of gear. In Shooting with Wireless Flash: Product Shots , Jim Sugar, a veteran photographer for National Geographic, Time, Sports Illustrated, and others, shares a working professional’s techniques for getting beautiful results with compact and inexpensive wireless flash units.
Shooting with Wireless Flash: Studio Portraits expands on Jim Sugar’s wireless flash tutorials. See how to use a variety of inexpensive lighting tools—clamps, gels, diffusers and other light modifiers—to get the kind of lighting that used to require many trunks full of gear. | Explore the current standards of banner ad design  Best Practices for Flash-based Banner Ads explains how to build eye-catching banner ads in Flash Professional to achieve design goals and satisfy search engines and the site requirements. Author Anastasia McCune explains the current standards of banner ad design, and offers a series of best practices for technical development-including incorporating video-and details the necessary information to gather from clients and publishers in order to build an ad. Build sample banner ads along with Anastasia, from start to finish, and learn how to optimize assets and add interactivity. | Two new courses on web typography  In Typography for Web Designers, new author Laura Franz shows how to choose fonts for a web site and create beautiful, legible type. The course shares how to create designs that maximize readability (and keep visitors on the page) by paying attention to details in size, line height, line length, alignment, color, vertical space, and more. Laura also demonstrates how to incorporate web fonts, style type with CSS, and pick fonts that work well together.
 In Typography with CSS in Dreamweaver , author Joseph Lowery introduces Dreamweaver type tools and shows how to perform basic text modifications, establish the appropriate type unit, integrate custom web fonts, and apply drop shadows, gradients, and other effects. The course also provides in-depth tutorials on structuring text with headings, paragraphs, columns, and lists, and offers a preview of Adobe’s proposed CSS Regions. | More insider training on Illustrator  Mordy Golding’s Illustrator Insider Training series challenges Illustrator experts to forget everything they know about Illustrator and to reapply that knowledge to artwork more quickly and efficiently. In Illustrator Insider Training: Coloring Artwork, Mordy guides you through what he sees are the three stages of applying color to artwork: creation, inspiration, and editing. | Take your site mobile  Mobile Web Design & Development Fundamentals surveys the core principles and techniques essential to building web sites for mobile devices. Author Joe Marini explains the unique coding requirements for mobile sites, and discusses interface design techniques that enhance your current site for viewing and using on mobile devices, from designing for smaller screens and finger-based interaction, to incorporating CSS3 and HTML5 capabilities (geolocation, local storage, and media queries). | Developing Android apps with Java  Android App Development with Java Essential Training teaches how to build and deploy applications for Android phones and tablets using the Java programming language. Starting with the installation of the required developer tools, including Eclipse and the Android SDK, the course covers how to build the user interface, work with local data, integrate data from the accelerometer and other sensors, and deploy finished applications to the Android Market. Exercise files are included with the course. | JavaScript Essential Training gets an essential upgrade  The long-awaited update to JavaScript Essential Training is here: Simon Allardice shows how to use JavaScript to add new features and a richer, more compelling user interface on web pages. This course keeps current best practices and practical uses for JavaScript in mind, while covering syntax, working with the DOM, and developing and debugging across multiple platforms, devices, and browsers. It also shows how to progressively enhance and gracefully degrade web pages, and take advantage of the world of JavaScript libraries now available. | Up and Running courses give just enough of the basics  Our new Up and Running series is designed to give beginners just the right amount of instruction to put a new tool or technology to work. The goal is to either give you just enough of the basics to meet your short-term needs, or give you a way to explore a topic before moving on to an Essential Training course for more detail.
So far, feedback from members is exactly what we'd hoped. We hope you’ll check out this new approach and that you’ll share your feedback with us as well.
Available now:
Up and Running with InDesign
Up and Running with Illustrator
Up and Running with Adobe Digital Publishing Suite
Up and Running with Photoshop Lightroom 3
Coming soon:
Up and Running with Photoshop for Photography
Up and Running with Photoshop for Design | Two new site features: list of last-viewed courses, and browsing by subject 
A lot of members asked us for an easier way to get back to what they were recently learning when they log back in to the site, so we’ve added a list of the last five courses you’ve watched right on the home page. Click any course title to go to its table of contents, or click more >> to see your entire course history.
The Latest releases box on the homepage is one of the first stops for many members to find new courses. To make it easier for members to find new courses in the categories that they are most interested in, we’ve added tabs that let you browse new courses by subject.
Each of the subjects also has its own RSS feed, so you can get notified of the newest releases you care most about. Learn more about RSS in Chapter 1 of the How to use lynda.com course.
To send us your feedback about these and any other site features, click on the site feedback link on the bottom right of any page on the site. Or visit the contact page and choose the topic you’d like to tell us about from the drop-down menu. | Live with Lynda | For the past several months, the Live with Lynda free webinar series has showcased discussions about the changing role of educators in the digital age. Recently I interviewed Will Richardson, the author of the book, Personal Learning Networks. Will and I discuss his book, his blog, and his passion for helping teachers encourage students to learn online tools for research and collaboration. If you missed it, you can catch a recording of the interview here: http://www.nmc.org/connect/2011/July/29 | Semester-long gift memberships lynda.com offers semester-long memberships as a great back-to-school gift idea. Whether your favorite student needs to use Keynote for a class presentation, or wants to figure out how to be more productive on his or her iPad (or any one of 600+ other topics), a membership for a semester or a year will help build confidence and skills.
That’s all for this month. Stay tuned for more, and until then, happy learning! | |
 Keep an eye on the site for these and many other helpful new courses coming soon to the Online Training Library® and the lynda.com store: - Gmail for Power Users
- Flex 4.5 and PHP: Creating Data-Driven Applications
- Up and Running with Photoshop for Photography
- Small Office Networking to Connect, Share, and Print
- Animation Tips and Tricks with Flash Professional
- Transforming a Photo into a Painting with Photoshop
- Premiere Pro: Color Correction and Enhancement
- SPSS Statistics X Essential Training
- Up and Running with Photoshop for Design
- Douglas Kirkland on Photography: Shooting with an 8x10 Camera
- HTML5: Geolocation in Depth
- Moodle 2 Essential Training for Teachers
- Organizing and Archiving Digital Photos
- Photoshop for Designers: Shape Layers
- Natalie Fobes: The Elements of Effective Photographs
- Creating Urban Game Environments in 3ds Max
- Mac OS X Server 10.7 Lion Essential Training
- Moodle 2 Essential Training for Students
| Testimonials of the month Absolute best value
I’m semi-familiar with the Adobe Suite, but wanted to learn more, specifically how to use Illustrator for a new business venture I’m interested in starting. From the first glance, I was in LOVE with you and everything you do. lynda.com is the absolute best value to learn software or to refresh your skills. I’m absolutely floored at how affordable the service is and the vast breadth of the library. Seriously, I’m still amazed.
—Carolyn A. Heads above the rest
I graduated with a dual degree in web design and web development, but I’m also very internet savvy and very lynda.com savvy. When a potential employer called me back for a second interview, I re-watched [Social Media Marketing with Facebook and Twitter], built my own PowerPoint, and I landed the job!!! HEADS above the rest, they said!! I feel confident that with you and lynda.com , I will be an excellent employee and have an excellent career! THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!
—Merideth B. Read more great feedback. | Tip of the month |  You can easily record new audio clips and drop them directly into your videos in Final Cut Pro X. | | Recording a voiceover directly into a video in Final Cut Pro X While Final Cut Pro X is a premiere video editing application, there will often be times when you’ll want to record audio directly into your video. Say you want to record a scratch track or a voiceover track. This is easy to do in Final Cut Pro X. With a project open, first position your playhead where you want the audio track to start. Then go to the Window menu and select Record Audio. The Record Audio window will appear. Your system setup will determine which dropdown menus you have in the window, but you should see Destination, Input Device, and Monitor listed. The first thing you need to do is select the destination where your audio track will be stored. Select the desired Event. Then, select which input device—USB headset, built-in mic, etc.—that you want to use to record your audio track. The green bar in the Record Audio window will register the sound input levels. If the green bar is not moving as you speak, check your connections and input preferences. If you want to hear yourself when you record, you can select the Monitor source from the dropdown. When recording audio, it’s a good idea to use headphones instead of speakers. Once you’ve selected your Monitor source, click on the Monitor check box. When you’re ready to record, just press the record button. The status next to the record button will change to ’Recording...’ to confirm that you are indeed recording audio. When you’re done recording, simply press the record button again, and then you can close the Record Audio window by clicking the X in the upper left-hand corner. Now you should see that your voiceover was recorded directly into your timeline where your playhead was parked. You should also see the voiceover saved in your Event library. The audio clip will work like any other media that you bring into your Final Cut Pro X project. You can edit the audio clip with the same trimming tools as the video clips, and you can reposition the clip exactly where you need it. If you select the clip and open it in the Inspector, you can control the volume and adjust the audio enhancements as well. View sample movies from Final Cut Pro X Essential Training. | |
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