How to Add Instagram Effects to Any Photos

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Photographers will have to use external help when it comes to adding effects to their shots. Fortunately, there are many photo effects software for your computer available in the market, and pro users will usually use Photoshop given its advance editing options. Non-experienced users will have to settle for photo editing software like Perfect Effects. It’s easy to use and is available in paid and free versions. It’s also good enough to help you add and edit professional photo effects.

Add photo effects with ‘Perfect Effects’

To add instant effects to your photos, go to the Perfect Effects download page and click on the Download button.

Fill up your details and hit Submit.

Perfect Effects will send you download link, click on the link to proceed.

After download is complete, unzip the download package and launch the installer. Hit the Continue button and follow the instructions to complete the installation.

Now when installation is complete, launch the software from your computer. You will be welcomed with quick instructions on how to get around with the software. Hit the folder section at the bottom to retrieve your photo collections to start editing.

When the folder is selected, you will see all your photo collections in the selected folder, now select which photo you want to add effects to.

On the left-hand side, you will see mouse control, select the tools relevant to start moving photos around the screen, crop, cut, paint or more.

On the right, you will see a panel with navigator, zoom selection, layers and masking options. When you make any changes to your photo, you will see the changes in layers.

Now to start adding effects to your photos, click on the Effects menu at the top right corner of the screen.

The Effects panel will appear at the bottom of the page.

There are four category selections from boarders, effects, instant and texture effects. To apply the effect you want, double-click from the selection panel.

When you are satisfied with your final effect, hit the save button to save your photo, and select to save the photo in PSD, TIFF, PSB or JPG format.

Photo Effects offers limited effect selections with this free version, but the result is pretty cool still.

Conclusion

With this software, you have the options to get more photo effects to add impact to your photos. If you would like more options, you can always opt for the pro version. What photo editing software have you been using apart from Photoshop? Share with us your favorites!

How to Sync Any Folders Outside /Dropbox

[Mac only] Dropbox cloud storage allows you to sync and share files and folders between many devices, as long as the files you want to share are kept in your Dropbox folder. But how do you share and sync files that are outside of your Dropbox folder?

In this quick guide, we will be using Terminal on your Mac to let you sync any files to your Dropbox automatically without having to keep these files in your Dropbox folder, and even sync them automatically with specific folder on another computer if need be.

Sync any folder on Mac

Before you can continue, you will need a Dropbox account. Make sure you download the app to your Mac after your account is created.
To sync any files on your Mac to Dropbox cloud storage without transferring or duplicating a file to your Dropbox folder, follow these simple steps;

1. Open your Terminal window, type "ln -s", hit space and leave it, do not enter.
   
   
2. Open your Finder and locate the folder you want to sync with Dropbox.
   
3. Drag and drop the folder to your Terminal window, and the path should appear after the line ln -s. Again, don’t hit enter and leave it.
   
   
4. Open your Finder again, locate the Dropbox folder and drag it to your Terminal window. Now you have the path to your Dropbox folder in your Terminal.
   
   
   The final line that will appear on your Terminal should be "ln -s <path to folder> <path to dropbox>"
   
5. Now, hit Enter
   After you hit enter, nothing happens, but the next time you save a new file in your selected folder, it will be sync’ed with Dropbox. Open your Dropbox folder to see the shortcut to that folder that has been created.
   
   
   In this example, I sync’ed my Desktop folder, so whenever I take a screenshot, it will automatically sync with Dropbox.
   

Sync any folder between two Macs

If you own more than one Mac and you want to make sure every Mac has the same settings or the same files in it to save time, you can use this method.

1. Make sure you have done the previous steps on your first Mac.
   
2. From your second Mac, open your Terminal and type the line "ln -s". Hit space and leave it. Do not hit enter.
   
3. Drag and drop the folder you have already sync’ed with Dropbox in the previous steps, to your Terminal. The path will now appear on Terminal. Do not hit enter.
   
4. Now leave your Terminal, open Finder and locate the folder you want to sync with your second Mac, and delete it. Make sure you make a backup first though, just in case. For example on the first Mac, I sync my ‘Desktop’ folder, which now I can access from my second Mac via Dropbox, so I will delete the original Desktop folder on my second Mac.
   
5. After deleting it, drag and drop the parent directory of the deleted folder to your Terminal.
   
   Your Terminal should have "ln -s <folder path from Dropbox> <path to parent directory of deleted folder>"
   
6. Hit Enter.
   

Conclusion

Now whenever you save a file from your first Mac, you will see it on your second Mac as long they both are connected to Dropbox. In this example, when I take a screenshot on my first Mac, it will automatically appear on the second Mac without me having to transfer or duplicate files to and from my Dropbox folder.

How to Type Faster by Avoiding Autocorrect Mistakes on iOS

Typing on iOS device is an almost flawless experience – until the autocorrect function spoils everything, sometimes making a joke out of something when it wasn’t your intention in the first place.

Speed typing in iOS is almost impossible when you need to type words that are not in the dictionary used on the iOS, and often times an autocorrect popup will appear suddenly, interrupting the delivery of your message.
In this article, you will find a short and simple trick on how to avoid annoying autocorrects on your iOS devices.

Recommended Reading: iOS 5: 10 More Things You May Not Know

Avoid Autocorrect on IOS

1. Type a word that is not found in the dictionary, to make the autocorrect appear. In this example, we use the word ‘maggi‘.
   
   
2. Don’t hit space just yet, but continue typing an extra letter at the end of the word.
   
   
3. Now delete that extra letter, and notice that the autocorrect has disappeared.
   
   
4. Hit space and continue completing your sentence.
   
   

That’s it! It takes some getting used to but after awhile, it will come naturally to you. Type faster than before without being annoyed by silly autocorrect popups ever again!

How to Include Mouse Pointer in a Screen Capture

[Mac only] Have you ever wanted to have your mouse cursor captured in your screenshot but could never make it happen? If you haven’t noticed, whether on a Mac or PC, every time you capture a screenshot, your mouse cursor cannot be found. Give it a shot.

If it is necessary to have the cursor in the screenshot, some of us may choose to edit the cursor in, which is a tad bit of a hassle. Why not just have the cursor snapped in together in the screenshot?
In this tutorial, we will show you how you can utilize a Mac tool to add in your mouse cursor, without installing any application or editing your photo. This tool is called ‘Grab’, and it’s a screenshot utility already available in your Mac.

1. ‘Grab’ Preferences

To start using Grab, go to your Applications > Utilities folder, look for ‘Grab’ and launch it. Click on ‘Preferences’ to select your mouse pointer.

2. select Mouse pointer

When you click on ‘Preferences’, a new window will pop up with a selection of pointer types you can use for screenshot purposes. Select the type of your choice.

Check the ‘Enable Sound’ to hear the screenshot capture sound effect.

3. Capture Style

Now that the mouse pointer is selected, go to the ‘Capture’ tab and click on either ‘Screen’ or ‘Timed Screen’ since these two options work best to capture the mouse cursor in your screenshot.

1. When ‘Screen’ is selected, a new window will appear to guide you on your screen grab. To start capture, click anywhere on your window area.
   
2. This guide window will not appear in your screenshot, and your mouse pointer will appear as selected earlier.
   
   
3. When ‘Timed Screen’ is selected, another guide window will appear and you will have 10 seconds to prepare where you want to place your mouse pointer.
   Click on the ‘Start Timer’ and position your cursor where you want it within 10 seconds.
   
   

4. The screenshot

After a screenshot is captured by Grab, a new window will appear with a snapshot showing your result.

To save the image, click on ‘File’ and ‘Save’. Note that file will be saved in ‘.TIFF’ format,

Alternatively, if you want to copy the image and save it elsewhere, click on ‘Edit’ and then ‘Copy’ and just paste it elsewhere.

Conclusion

Capturing a screenshot has never been this easier. No more hide-and-seek with the elusive mouse cursor. Without even installing any application, you can get your cursor in a good screenshot.

How to Save Video Files Played on Browser [Quicktip]

[Windows only] You have just played a video on your browser, streaming from a website like Youtube and was wondering how to save the video file on your computer. Unless there’s a save button on the video, you need to find a video downloader which would cost you double the bandwidth usage.

There are many video downloaders out there available as extensions to your browsers, you can simply download a video on any website by providing the video link, or by clicking on an extension download button that would appear somewhere on your browser.
What we are going to share in this article however is a different approach. Instead of first view, then download which doubles your bandwidth usage), VideoCacheView allows you to simply view any video on the Web then save it to your computer right away. What VideoCacheView does is collect all the video files from your browser cache folder and list them in an application window so you can access and save them without having to play it back from the Web.

Save Video Files From Cache Folder

To start saving videos you play on the web, go to the VideoCacheView website and scroll down until you see the download link, download the zip file to your Desktop for easier access or anywhere within your computer. The file unzipped should look like this:

Now play any video on the web, or if you have not cleared your browser cache since the last time you viewed a video, you can then open the VideoCacheView application. Click ‘Run’ to run the application.

When you run the application, you will see a list of videos played on your browser, ignoring the name, highlight the video of choice and click the ‘play’ button to preview the video, and click the ‘Copy selected files to’ button to save the video file.

Once you decided to save the video file and click the save button, a popup window will appear. Select the location you want to save the file to, check the necessary boxes to prevent duplicates and name the file accordingly.

That’s all you need to do; your file is now saved in the selected folder. Open the folder and you will see list of files you have saved.

Conclusion

If you are using other browser extensions to save the video files played on browser, saving the video will require a download process. With VideoCacheView you can feed your video junkie obsession and make collections of any video that is available on the Web.

How to (Automatically) Backup Your Website into Dropbox

As owners of websites, one of the more important things you should do is to regularly backup the website. Most web hosting providers will enable daily or weekly backups, mainly for their disaster recovery purpose only. If you want to personally oversee a backup of your website, you can do it by yourself using the Backup function in hosting control panels like cPanel, Plesk and DirectAdmin. As a webmaster or domain owner, you are responsible for this task.
A good backup should have following criteria:

• Backup your data as frequently as possible.
• Give higher priority to critical data like database and web contents. Try to exclude temporary files.
• Your backup should NOT be saved inside the same server.
• Your backup should be retrievable and accessible anytime, anywhere.
• You should get notified for every backup status which has been scheduled.
• Your backup should be compressed, if disk space or bandwidth is your concern.

It is good if you can have your one FTP server to store backup remotely. But, what if the FTP server is down? How can we automate the backup task with limited access to the server? How can you be sure that the availability is always there? Cloud storage is your answer.
Cloud storage is becoming the best way to store files. Popular providers like Amazon S3, Dropbox, iCloud and Box.net are offering these facilities for free with some limitations. But, none of them are supporting FTP as the medium to transfer while almost all of webhosting providers only allow this transfer method.

Recommended Reading: Automate Your Dropbox Files With Actions

Backup Box

Here’s where Backup Box comes in. Backup Box helps you securely transfer anything on an FTP server to your Dropbox account. Actually, Backup Box can integrate your FTP account with cloud storage providers like Amazon, GitHub, Box.net and Flickr as well. At this very moment, only Dropbox integration is supported while the others are still under development. It is free to use, with limited features like monthly backup schedule and immediate transfer schedule. In this post, I am focusing on preparing the backup data for weekly backup while running on cPanel server.

We can use this tool with various ways of implementation such as 1, directly copying the web directory using FTP and transferring to Dropbox (compressed or uncompressed) or 2, creating a compressed backup (cPanel backup) and using FTP to fetch the backup to Dropbox.
Before we proceed with the tutorial, ensure that you have following required information:

• An FTP account which is mapped to your web directory. Get it from your hosting control panel.
• A Dropbox account. You can register here for free.
• A Backup Box account. You can register here for free.

Web directory > FTP > Dropbox

Since the database is also important, we need to prepare the database backup and put it into our web directory. If you are running on Linux hosting, you can use a task scheduler called a cron job with some help from mysqldump. In cPanel, it is located under cPanel > Advanced > Cron jobs.
Let’s use the following data as an example:

1. Web directory path: /home/username/public_html  
2. cPanel username: mycpanel  
3. cPanel password: mypass123$  

Create a new weekly cron job and use the following command:

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1. mysqldump --opt -Q -u mycpanel -p'mypass123$' --all-databases > /home/username/public_html/databases.sql  

here’s an Example:

This will create an SQL backup file which includes all the databases under your cPanel account. Login into Backup Box. On the left panel, login into the FTP account by clicking the ‘gear’ icon. On the right panel, login into your Dropbox account.

You can choose Transfer public_html as a folder in the Transfer Options. This will transfer the whole public_html folder including all files into your Dropbox account. You can now start the immediate transfer by clicking Review. This will transfer the public_html folder to Dropbox. Once done, you can create Monthly schedule to automate this backup task monthly. Just click Monthly > select Date and Time > Finalize and Run. Note: If you want to use weekly or daily backup, you need to upgrade your subscription as stated in the website. Do not forget to change the cron job setting based on when you want the backup schedule to happen

cPanel backup > FTP > Dropbox

The good thing about cPanel is you can generate your own backup automatically using cPanel API. In this case, we will use PHP script to run on schedule to generate backup. Since the backup location needs to be exclusively for Backup Box, we will need to create an FTP account which is mapped to a new backup folder.
Go to cPanel > FTP and create an FTP account as the screenshot below. Do not create the FTP directory under public_html because it is accessible publicly via web browser (unless you protect the directory with a password):

We need to use PHP with cPanel API to trigger the backup process. Download this file (cpanel-php-backup.zip) and unzip it. You should see 2 files, cpanel-backup.php and xmlapi.php.inc. Change all required information inside cpanel-backup.php as below:

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1. // Credentials for cPanel account  
2. $source_server_ip = ""; // Server IP or domain name eg: 212.122.3.77 or cpanel.domain.tld  
3. $cpanel_account = ""; // cPanel username  
4. $cpanel_password = ""; // cPanel password  
5.   
6. // Credentials for FTP to Backup Box  
7. $ftpacct = ""; // FTP account  
8. $ftppass = ""; // FTP password  
9. $email_notify = ''; // Email address for backup notification  

Save the file and upload both files into your public_html directory using FTP. You can start to generate a backup by accessing the PHP file directly via browser, which is usually http://www.yourwebsite.com/cpanel-backup.php .
In order to automate cPanel backup creation, we need to setup a weekly cron job into cPanel and use following command:

1. php -q /home/username/public_html/cpanel-backup.php  

Here is a sample:

Login into Backup Box. On the left panel, login into the FTP account (use the backup box FTP account) and in the right panel, login into your Dropbox account:

Since we store backup files into a dedicated folder, we can only transfer the contents of it. Select Transfer only the contents of / in the Transfer Options as the transfer method.
You can now start the immediate transfer by clicking Review. This will transfer the public_html folder to Dropbox. Once done, you can create Monthly schedule to automate this backup task monthly. Just click Monthly > select Date and Time > Finalize and Run.
Note: If you want to use weekly or daily backup, you need to upgrade your subscription as stated in the website. If you do, do not forget to change the cron job setting according to your backup schedule. Another thing, the PHP script will delete all previous cPanel backup before it generate new backups. This to make sure your backup will not eat up much disk space.
For more backup solutions check out these following:

How to Transfer / Merge Your Google+ Accounts

Early adapters would have created a Google+ account with their @gmail.com addresses. When Google announced the support of Google+ in Google Apps, most users face a dilemma: Should I continue using the Google+ that’s associated with my gmail or should I register Google+ with my Google App account? Then, there is the third option of maintaining 2 sets of Google+ accounts.

If you opt for the third option, you will probably end up with 2 sets of friends that are duplicated over two different accounts. The best option would be to merge these two Google+ accounts together and here’s how you can, with Google Takeout.

Things you Need to Know

Here are a couple of things you need to know before and after initiating a transfer:

Before the transfer

Decide which of your account should be the Source account and which should be your Destination account. At the end of the transfer, the Source’s profile will be replaced by the Destination’s profile. The transfer will occur 7 days after the request is initiated by you, during which time you can still cancel the transfer if it has yet to start. An initiated transfer will take 48 hours and you will get limited access to both accounts during the period.
To cancel transfer just login to your account and click on Cancel Transfer at the bottom of the page because if you got the Source/Destination wrong, this ‘mistake’ can only be undone after 6 months.

After the transfer

Since the destination profile is the profile that stays, a few things will happen after the transfer. Firstly, Circles, Blocks and Ignores will be copied from the Source profile to the Destination profile. Circles with the same name in both Source and Destination profiles will be merged. Profile info, comments, posts and authorship information in Source will not be transferred. Google+ pages associated with Source will also not be transferred to Destination.

How to transfer

Now that you’ve got the Source and Destination profiles sorted out, here’s how you start the transfer:


Step 1. Login to Google Takeout with your Source credentials.

Step 2. Click Transfer your Google+ connections to another account to begin transferring your Circles.

Step 3. Enter your Destination profile’s email address and click Sign in to this account.

Step 4. Verify your the information for both profiles then click Transfer to start the transfer.

Step 5. With this done, the transfer will be done in the next 7 days. You’ll receive an email in your Source email account.

Conclusion

And there you have it. No more running between two (or more) accounts in an effort to keep your Google+ profile active. Merge them with Google Takeout and have all your friends under one account.