Mehrangarh Fort of Jodhpur, India

Mehrangarh Fort, located in Jodhpur in the state of Rajasthan, is a massive fort located on a hill 400 feet above the city. Its walls are up to 36 meters high and 21 meters wide. Inside these imposing thick walls, there are gardens, courthouses, several palaces known for their intricate carvings and expansive courtyards, elaborate balconies, arched galleries, and heavily ornamented private residences. Looking straight down a perpendicular cliff, the famously impregnable fort is an imposing landmark, especially at night, when it's bathed in yellow light.

The approach to the fort is guarded by no fewer than seven huge gates. The first gate, the Victory Gate, was built by Maharaja Man Singh to commemorate his victories over Jaipur and Bikaner armies. Fattehpol (also meaning 'victory') gate was built by Maharaja Ajit Singh to mark the defeat of the Mughals. The palm imprints upon these made by 15 royal satis (Jodhpur queens who burnt themselves on the funeral pyres of their husbands), still attract much attention even today.



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Past the gates, the fort-palace takes one's breath away. Across from huge courtyards are the set wings of palatial apartments that have been built over five centuries of bristling history. Today, managed as a museum by the royal trust, only some of the more spectacular palaces of Meharangarh are open to the visitors. These consists of Moti Mahal (Palace of Pearls) with its pierced screen windows overlooking the coronation seat where the Rathore ruler have been ritually anointed to rule; Jhanki Mahal (Palace of Glimpses), from where the royal ladies watched the official proceedings in the courtyard; the royal Darbar Takhat or throne room with its octagonal throne; and the Rang Mahal (Palace of Colors) where the maharaja would play Holi with his wives. Also noteworthy are Sheesh Mahal, Phool Mahal, Umaid Vilas and Maan Vilas.

The various buildings inside the fort now serve as museums which hosts a well preserved collection of musical instruments, palanquins, furniture and cannons on the fort's ramparts.

Mehrangarh Fort was built in the 15th century by Rao Jodha when he shifted his capital from nearby Mandore to Jodhpur. The foundation of this fort was laid on 12th May, 1459 by Jodha himself on a rocky hill six miles south of Mandore. This hill was known as Bhaurcheeria, the mountain of birds. According to legend to build the fort he had to displace the hill's sole human occupant, a hermit called Cheeria Nathji, the lord of birds. Upset at being forced to move Cheeria Nathji cursed Rao Jodha with "Jodha! May your citadel ever suffer a scarcity of water!". Rao Jodha managed to appease the hermit by building a house and a temple in the fort very near the cave the hermit had used for meditation. Jodha then took an extreme measure to ensure that the new site proved propitious; he buried a man alive in the foundations. The man was Rajiya Bambi (Meghwal) and he was promised that in return his family would forever more be looked after by the Rathores. It was a promise that has been honored and Rajiya's descendants continue to live in Raj Bagh, Rajiya's Garden, the estate bequeathed by Jodha.



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Source: Rajasthan Tourism India, Wikipedia




By Kaushik

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How to Make a .GIF Animation

Animated Gifs have been around since the dawn of the internet but they have become very popular again especially on media sharing sites like Tumblr or Reddit. Services like Vine and now Instagramhave made it easy to create and share short videos.

By creating your own gif you can make something extraordinary that really captures attention and inspires imagination.

Want to add something unique to the mix? Make your own animated gif!
FIRST YOU WILL NEED






Adobe AfterEffects

Try AfterEffects Free







Adobe Photoshop

Try Photoshop Free


Adobe’s software is fairly expensive but you can try it free for 30 days at Adobe.com.





HOW TO MAKE A GIF

IN 4 EASY STEPS




➊ CREATE ANIMATION IN AFTER EFFECTS


Get creative! Import any clips, graphics and artwork into After Effects and start messing around with animation.

Creating a short animation in After Effects takes a little effort but is not too difficult to figure out.
You could start from scratch, import a piece of video or one of your existing pieces of artwork.
You can mix text and effects in endless ways with After Effects
I simply started with an images of the Artopia logo and a short clip of some moving water. I layered the water clip on top and made the transfer mode ‘soft light’ this gave me the blending effect. That is all there is to it.
Most of my After Effects knowledge comes from videocopilot.net. They have over lots of great free tutorials!


➋ SAVE YOUR ANIMATION AS A .MOV FILE


Once you have made your animation After Effects you need to render (save/export) it as a .mov file.

Pick ’Composition -> Add to Render cue‘.
Choose Quicktime in the settings.
Select a location for your file and press render.
Gifs can play up to 15 frames pr. second so set the frame rate of your composition to 15 fps or lower.
Choose a lower FPS to make your animation run slower.




➌ IMPORT YOUR .MOV FILE INTO PHOTOSHOP

Once you have Photoshop open you need to get your video file into photoshop

Click ‘import -> video to layers‘ and select your .mov file.
If you want, adjust the length of your animation. Click ‘Ok’ and photoshop will automatically make an animation from your clip.
At this stage it is possible to do more with your animation in Photoshop like set the timing of individual frames.
If you don’t see a timeline, go to ‘View -> Timeline‘.


➍ SAVE TO A .GIF FROM PHOTOSHOP


Go to ‘File -> Save for Web…‘ to save your animation to a gif.
In these settings you have a chance to lower the image quality of your gif in order to make it a smaller file size.
Click ‘Save‘ and choose a location.



You’re done!

video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeZGwjVwDrc

credits to johannes

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How to Photoshop Yourself Into a Vampire

As we approach Halloween and get the chance to dress up in our favorite costumes, there are plenty of opportunities for spooky fun — especially if you have Photoshop handy.

SEE ALSO: 9 Excellent Apps For Discovering New Things

In this quick tutorial we’ll show you how to turn yourself into a vampire with some simple tricks.

What you'll need: Find a photo or use your own. Also, grab some creepy cat eyes and blood brushes.

1. Choosing the Photo

Take a photo of yourself. If it’s easier, get someone to help you, as you want to get the right lighting and composition.

Once you’ve got the shot you like, bring it into Photoshop and label the layer "Face."

2. Adjusting the Skin

Now, as a vampire’s skin is pale, we need to remove the color from her face. To do this, we’re going to create a mask so that we can add color to the rest of the image. Select the "Face" layer and choose "Hue/Saturation" under the "Create new fill or adjustment layer" option. Pull the Saturation slider back to “-87."

Using the Eraser Tool with a soft brush (make sure the color palette is set to white), carefully remove any masked areas that are covering sections of the photo you want in color.

In this photo I’ve kept the hair, eyes and lips in color. Depending on the level of detail you want, you will have to change the brush size to achieve the desired effect.

Now that you have removed the color, it's time to enhance the shadows around her face.

Select the face layer. This time, instead of choosing "Hue/Saturation" under the "Create new fill or adjustment layer" option, select the "Levels" option and move the sliders to enhance the shadows on the face. You can see the settings I used in the image below.

3. Vampire Eyes

Once we have the desired color and shading on the face, it's time to create the vampire eyes. You want something different from the standard human eye; I’ve decided to use a cat’s eyes from a photo I found.

Select an area around the cat’s left eye using the Rectangular Marquee Tool. Copy and paste the eye into your previous image and label the layer "Left Eye." Add a "Layer Mask" to the Left Eye layer and erase the area around the eye to match the human eye. Once you’ve done that, you may have to resize the eye.

Now that we have the eye in place, we need to enhance a little. Open up the "Layer Style" panel and select the "Inner Shadow" style. Use the image below as a guide.

It’s looking good, but we want the image to be a bit more vibrant. Select the Left Eye layer and choose "Vibrance" under the "Create new fill or adjustment layer" option. Under the properties, set the vibrance to “+85” and the saturation to “+100."

The left eye is now complete! Simply duplicate the Left Eye and Vibrance layers to create the right eye and move it into the appropriate position. You may have to resize and flip the image to make it fit again.

We’re starting to build up a selection of layers, so it might be a good idea to organize a few. I’ve decided to put the eyes into a separate group.

4. Vampire Teeth

The next step will focus on the vampire teeth. We’ll start by creating a simple triangle shape with the Pen Tool. You can call this layer "Left Tooth."

Once you’ve created the shape, erase some of the edging around the top, then apply the following styles to the layer:

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Now that you have created your tooth, you’ll need to duplicate this layer (naming it "Right Tooth") and place it appropriately on the other side of the mouth. You may have to erase some more edges to make it fit.

The teeth are starting to look good, but they’re a little too “shiny” for the photo. Depending on the quality of the self-portrait, you may want to add some noise to the teeth. First, make sure to Rasterize the teeth layers (right-click a layer and choose "Rasterize Layer"), then from the Filter menu choose Noise > Add Noise and follow the settings in the below image.

5. Blood

Depending what effect you are going for, you can also add some blood stains to the teeth. For most of the blood effects in this tutorial, I used a brush available for download online.

There are plenty of free brushes online, but make sure to ask permission to use them — some may require payment or credit for use.

To add the blood effect to the teeth, hold Control and click on the teeth layer you want to add blood to. Simply choose the appropriate brush and fill in the rest.

No vampire is complete without a bit of blood dripping from her mouth. You can create this effect by simply adding different shades of red around the lips.

First, create new layer called "Blood around mouth" and begin to color in something similar to the image below. Mix shades of red to get a patchy effect and finally change the blending mode on the layer to give the impression the blood is actually on the skin.

Lastly, I wanted to create a dripping blood effect running from the vampire’s mouth. I decided to use the blood brushes pack I downloaded earlier. Label this layer "Blood drip" and shape the drip in a way that looks convincing.

As you can see, the blood isn’t matching the image very well at the moment, but with a few style changes we can fix that. Use the following styles below.

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Now that we’ve finished, we should have our vampire! Muahahahahahahaha...

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How to Prevent Google From Using Your Profile Picture in Ads

Every time you Google something or click on an ad in a YouTube video, Google gets paid. They are estimated to make well over $100 million a day, and I honestly think that's low-balling it.

Of course, making more money than most countries do doesn't quite cut it for big bad Google. They recently announced integrating your personal Google+ profile pictures into their online ads, à la Facebook's Social Ads. That means that your face could be next to an ad for adult diapers without you ever knowing.

Pretty cool, right?

The Updated Terms of Service

If you've used Google in the past few days, you've probably seen the small disclaimer they've been running up top to inform people of their latest policy and terms of service changes. If not, you can check them out here. The most glaring change is the use of your profile picture in advertisements.

Google proclaims that the changes are being made to better recommend services and products to those people in your social circles.

It should be noted that your profiles and likes (+1s) will only be shown to people that you're currently connected to and have chosen to share certain information with, just like Facebook claims to do with their Social Ads.

Also, your profile will only appear next to ads or products that you personally have followed, commented on, or shared yourself.

NOTE: If you are under 18, you may see shared endorsements from others, but your own name and profile will not be paired with shared endorsements in ads and certain other contexts.

How to Protest Profile Picture in Ads

Even still, people do not like the fact that their face will be used to sell something without any form of compensation. Some people have taken to protesting. Using Google Chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt's face in place of their own profile photo.

If you want to stick it to the man, that's the way to go, at least until they build an algorithm that deletes every likeness of Schmidt on Google+ except for on his own profile.

How to Simply Opt Out of Profile Pictures in Ads

If protesting is not for you, you can opt out of Google's new ad program. Thankfully, it's pretty darn simple.

Follow this link to visit the Shared Endorsements in Ads setting, and scroll to the bottom where you will see this message and a small check box underneath. Alternatively, you can get here by going to your Google+ Settings and clicking on Edit next to Share Endorsements.

All you need to do is un-check that box that says, "Based upon my activity, Google may show my name and profile photo in shared endorsements that appear in ads."

Google will try to dissuade you. Ignore them and click Continue.

Your settings will then save, and it should say "off" next to Shared Endorsements in your Google+ Settings now. Google knows how to make things easy at least, something Facebook still needs to work on.

Original man in a frame photo via Shutterstock

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