If you do a lot of graphic arts, or photography, Digimarc offers the only major watermarking system that I’m aware of.  With a subscription you can track your watermarks, and even use Digimarcs backup system which is kind of cool.  As of now, the plugin only supports Photoshop and Adobe Photoshop Elements which seems pretty restrictive to me.

The system works, don’t get me wrong, it does exactly what it’s touted to do, and quickly - but the support for this thing is dismal.  I loaded the Photoshop plugin on my old system and as I recall it was a bit of a bear, I ended up fighting with it for a while to get it installed correctly.  Now that I’m trying to install it on my new system, it’s a no go.  I’m guessing this is a lack of Vista support.

Regardless of whether you can get the downloaded plugin to work, Photoshop CS3 comes with an older one already loaded and you can log your Digimarc ID into it.  It looks like something circa 1990 though, very retro if you know what I mean.

Anyway, it works beautifully, with minimal degredation of your graphic though you’ll have to play with the settings a bit to attain the best match.

UPDATE!:  I found the good drivers for this, if you need them contact me  at bunneh at pixelbunneh dot com or drop a comment here and I’ll send you a download link.  The correct files look much better, more like we’re in the correct century, though it does say it’s from 2005 :/

Speaking of home renovations, I had the idea that I would do a 3D mockup of what we’re planning to do with our bathroom, you know, to get an better feel for what would fit where etc.  The first problem I ran into is that most 3D applications don’t use feet or inches (or meters and centimeters), they use “units”.  That sounds okay on the face of it, but when you get to the details, it just didn’t work well for me.

For instance, say I have a wall that is 72 inches long, or 6 feet.  Do I use 6 units, or 72 of them?  I end up with either a huge construct, or a tiny one.  I didn’t spend a lot of time worrying over this, since I knew that Google Sketchup used conventional measurements, so I went and grabbed a copy of it.

Sketchup, like all software, has a slight learning curve, but nothing horrid.  That said, there are some glaringly obvious problems with it.  Let’s say I’m drawing a wall, so I make a cube right?  I then want that cube to be 6 feet wide, sounds simple doesn’t it?  It isn’t.  When you insert the length you want the wall, Sketchup marks where that would be in your 3D space, instead of just making the wall 6 feet long.  Stupid.

Anyway, it’s still a great tool to use for home renovation or construction, but if any of you know of an easier way to do this, please please let me know!

Been busy with other things recently, sorry about that.  If I could renovate my home with the same speed and detail I can do one in 3D, I would be a very happy Bunneh.  Alas, I can’t.

Anyway, in my spare time I’ve been working on some textures for a Halloween themed set for Second Life.  Halloween is just a fun time to build, as it can go anywhere from Gothic Grunge to Casper the Ghost.

A few quick tips for Halloween textures, FilterForge for your basic backgrounds rock/brick and Photoshop brushes for the details.  Deviant Art has a huge database of brushes and note that the newer versions of GIMP can use PS brushes also.  Please folks, read the user agreement carefully before you grab and use the brushes!

Creepy trees and a few gargoyles, maybe a bat or two and you’re good to go!