OddballGreg - Photoshop 101 (A Newbie's Guide To Professional Photoshop)

Do you realize how trippy it is photoshopping a picture of Photoshop taken while I was photoshopping a picture of Photoshop? (It's Photoception! Teehee)

Photoshop. It's a common subject of conversation in today's world, with models being edited in magazines, competitions being held for the best images, and this blog being made pretty much entirely by it. Suffice to say, I wasn't always very good at it, but I do have some handy tips to pass on if you're interested.

First and foremost, allow me to preface this article by saying that it was largely inspired by the great reception we had to the article I wrote the other week, "Drawing 101", which was basically like this, but with pencils rather than a mouse. (Teehee) Also, do keep in mind, that when I say "A newbie's guide", I'm actually talking about myself. I'm by no means the best out there, (That title belongs to people like Alexander Koshelkov), but I do have a good few handy tips that'll put you a few months ahead of the learning curve I've had to deal with as I started doing the graphics work for this blog. So without further ado, let us discuss the basics.

First and foremost, if you've just started with photoshop, and you don't own one of those ridiculous expensive touchscreens or drawing tablets, just quickly throw any ideas of drawing on your computer, out the window. Drawing with a mouse is like trying to make the Mona Lisa with water colours and a pencil instead of paint brush. It doesn't work that way. (Trust me, I tried.) While it's still a great idea to eventually get one such tablet for the ease of use with Photoshop, budget users of myself simply make do with what we have. (Which is to say; a gaming mouse and too much time.)

Now that you've relieved yourself of that vacuous notion, I'll point out that Photoshop is fairly intuitive from the get go. Things do tend to be where you expect them to be, once you know what you're actually looking for. (That's actually the hardest part, knowing what you actually want to do.)

Buttons. Buttons... Everywhere. I will point out that I am using Photoshop CS6. There's probably some things not here that Adobe CC has added since they discontinued support for CS6.

I'll point out, that your best friends will be items such as the "Lasso" and "Magnetic Lasso" tool, clipping/layer masks, the control, alt, shift and space keys, and those numerous cascading buttons along the the top left of the screen. Lets talk about the tools and features first.

The Tools

Cascading Buttons. Always fun. Also a mainstay of basically every program ever...

Firstly, like any program, Photoshop and basically every Adobe program, a very large quantity of your functionality comes from the cascading toolbar. Things like changing the size of your canvas to adding images in as new layers to even changing the layout of Photoshop itself are up in here. (And Filters. Filters are also important.) I highly recommend getting familiar with these and their functions by going through them and testing them out as they can make your life a great deal easier.

The "View" button gives you access to a great deal of handy, non-default functionality in Photoshop such as showing grids and making things align to them, which in my case is fantastic since the custom font I use for the blog headers requires me to align each letter by hand. The "Filter" button contains what is essentially a bunch of effects you can apply to your image, the most commonly used being the "Gaussian Blur" which allows you to make your image well, blur. Great for implying speed or hazy vision, or simply tying a new element into the greater picture when necessary. Then under the "Select" button, we have the "colour range" and "modify" options which are fantastic for selecting specific colours in a picture, or simply changing the your selection in a more intelligent way such as growing it by a few pixels or feathering it. There's plenty more functionality to be had in these buttons, so make sure to go through them well.

Next up, we have the selection tools, and layer/clipping masks. Now, I'm not going to explain every tool since if you have Photoshop open, you'll realize that a great deal of them are straightforward and even have tooltips if you're not sure what it's supposed to do. An eraser, erases, and brush paints, etc and so forth. I am, however, pointing out that some of these tools are actually far more important than others despite not being obviously such.

Most importantly, I point out the lasso tools for one simple reason. People that use Photoshop like to cut things out, and these are by far the most effective tools for doing so. When I first started, I would painstakingly erase everything from an image that I was placing into the other image, which was stupid in hindsight considering how easy the lasso tools make it. The magnetic lasso will automatically create a selections for objects along any obvious borders that you bring your mouse close to, such as mountains along a skyline. Far easier than doing it manually, so you can remove the skyline (or mountains) with far fewer clicks and far less effort. In the case of not as obvious borders or when you want specific selections, the polygonal lasso is fantastic for cutting out objects cleanly as opposed to the incomplete cut-out effect a eraser tends to leave by simply clicking along the border of what you want. Some people also use the pen tool for this, among many other things.

Of course, the other option is some clever use of Clipping and/or Layer masks. A Clipping mask is a layer which only shows where there are pixels on the layer below it. So for example, this blog's title has the faces of myself and JovialJman. By creating a layer of the inside of the letters, and then setting the pictures of our faces as clipping masks, they only show on those letters. Far easier than cutting out our faces for those exact shapes. A Layer Mask is roughly the same, but can be applied directly to a layer instead of made from another layer. It's essentially a white board that dictates where the layer shows. By blackening pieces of the board, you can determine where that layer shows, with one less layer. (I don't personally use Layer Masks all that often, but Aaron Nace is very fond of them. I'll tell you about him later.) These items specifically, will make your life while using Photoshop TONS easier than mine was when I first started out. ONTO SHORTCUTS!

Shortcuts

Another great thing to remember, is that Photoshop was designed for effective workflow by professional programmers. Apart from the latest version being constantly improved and updated,(Provided you're paying the $50 dollars a month to use it.), that means that it's made to be quick and easy to use once you're familiar with it. Most functions have hotkeys. My favorite is "Control + S" since that saves my work. You only need to lose 10 hours of work to a power failure once to use those two buttons more than the rest of your keyboard. (And to headdesk.)

In addition to that, pressing "Control + Shift + S" Opens the "Save As" window, so there's no need to press the "File" button. There's also things like pressing "Control + T" to transform the current selection, pressing "Control + Alt+ C" to resize your image canvas, or simply holding space while creating a selection to change the location of the selection. (Again, another handy tip from Aaron Nace.) Here is what they call a "Cheat Sheet" which has a whole bunch of the keyboard commands in a convenient PDF image that you can print. Great for improving workflow once you're familiar with what you're actually looking to do in Photoshop. These will be great for helping you to make good compositions, easily.

How To Make Good Compositions

So you know how to you use the tools and you're familiar with the functions, but how do you get a good looking composition, (image)? Well, firstly, that's something that comes with time and hard work. Like my Drawing 101 article, I will point out that what I know in Photoshop has taken a fair bit of work and dedication to learn to effectively do. But there are a few things I can mention that will help you in the right direction.

Firstly, like drawings, lighting and shading is the be all and all of your image... Usually. Like when drawing a cartoon, it might not always matter, but if you want realism, then you need to make sure that you understand where the light is supposed to be coming from in your image, and adjust your changes accordingly. In my composition called "War Bear" which can still be found right at the beginning of this blog's archives, or below if you're lazy, I created the room and lighting around the teddy bear entirely by hand. It was by no means an easy process, but understanding how light works in the world makes faking it all the more easier with a bit of work.

Ironically, Having just looked at it now, there are still tons of ways I could have improved this picture, and there are many easier ways to do the lighting than the manual hand work I actually did here.

Another thing to consider are the image adjustment's which are located just above the Layers window by default. (Shown below) These are great for tying the individual elements of your image together. While shadows and lighting  are important for making an object look like it belongs wherever you've put it, image wide colour or curves correction can really be the deciding factor in just how convincing your creation is. You'll note that the TCSA blog post header images all have either a blue or yellow hue adjustment (as of writing this post) which helps to make the background image seem relevant to the image, rather than just something caricatures were pasted over. They're also great for changing contrast and brightness or even removing the colour from the image or making it more vibrant. All of which can be effective in tying the new object into the original image, or for tying the composition together.

The final thing I need to mention in this case, is resolution. Resolution can make or break your composition. A lot of images around the web are miniature 600x300 (Also known as FREAKING TINY) or some other ridiculously unhelpful size. A good thing to note is that images scale down fine enough, but blowing them up more than a few hundred pixels tends to cause pixelation and completely ruins your image's believeability. Get a good camera, preferably in the 9 megapixel or more range, and take some decent photos if you want to make decent compositions. Which brings us to the next important lesson. PUBLIC DOMAIN!

Public Domain

First rule of the internet with Photoshop. If you want to do something with an image you didn't take, don't. Second rule of the internet with Photoshop, if you really need images but can't take them yourself, celebrate the inception of Creative Commons, and go find some public domain images. The worlds laws about using images tends to be about as strict as it is on theft. Ie, it doesn't belong to you, so if you use it, people are going to sue you quite badly if they didn't give your permission to do whatever you're doing.

Thankfully, Creative Commons has a large following of photographers who enjoy giving their works to the public domain to use, waiving their rights to the image in exchange for fame for their patronage. (A great deal in my opinion. If you do this, I truly thank you.) The website I most commonly visit for this purpose is Pixabay.com which has thousands of high resolution images which are released to the public domain when they are uploaded to Pixabay. Obviously, a great resource for the budget Photoshop artist.

To a lesser extent, you can explore DeviantArt.com for a a vast trove of resources like custom fonts and textures, but be wary of quagmire of potential attributions you might have to make if you decide to do that. There's fantastic things on there, but you could have a large issue on your hands if you mistake something for being free for use and incur the ire of another artist. (Reputations are important when your success is dependent on fame.) Speaking of fame, this brings us to the final piece of advice I can offer.

Tutorials and Phlearn

Remember I mentioned Aaron Nace? He's the presenter of the YouTube channel Phlearn, which does frequent, free tutorials on many aspects of Photoshop. Did I mention they're free? A couple of the things I've mentioned in this post are the result of watching Phlearn's tutorials. (Some is from other sources and my own effort. Nothing quite compares to the entertaining and interesting quality of the Phlearn videos though.)

Fun to watch, and greatly educational if you're really interested in developing your skills at Photoshop, these videos are invaluable in terms of saved time and effort. Many of the things that took me weeks of tinkering to figure out are basically just handed to you by Aaron in these video's, so I highly suggest you check them out.

In any case, that's about all I can think to offer for this Newbie guide to Professional Photoshop. I hope that it has proved informative and useful to you, or at least been entertaining to read. If it has, or you would like me to answer any questions about something specifically, then make sure to let us know down in the comments below, or via Facebook/Twitter. We here at TCSA love to hear from guys. Also, if you have any friends looking to improve their Photoshop skills, consider sharing this post with them. I'm sure they will appreciate it. Of course, if you would like to read more interesting posts like this one, then do be sure to like the Official TCSA Facebook page and/or follow us on Twitter using the associated buttons on the bar to the left so that you can get the latest posts, as they're published. Regardless of what you do, I thank you for having taken the time to read this lengthy article; hope that you have/had an absolutely FANTASTIC day, and I will speak again soon.

Happy Editing my friends.

Thespian Thursday - Tips on Being a Better Actor

Hello and welcome to Thespian Thursday; the day where I pass on some tips to help you be a better actor, and maybe tell you about some the ridiculous things I've done as an actor.

There was a joke here about my future being so bright that I needed to wear sunglasses inside...
I didn't anticipate actual blinding glare on the camera lens...

So you want to be an actor eh? Or at least a better one at any rate. I think I've got some tips that might prove handy if you're interested. I've had a fair degree of success in acting (In theater performance at any rate, I'm working towards expanding into media.) As an actor I've had to perform roles ranging from the mentally deranged, to the cowardly and weak, to a figment of someone's mind. There was also a pirate somewhere in there as well. (Although he was mostly famous for an incredibly well drawn beard and ear piercings.)

Out of these performances, I found that I had something of a natural talent for acting.
Last Thespian Thursday I spoke about some of my successes as a result. (I didn't mention the superman slides though. *Sad face* How on earth could I forget those.) In any case, I can say with fair accuracy, at least as far as I'm concerned, that talent is not everything. What I'm going to tell you about in this post can be learnt with some work. Talent is by no means some magical thing you're born with, it's merely the luck of being good at the right things for a task, and in this case, you can learn the right things. (Maybe you'll even become famous one day. It'll take some work though.)

The most important piece of advice I can give you is this: 

Don't act words and actions, act thoughts and emotions.

This is something I tell pretty much anyone who's struggling with a particular role. If you're trying to portray a character, portray a character, now the things they do. The most believable actors spend weeks and even months "getting into character". They sit and think in the way their character would, consider things from their perspective, and most importantly, learn their emotional reactions to things. You will typically find that as you sit and learn about the character you're portraying, you will slowly begin to grow a better understanding of them and thus be able to more accurately act as them. How can you express the outrage of a businessman who's been robbed if you do not understand how important his money was to him, or how hard he had worked for it. Motivations are key to a believable portrayal. One of the greatest exercises I was ever made to do was when the director of my first play lined the cast up and began demanding us to answer questions about the character that were meaningless to the play and unanswered by the script. 

"What's your favorite colour?" "Why do you enjoy drawing?" "Who were your parents." These questions all served to prompt us into learning who our characters truly were. As such, we were far more capable of portraying them as fully fleshed personalities, as averse to simply a jumble of actions and words. The best part: achieving that level of understanding means that should you by mischance, forget your lines, or a fellow actor forget their, you will be able to far more believably improvise actions and lines in order to maintain the flow of the play. 

So to summarize, I was not good because I was born good, I was able to perform well because of my understanding of my characters perspective and motivations. To portray a someone well, you need to see the things as they would, understand how they would deem things as important or unimportant in helping them achieve their goals, and of course, know why those things would be important or unimportant to them. And you can figure all this out by simply sitting down and considering the life of who you wish to portray. Perhaps even imagine having a conversation with them. How would they react to the things they do. What kind of mannerisms do they have? Does their face have laugh lines or a sunken cheeks and a scowl? Start at the basics, and simply grow to know your character, and I guarantee that you will perform far more believably. 

And if you're still wondering what I meant by superman slides; I found it immensely amusing to jump out at velocity and slide from curtain to curtain of my old school stage. I think most of the bruises and scrapes I accrued were results of that... but to be honest. IT WAS AWESOME. (Teehee)

Anyways, hopefully you've found something here of value in your acting pursuit or perhaps for some other reason. Or maybe you just found my eloquent typing a pleasure to read. Whatever it was, I hope you enjoyed it. If you have a suggestion on other things that may help budding actors or something else you would like to share, feel free to leave a comment below. Perhaps even consider sharing this with any actor friends you have who are struggling and don't forget to like my new Facebook Page by pressing the button underneath the Twitter feed. (That's that gray thing to the right of this post.)

That's enough from me. I hope you guys have/had and AWESOME day, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.

Later people.

Website Wednesday - Handy add-ons for improving your blog

Hello and welcome to Website Wednesday. That day of the week where I point out some nifty tricks about Blog's I learnt, and also why hitting your head on your desk is a bad idea.

Did I seriously post a screenshot of my blog onto my blog?
Yes. It's oddballception.

If you, like me, find that you're interested in spending copious hours of your daily time exposing various faucets of your life to the internet for the common masses to consume and judge you upon. (Sounds scary when I put it that way actually.) Then you may be interested in starting one of these whimsical and to be honest fairly frightening things we call "Blog's". What is this "Blog" you ask? If I couldn't answer that, I fear my highschool Computer Applications Technology teacher would track me down and skin me. (God know's she said it enough.) A blog is something of an online diary as she termed it. A place where you post things about your day to day life in order to inform. (or in my case typically, entertain.)

I'll be blunt about it. Blogging isn't easy. I have in my lifetime started... about 10. Ranging on subjects from art, to philosophy, to reviews. A common problem for me was a tendency to grow bored or run out of ideas (Which led to frequent head-desking and a fair bit of pain.) Luckily I eventually struck upon the idea for this blog which, is to say, I amalgamated all my previous idea's into one package and called it game. No idea why, but it seems to be working so far. That's beside the point though.

If you should be one of those few who feel the necessity to expose your inner mind to the harshness of the world, I would suggest a few things in order to create a far better blog and far more interest in the long run. Firstly, become a master at HTML. (Pfffft. Yeah right. I've been at this for a while and HTML still keeps me up at night.) Nah, I'm joking. You'll likely learn that as you go along if you give it time and Google the odd thing.

I do however, suggest one or two other things... Firstly, take a look around my blog. You may notice I have things such as Facebook Share and Like buttons, a Twitter Feed, and the lovely "Things you may like" list of posts along the bottom of this post. Those are not standard to Blogger nor any other blogging platform to my knowledge. They also took a fair bit of research and tinkering for me to figure out and/or find a tutorial to do.

Lets start with the Facebook Share buttons. I could not actually find a reference to these on Facebook while logged in as a regular user, but thanks to the blessed Search Engine we base our lives upon, (AKA Google), I was able to quickly find this page which provides all the means and instructions to integrate those buttons with your site. Even better, if you have a Facebook Page or intend on starting one, you will find instructions on how to make the "Like" button link to that page, rather than simply a statistic of people that like your blog. That way, they'll begin to receive the updates you post to your facebook page, which is FANTASTIC for recurring traffic. I got those buttons functioning in just under an hour and am fairly pleased with the result if I do say so myself. (For those Blogger users of you who are unsure of where or how to insert 3rd party HTML into your page, I suggest looking into this article here.)

The next item is the Twitter Feed. This was perhaps one of the easiest to install, as Twitter comes with a fairly easy to find widget generator in it's settings menu for those who have registered with them. Simply navigate to the Widgets menu in your settings, put in the necessary information and it will generate the HTML. From there it's as simple as inserting it into your blog and enjoying a personal Twitter feed which is displayed directly on your blog for all to see. As with the Facebook share buttons, the aforementioned article will help you insert the feed if you're a Blogger user.

Lastly, we have the LinkWithin "Posts you may also like" bar. A free service, I find it highly helpful for letting new readers find articles you've spoken about in the past but have since fallen off the radar as newer posts fill out your blog. Simply head over to their website here and generate the widget, no registration required. I did have a touch of pain getting this to work on my blog though since for some reason it doesn't generate code when it attempts to place the "gadget" on Blogger. (Cue Headdesk. I think I need to find a .gif for all this headdesking.) In any case, I circumnavigated that issue by going stating my blog to be of custom design, copying the code from there and then placing that into the code box for the Blogger gadget insert which is shown once you've accepted and allowed it to try and place the widget on your blog. Kudos to Google and some websites I regrettably forgot to save for figuring that one out.

Lastly I've got a relatively simple one that you can't actually see on my blog. Google Analytics. This beautiful (AND FREE!) service from google allows you to see all the traffic as well as various statistics and degree's of information about how they use your website. At first a little confusing, with a little work you'll glean an invaluable insight into how people are finding your blog and what they're doing afterwards. Better yet, Blogger already has Google Analytics integrated. Once you sign up to the service, all you need do is insert your tracker ID into your blog's control panel. (Settings; Other, at the bottom, to be precise.) For those of you looking to integrate Analytics with other blogging platforms or self hosted blogs, I'd suggest searching for one of the many tutorials on Youtube. (Best part, no headdesking involved.)

Anyways, I hope you've found some helpful information here which will make your blogging experiences easier. (And prevent cranial injury due to sudden impacts with hard wooden surfaces.) If you've got a suggestion for something else that's great for improving blogs, or maybe want to tell me I'm stupid for hurting myself so much, do so in the comments below. Maybe even share this with friends who would like to expose themselves to the internet. (Please god no streakers...) Whatever you do, I thank you for reading and hope you have/had an AWESOME day.

(Was tempted to say goodbye in Klingon today for laughs. Realized I couldn't read it. *Headdesk*) 

So cheers people.

Post edit: Handy trick I forgot to mention for Blogger users. You might notice your post shares the wrong text when you post the link on Facebook. Edit the HTML of your post and place a "<p></p>" tag around the text you want to be shown. Facebook grabs the first test it finds in those tags and Blogger doesn't use them by default. If you forget, and add them after you've shared your post, go here and paste in your URL to get Facebook to refresh the info. 

Technology Tuesday - Getting the most out an outdated computer

Hello and welcome to Technology Tuesday. The day where I tell you about some nifty tricks to make the most of outdated computers all while expressing my frustration at their inadequacies.

Caution; computers tend to aggravate me on occasion.

If you are one of those individuals who, like me, suffer from an unassailable level of frugality, you probably try to make things last as long as possible at as little cost as possible. No to be confused with being a miser, I'm happy to spend money on a good purchase, but if there is a way to save money or get a better deal, then on your life; you'll get that instead.

Frankenstein. That's this guys name.
 It's also what I call my computer.

How is this related to Technology Tuesday then? Well, a downside to this urge is that computers become very outdated, VERY quickly. And as I'm sure you can guess, technology doesn't wait around for you to catch up. Your computer can stay sitting with it's dinky little dual-core, but software requirements won't.

With that in mind, I've had to do some research on how to make the most of old tech just to get those last few bangs for those stingy bucks I paid all those years ago. While it can be guaranteed that you can't make any hunk of junk last forever, (Something's going to happen to it eventually. Or you're just going to get tired of waiting all your life for Photoshop to apply filters... I know that pain.), it is handy to know some tricks for making the time until your next upgrade more bearable; which is nice if you have more important things to spend the money on. Here's a couple tricks for optimizing parts different parts of your computer:

CPU

The CPU. Basically the brain of your computer, to be simple about it. Maintain this simple train of thought, (See what I did there?), you can say that the brain can only think about so much at a time. Well, Windows allows you to set 2 things with regards to processes, (Those are basically the things your CPU has to think about.), the priority and affinity of the process. Windows automatically assigns every process it runs a "normal" priority, which basically means that the CPU simply deals with processes it recieves on a first-come, first-served basis. By using the Task Manager, (Opened by pressing the Escape, Shift and Control keys simultaneously.), the user can set individual processes to a higher priority to have the CPU deal with it sooner than other things. Word of advice though. Be careful tinkering with the Task Manager as it's a good way to trash your computer if you play with it. Also, never set anything to more than "Above Normal" priority unless you want to starve system processes and cause a BSOD.

The task manager also allows those with multiple core CPU's, (Which is most of us these days, even frugal people like me.), to set the Affinity of processes to specific cores, thereby ensuring that only that/those cores deal with the process and allowing other cores to deal with more important tasks. Same warning as earlier applies though. Be careful.

For those who are less at home dealing with computers or would rather a more technical, as averse to my summarized, guide, as well as some ways to make the setting of these affinities and priorities more permanent, head over to this article here by techradar.com for walkthrough of these tricks. They were a huge help in getting things to run noticeably quicker for me. (A godsend for an impatient person like me. Also, they effectively saves me brain damage from repeated facedesking)

GPU

If the CPU is the brain of your computer, then the GPU is it's artistic wife. The GPU, which is situated on your graphics card, handles all the graphics calculations and displaying your computer does. (It's what's letting you read this, if you're not sure.) Of course, today's software and games such as the upcoming The Witcher 3 and Photoshop CC, do a lot of calculations, and for frugal people such as me, our older graphics cards tend to suffer under the strain a little. While to be technical, there's not much I can do for any fellow Photoshop artists since you're looking for quality obviously, gamers will find that with some clever manipulation of the settings in the associated Graphics Control Panels that go with the drivers of Graphics cards, they can get a far smoother performance in their games. This has been invaluable to me by allowing me to play games such as Assassins Creed 3 on a relatively puny Nvidia GT-610 card by forcing the use of minimal settings in the control panel instead of in game settings. 

For a blow by blow of the functionality in the Nvidia and AMD control panels and how precisely they can let you fine tune your use, I suggest checking out this article by pcworld.com. The information is laid out well and will surely have something for even some of the more experienced users. (And if not... well, I'm flattered that you would read through information you already know just because you like me.)

Glary Utilities

Hmmm. You may be wondering why I'm talking about a program instead of RAM in general. Quite simply, because Glary Utilities is a highly effective program for a multitude of reasons ranging from scheduled maintenance of various system components, the fixing of broken registry's which can often cause issues in your computers running, to the removal of temporary files accrued while surfing the web, (which can becoming gigabytes of wasted space), and the optimization of your computers boot-up sequence. It also has some other more unorthodox functions which I personally have never really needed to use, but may be useful to others. But the boot sequence optimization is easily one of the more handy faucets of this program, allowing you to stop irritating programs from starting up unless you want them to, and also allowing you to delay the start-up of specific programs so that your computer can get functional sooner. It even gives you a statistic on your relative boot speed compared to other users.

Basically, this program does a lot for your computer, it does it easily, with almost no chance of wrecking anything, (unless you do a defrag of your system registries and the power goes out... that's happened to me.), and best of all, it does it for free. I highly suggest you go over to glarysoft.com and download it. (Or don't. I'm not forcing you to do anything. But it could help. Actually, it probably will help.)

Game Optimizers and other "Could help" programs

There are many programs out there that claim to be able to optimize computers during the playing of games or for other tasks to improve computer performance. They supposedly do this by disabling unnecessary background processes and other small tricks which are aimed at freeing up resources for whatever you're trying to do. While I cannot provide a definitive answer as to whether these programs are actually effective in their pursuits, it's worth noting that many an article, such as this one by howtogeek.com which discusses the effectiveness of the Razer Game Booster. To summarize what they say and give my opinion on the subject, Windows is a complicated operating system, and it's likely that these game boosters use more resources trying to stop parts of Windows from working than just letting them happen, not to mention the fact that it must use system resources to run itself. So in the case of computer users who run an effectively optimized computer, perhaps by using the aforementioned Glary Utilities, the effects of the game booster are negligible at best; though less experienced computer users with a lot of unnecessary background processes might find these programs to be of use.

Anyways, I hope that you've found something useful in this post which will be handy in squeezing out as much as you can from your hardware. Got a suggestion for something I missed or another useful trick, feel free to leave a comment below, and maybe even share this with a friend who's been complaining about his old computer. As always, I hope you have/had an AWESOME day.

Keep well mio compadre's.