Tag - AuroraIL

JPEG Artifacts Removal - An Awesome Photoshop Tool to Improve Pixelation
18Aug

JPEG Artifacts Removal – An Awesome Photoshop Tool to Improve Pixelation

In October 2020 Adobe Photoshop added new "Neural Filters" that use AI to alter or improve photos. While it may not be the fanciest of the group, JPEG Artifacts Removal has become essential in my daily workflow. Pixelation is a big problem when clients send me image files. Pixelation is essentially blurriness that can be caused by multiple factors. When I'm designing a website, or adding content to a website, I want to use crisp, clear images. Photoshop's JPEG Artifacts Removal Neural Filter is unbelievable at cleaning up any pixelation or blurriness in photos.

To use the JPEG Artifacts Removal tool follow these simple steps:

  • Open an image file
  • In the top menu go to Filter -> Neural Filters...
  • You'll see JPEG Artifacts Removal under FEATURED. Slide the toggle to activate the filter.
  • I prefer to set the strength to High and the Output to Current Layer so I don't have additional layers to worry about. Click OK and that's it!

A client sent me the image below and I immediately noticed the pixelation. The next image was after applying the JPEG Artifacts Removal tool.

JPEG Artifacts Removal - An Awesome Photoshop Tool to Improve Pixelation
Before JPEG Artifacts Removal Tool
JPEG Artifacts Removal - An Awesome Photoshop Tool to Improve Pixelation
After JPEG Artifacts Removal Tool

Not bad for a couple of clicks! Now let's say I need the image to be larger than it was sent to me. Enlarging photos definitely creates pixelation and is always an issue.  The below images we enlarged from 700x525 pixels to 1000x750 pixels. I took the original pixelated photo and enlarged it, creating more pixelation! After the JPEG Artifacts removal tool was applied there was a tremendous improvement.

JPEG Artifacts Removal - An Awesome Photoshop Tool to Improve Pixelation
1000x750 Pixel Enlarged Image Before JPEG Artifacts Removal Tool
JPEG Artifacts Removal - An Awesome Photoshop Tool to Improve Pixelation
1000x750 Pixel Enlarged Image After JPEG Artifacts Removal Tool

Definitely check out these Neural Filters. In addition to JPEG Artifacts Removal, there are tools to smooth skin in photos, add smiles to faces, decrease "facial age", increase hair thickness, colorize black and white photos, and a ton of other cool tools. If you need any website or graphic design assistance contact me today. I'd love to help you out.

Graphic Design, , , , , , , , , , ,
Read more...
Happy New Year - Website Tips For 2020
31Dec

Happy New Year – Website Tips For 2020

I would like to wish you a Happy New Year. I'm so grateful for my loyal customers and look forward to continued growth in 2020. My clients vary tremendously by industry and location, but the basics of website design, advertising and SEO can be applied to any industry. A visually attractive, informative and SEO optimized website is the best investment you can make in your company.

Website Tips for 2020

Google has over 90% of the search market. The best thing you can do for your companies reputation on the web is to focus on what Google looks for in a company. Google is all about business reputation. First and foremost your business website should be optimized to target the keywords your customers are searching for. Once that is accomplished Google looks at many other factors. Your Google My Business profile should be fully optimized and reviewed on a regular basis. Also, make sure to optimize your Bing Places For Business profile.

Google loves fresh content on your website. The best way to accomplish this is with a consistently updated blog. Social Media interaction is also a huge ranking factor. You should have business profiles on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest. I typically connect my client's blogs with their social media profiles. Multi-platform posting tools like Buffer are essential. I also recommend following other companies in your industry for inspiration and additional followers.

Your business information should be in as many databases as possible. Google gives credit for backlinks, which are links to your website from credible sources. The best way to get your business information out there is to use a tool such as BrightLocal's Citation Builder. This ensures your business name, address, phone number, hours, website URL, description and images are consistent across the internet. I've seen clients rankings jump multiple positions after a BrightLocal campaign.

I can go on and on but the things I've listed above should a priority for your company in 2020. If you're looking for a new website, have an existing website, need some SEO improvement, graphic design, or advertising please contact me today. I'd love the opportunity to help your business improve its web presence.

General, Graphic Design, Marketing, SEO, Website Design, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Read more...
Adobe Color - A Great Color Palette Generator
21Jun

Adobe Color – A Great Color Palette Generator

Whenever I design a website one of the first considerations is the color palette that will be used. Colors are typically pulled from an existing logo or based on customer preference. Considering there are 16,777,216 hex colors to choose from, selecting colors can be extremely subjective. Occasionally a client will want a certain color, only to say "a bit lighter" or "a bit darker". The solution to this problem is a tool from Adobe called Adobe Color.

What I like about Adobe Color is the simple interface and the ability to easily create complimentary colors for the colors you select. The various options on the left give you a quick twist on the shade of the color you selected. Click on the Explore tab at the top, and see popular color pallets and randomly generated color palettes that may inspire your creativity. The hex code (looks like #ababab) is what web designers need to use the color within a design element. Whenever I lack natural creativity this tool help spark my creative flare.

If you're looking for a website or graphic designer, contact me today for a free estimate.

Website Design, , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Read more...
Uptime Robot - Know When Your Website Goes Down
13Jun

Uptime Robot – Know When Your Website Goes Down

Web servers are not perfect and they crash. I use InMotion Hosting for my web servers and they guarantee a 99.9% uptime... it's not 100%. Yesterday InMotion was having some data center issues and I knew about it within a minute of the servers going down because of a great tool from Uptime Robot. Their free plan will ping your website every 5 minutes and you can add up to 50 websites. If you need more monitors or want them to ping your website more often, they offer very competitive pricing.

If you have a website you should use Uptime Robot. Knowing there's a problem is step one to fixing it. If you need website, graphic design or marketing services, please contact me today.

General, Website Design, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Read more...
How to Login to Gmail Using Your Domain Email Address
07Jun

How to Login to Gmail Using Your Domain Email Address

I host email for the majority of my clients and forward their domain email (@yourdomain.com) to a Gmail address. The reason I do this is the convenience and functionality of Gmail. Also, most business clients have multiple email addresses and don't want to login multiple different places to check their email. Forwarding email to a Gmail address and using Gmail's 'Send Mail As' feature gives my clients the ability to send and receive their domain email from Gmail. I will write an article on that process in the future, but for now, see this article on how to do that.

Being able to sign into Gmail using your domain email address is another way to streamline the entire process. Follow these steps to allow that feature:

  1. Login to Gmail
  2. Click on your profile photo on the top right and select 'Google Account' below your name
  3. Click on the 'Personal Info' tab on the left
  4. Under 'Contact Info' click on 'Email'
  5. Click on the Advanced dropdown, then under 'Alternate Emails' select 'Add Alternate Email'
  6. Once you've added an 'Alternate Email' you will be able to sign into your Gmail account using the domain email address you entered in this field.

If you have the money to spend, another option is using GSuite, in which Google actually hosts your email and allows you to manage multiple users. GSuite costs $6/user/month for 30GB of Google Drive storage, or $12/user/month for unlimited storage. Many of my clients don't want to spend that money when they can forward their domain email to Gmail and use this login feature to get a very similar product for FREE. If you want to learn more about this topic contact me today and I'd be happy to walk you through everything.

General, Marketing, Website Design, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Read more...
How to Create a Custom Report in Google Analytics and Schedule Emailed Reports
17May

How to Create a Custom Report in Google Analytics and Schedule Emailed Reports

Google Analytics is the best way to see who is visiting your website, where they came from, what they did on your website and more details on their overall interactions with your website. I install Google Analytics on every website I build, but very few of my clients actually monitor the statistics it provides. While Google Analytics can seem overwhelming due to the wealth of information it provides, I'm going to show you how to create a custom report that will simplify these statistics. Even better, Google Analytics allows the ability to schedule this report to be emailed on a scheduled basis (once, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly).

To create a custom dashboard on Google Analytics first pull up your websites Google Analytics page and click on 'Customizations' beneath 'Home', then select 'Dashboard'. When you click the Create button you will be given the option to create a blank dashboard or use their starter dashboard, which has some of the most common widgets all ready to go. You can add up to 12 widgets. How you choose to set up your dashboard is entirely up to you. Widgets pull information stored in Google Analytics and display that information as a number, graph, map, table, pie chart or bar graph. Some common examples are Users (Total Visits), % New Sessions (New Visitors), Users By Source (If a user clicked a link to visit your website rather than typing in the URL, where did they click that link), Sessions by City (Where do your visitors live), Sessions by Keyword (What term did they search for to find your website) and the list goes on and on.

Lucky for you, I have created a pretty great custom dashboard that you can easily import into your Google Analytics account by simply clicking this link. The widgets I created give a pretty good overview of how many people visited your website over a 1 week period, new vs returning visitors, most popular days of the week, what they searched for, where they came from, how much time they spent on your website, what browser they were using and the type of traffic (paid/organic/direct/referral).

Who wants to login to Google Analytics every day and stare at numbers? I certainly don't, so I setup reports to be emailed out on a weekly basis in PDF format. All you have to do after you create your custom report is click on the email button above the report. You can choose who you want to send the report to (you can add multiple emails by separating them with a comma), write a subject, message and decide how often you want the report to go out (once, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly). After that sit back and let your reports come to you!

I highly recommend if you have a website with Google Analytics you click through all the different options you have. You can do a lot more than creating reports. If you want to learn more about the power of Google Analytics and how to use the information gathered to improve your business, please contact me today. I'd love to help you out.

Marketing, SEO, Website Design, , , , , , , , ,
Read more...
The Top Social Media Platforms For Your Business
10May

The Top Social Media Platforms For Your Business

Google has been giving more and more SEO weight to companies that actively use social media. I recommend that all of my clients post on social media as often as possible, ideally once per week. While I know that's a challenge, it's becoming increasingly important to help your search engine rankings. Buffer is a great tool that allows you to post to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest at the same time, from one place. I would currently consider those the top social media platforms for businesses ranked:

  1. Facebook - 2.23 billion monthly active users
  2. Instagram - 1 billion monthly active users
  3. Twitter - 335 million monthly active users
  4. LinkedIn - 294 million monthly active users
  5. Pinterest - 250 million monthly active users

In addition to these 5 social media platforms, I can't understate the importance of YouTube (1.9 billion monthly active users) and Google My Business posts. YouTube can be tough if you don't like being on camera, but even short videos carry weight. YouTube is a Google product... Google likes when you use their products. Speaking of which, within the last year Google has started allowing companies to post on their Google My Business listing. These posts show up on your Google business profile and show for one week... another indicator Google wants you to post every week. Unfortunately, there's no way to currently post to Google My Business through Buffer or similar tools, but I'm sure that will change.

Optimizing your use of hashtags and posting weekly on as many social media platforms as possible is the key to success. Posts can be as simple as a picture with a sentence, or an entire blog post. I integrate Wordpress with Buffer so you can create a blog post and automatically have it sent out to your social media platforms. That way you're getting SEO benefits from creating content on your website while also getting credit for the social media aspect.

If you would like to learn more about posting on social media, or are interested in getting pricing to have me post for you, contact me today.

SEO, Website Design, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Read more...
Google Hangouts Meet - Video Conference From Anywhere
02May

Google Hangouts Meet – Video Conference From Anywhere

Google Hangouts Meet is one of the best free video conferencing tools out there. If you have a Gmail account you already have access to Google Meet. Like most things Google creates, Google Meet is easy to use, easy to get started and works great. The feature I use most on Google Meet is their screen share feature. I regularly use this feature to review websites with clients and make live changes. During most calls, I don't even use the video feature.

Google Meet allows up to 25 people to join your video conference. They also have a feature to allow people to join by phone and just listen in. Of course, Google Meet is also fully integrated with Google's other products such as Calendar. When you create an event in Google Calendar you have an option to also create a meeting. That way when you share the event with your guests not only will they be able to add it to their Google Calendar, but you've already sent them the link to join the meeting.

If you want to learn more about Google Hangouts Meet or any other Google products, contact me today. I have a lot of experience working with Google's suite of apps and teaching clients how to use them.

General, Marketing, , , , , , , ,
Read more...
Imagify - Wordpress Image Optimization Made Easy
26Apr

Imagify – WordPress Image Optimization Made Easy

Optimizing images for the web is crucial. Google gives a lot of weight to website load time and images are the largest files on most websites. The goal with optimizing images is reducing the overall size of the file while maintaining image clarity. There are a lot of tools out there which can accomplish this task, but none easier to use than Imagify. Imagify is a Wordpress plugin that automates the image optimization process. Not only is the interface very easy to use, but it also does an excellent job at reducing file size with minimal loss in quality.

I use Imagify on all of my websites. Imagify can optimize your images as you upload them, or for an existing website, it can quickly optimize your existing images. Imagify is free to try (25MB limit) and has monthly data plans for higher limits. I pay those costs for all of my clients. If you're interested in learning more about Imagify or need someone to optimize your website, contact me today.

Website Design, , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Read more...