Instead of calling your Hot Pocket loving neighbor Jim who says he “might teach you how to do it… for a price,” you’ve come to us, and it’s a good thing you did, because MakeUseOf always delivers with no compensation required.

Setting Up the Main Background

Proper pixel dimensions are key when it comes to creating Twitter backgrounds, so you will need to start off by creating a new Photoshop file that is just the right size. The dimensions that we are going to use for this project will have a width of 2560 pixels and a height of 1600 pixels.

The purpose for such a big size is that it provides just enough breathing room for large-screen monitors, so try to keep your design simple. Keep in mind that only part of it is going to show on most of your followers’ screens, so don’t fret too much over making a full-size, Louvre-worthy background image.

Because my Twitter account uses a black and white theme that matches my personal site, I will be keeping it simple with a plain background. However, if you want to get crazy, I would suggest going old school with a nice radial gradient, or perhaps you could use a hand-drawn picture or photograph.

Preparing the Side Graphic

Twitter doesn’t provide the option of adding a header or banner image to your account, so the next best thing is to have a customized graphic or logo on the side of your stream using the main background itself. In essence, the side graphic is a virtual billboard, for it allows you to add web URLs, Facebook information, and anything else that you want to include that is relevant to your account. Unfortunately, nothing on it is clickable, so just consider it to be eye-candy.

For example, MakeUseOf’s graphic takes up the entire side of the page with a nice artistic depiction of the site. To make something like this, you should open a totally new Photoshop file with dimensions that have a width of 235 pixels and a height of 700 pixels.

The sizing of this image is actually pretty variable, but the general idea is to make it as visible as you can without it running into your stream. You have a surprisingly large field to work within, so don’t worry about not having enough room. Based on the upcoming step, I would advise using a totally transparent background layer or one that matches the color of your earlier Photoshop project.

Putting it All Together

So now that you’ve finished both your main background and your side graphic, it’s time to put them both together. First, go to the project window of your side graphic, select all, and then click “copy merged.” After this, go back to your main background, and paste your side graphic right on top of it, lining it up against the top left corner of the window. Be warned that if you don’t line it up properly, it could be covered by a portion of your stream or run off the page.

Despite how small the side graphic may appear to be right now, it’s going to take up quite a bit of real estate when viewed in a browser. This is exactly why you should keep the artistic focus on your side graphic, for your followers will likely be paying the most attention to it. After you are finished, I would suggest that you finish things off by saving the background as a PNG file.

As you can tell with my own Twitter account, the side graphic is just to the left of my stream and totally out of the way. You may notice, however, that if the browser window is open in a small size, the side graphic will be mostly covered by your stream. This is normal, so don’t worry about it.

Since the side graphic is part of the background, it is cropped when you resize the window even though the stream content still stays in view. The issue may primarily be noticed by Mac users seeing that Snow Leopard does not allow full-screen viewing unless the window is manually resized.

Conclusion

So now that you are a Twitter background-making fool, you can play around with these guidelines to make something sexier than my own Plain Jane design. All in all, it’s a really nice graphics skill to know, especially if you are in the business of marketing and graphic design. As an endnote, you could probably adapt these same guidelines to something like Pixelmator or the GIMP.

We’d love to see your own creations, so follow MakeUseOf on Twitter and give us a shout-out that will direct us to your own Photoshop Frankensteins. Also, since the process is all about customization, do you make your Twitter backgrounds any differently? In what ways did this method help you?

Image Credit: mzacha

Over the past year, however, there’s been a proliferation of a technology called switchable graphics. This tech makes it possible to completely turn off a discrete GPU when it isn’t needed, leaving the PC to run on its far less power hungry IGP. Now this technology looks set to make the leap to desktops later in the year – but what are switchable graphics, and how does it benefit you?

The Basics Of Switchable Graphics

The problem with discrete GPUs is the fact that they draw a lot of power even when only a fraction of their full potential is being used. This is a problem shared by all high-performance chips, and it happens because transistors leak power all of the time, even when not in use. A powerful discrete GPU has several billion transistors, so there’s a lot of leakage going on.

The only way to get around that is to switch the chip off entirely, but that has its own issues, particularly when you’re talking about a GPU. What you see on your laptop’s display is brought to you via a memory buffer, but a discrete GPU and an IGP will each have its own memory. This makes switching non-trivial, and it’s the reason why early switchable graphics implementations forced users to reboot whenever they wanted to switch.

However, seamless switching is possible with the proper drivers, and today is available on chips from Nvidia and AMD.

Nvidia & AMD’s Solutions

While both Nvidia and AMD have switchable graphics technology available, only Nvidia has been aggressive about marketing it. The green team has given the technology its own brand name, Optimus, and has stuck with that for some time now. Today, switchable graphics technology is all but standard among laptops with mid-range Nvidia GPUs.

AMD has been far less organized in its approach to switchable graphics. If you visit the company website you’ll be told that a wide variety of Radeon products support the feature, but “support” is a tricky word, because it only means that switchable graphics is an option, not that it’s enabled by default. You’ll have to carefully investigate a particular laptop’s feature set to find out if switchable graphics actually functions.

As both Nvidia and AMD’s solutions are heavily reliant on driver support, switchable graphics works on a limited number of operating systems. Optimus is only supported on Windows 7. AMD supports Windows 7 and Linux, but Linux users have to switch between the GPU and IGP manually.

Bringing Switchable Graphics To The Desktop

The ability to turn off a discrete GPU is obviously of great benefit to laptop computers because it no longer forces users to choose between a laptop with respectable graphics performance and a laptop with reasonable battery life. It’s little surprise that the technology was pioneered on mobile PCs.

Now that it’s matured however, there’s no reason that desktops can’t get in on the action as well. Although desktops don’t have to worry about battery life, they still draw power, and that power costs users money. In addition to this, discrete GPUs on desktop computers can be a bit loud because of the large cooling fans used to exhaust excess heat. Nvidia wants to solve these problems, and is expected to bring switchable graphics to its desktop video cards this summer under the name of Synergy.

If you don’t feel like waiting, however, you can buy a current motherboard featuring the LucidLogix Virtu chip, which makes it possible to switch between an Intel IGP and a video card from Nvidia or AMD. However, only a few motherboards are currently shipping with this feature.

Conclusion

Switchable graphics is a technology that will become the norm within the next few years. Eventually, we’ll have trouble remembering a time when computers didn’t come with this feature by default. If you have any questions about switchable graphics, feel free to post them in the comments.

Taking lots of pictures of course doesn’t mean they are any good. Professional photographers know that often the real work is done in post-processing. While the goal of every photographer is to take the perfect snapshot that requires zero editing, the manifold tools that are available can also be a source of great entertainment for the hobby picture takers. Not only can you improve your photos by adjusting the frame, correcting blemishes, or changing the color, you can also add cool effects and fun elements.

Aviary

In case you were hoping to find an online alternative to Photoshop…voilà, you have just found it! Aviary currently is the most powerful image editor suite on the net. Moreover, it is very easy and intuitive to use. Advanced features are available through separate tools, which helps to keep the option madness at bay. Best of all, you can start customizing your photos right away, signing up is not required.

It all starts with a photo. To start customizing with the basic editor on the front page, simply upload your photo or paste the URL via the respective button in the top right. In the next step you can choose from several great features for customizing photos, for example whiten (teeth), red-eye (removal), blemish (correction), resize, and sharpen.

If you want to make more advanced changes, scroll down and load one of the advanced creative tools

For a more detailed review of Aviary’s advanced creative tools, check out this MakeUseOf article: Edit Images Online with The Aviary Photo Editor Suite. Also check out Feather, Aviary’s HTML5 photo editor and our review about it: Feather – A Light, Simple But Powerful HTML5-Based Online Photo Editor.

An alternative to the Aviary suite is Pixlr, which was reviewed in detail here: Easy & Powerful Online Image Editing With Pixlr.

FotoFlexer

If you’re looking for something that has more out of the box effects to customize your photos with, have a look at FotoFlexer. It may not make much an impression at first sight. Once you’re in, however, you will notice what a great tool it is! No signup is required, there’s a simple interface, it’s easy to use, and it’s packed with features.

You can start by uploading a photo from your hard drive or edit photos from a selection of photo customizing sites, including Flickr, Facebook, or Picasa. For this demonstration, I connected FotoFlexer to my Flickr account.

After you select a picture, the image editor loads and you can start having fun. You can choose from several different tabs, including a basic editor, effects, layers, and geeky stuff, meaning more advanced editing.

BeFunky

BeFunky is one of these tools that look super simplistic at first sight, but then turn out to offer way more than expected. The root to this first impression is the minimalistic, almost oversimplified interface. What hides behind it, however, is a range of options and a fast engine that allows almost instant changes.

Pictures can be uploaded, downloaded, printed, or shared via the respective buttons in the top right. What they hide is that you can connect to several networks to collect or spread your images. Via the respective buttons in the top left you can switch between the edit and create mode. Editing refers to basic image editing, i.e. cropping, resizing, adjusting color etc. Creating is everything else, i.e. adding effects, frames, text, and other goodies. Each selection changes the available features in the sidebar.

The only drag I found with BeFunky is that you are constantly reminded that there is a pay version by the ‘Upgrade Now’ button in the bottom right and the many ‘Premium Effects’ that are only available with the upgrade. While there are free items for every single of the dozens of effect categories, it’s a nagging reminder that you could get access to even more.

A tool that looked promising, but turned out to be very slow was Picture2Life. Creating a free account is optional and it offers a huge amount of quick fixes, effects, and adjustments. Unfortunately, the interface is not as intuitive as that of other tools and it takes forever to make changes. If you are looking for the tool with the most features though, do give it a spin!

If you’re willing to register to access a tool that provides many one-click effects, try out flauntR. We have reviewed the tool in this article: FlauntR – A Killer Online Image Editing Tool.

With so many great tools available online, do we really still need software for customizing photos? What photo customizing sites do you prefer to use?

Image credits: Marynchenko Oleksandr

To prove my point, I’ve scoured the web and DeviantArt in search of great graphics. The result was absolutely exhilarating. Not only did I find many magnificent pieces made entirely with open-source software, I also was surprised to find a growing community of professional visual artists dedicated to spreading the word about GIMP, Inkscape, MyPaint, etc. using them exclusively to produce their artworks and even extending them to produce improved painting packages like GIMP Paint Studio. There were too numerous works worthy of mention here, but including all of them would have probably made this too long of a post. So here are some stunning pieces flowing around deviantArt.

Inkscape 0.47 Contest Entry

Author: ~sko on deviantART

Software used: Inkscape

Inkscape Is My Bitch

Author: ~wflu on deviantART

Software used: Inkscape

sm_2

Author: ~hrum on deviantART

Software used: Inkscape

Bjork Vector Inkscape 2

Author: ~ndop on deviantART

Software used: Inkscape

Inkscape 0.48 Screen Contest

Author: ~Arwassa on deviantART

Software used: Inkscape

Jacky D Icon

Author: ~uberdiablo-pixels

Software used: Inkscape

Pinkitude For Life

A reminder for women that self-breast exams are key for early detection & prevention.

Author: ~QuicheLoraine on deviantART

Software used: Inkscape

Nixie Pixel Portrait

Author: *TheShock on deviantART (author of GIMP Paint Studio)

Software used: GIMP and GIMP Paint Studio

Jensen Ackles – GIMP Painting

Author: ~LasiaNicole on deviantART

Software used: GIMP

Ailvhe Ni Faolain

Author: Anokorok on deviantART

Software used: GIMP

Princess Of The Wind Kingdom

Author: *Anokorok on deviantART

Software used: GIMP

Sweet Candy

Author: *starca on deviantART

Software used: GIMP

Attack Of The Gnome

Author: hrum on deviantART

Software used: GIMP

big_water

Author: ~hrum on deviantART

Software used: GIMP

Negra In Vector

Author: ~pretojackson on deviantART

Software used: Inkscape & GIMP

Interesting DeviantArt Groups

If you’re interested in exploring additional paintings, be sure to look at the galleries of the following groups on DA. Each group has an RSS feed that you can subscribe to and most even accept members without any eligibility restrictions. That way you can constantly see artwork and be motivated to keep learning.

• FOSS Designers
• Open Artists
• Ubuntu Artists
• Linux Deviants
• MyPaint
• Gimp Dome
• GIMPies
• GIMP Artists
• Master GIMPers for resources, patterns, tutorials
• Krita Free Art App

I imagine at this point you’re bit curious to learn more about Inkscape and GIMP. If so, check out some hand-picked beginner video tutorials, some easy text-based tutorials to create your own wallpapers, or some dedicated websites. After being through with those, you can have fun creating cartoonish versions of your photos, or use GIMP for some non-artistic work, such as making GIFs, image maps, adding speech bubbles or callouts, zoom effects, and optimizing (read shrinking file sizes of) images. If you want to use GIMP to paint, you should definitely check out GIMP Paint Studio, which offers a variety of brushes and goodies to improve the drawing and painting features in GIMP.

Do you know of any beginner-friendly tutorials for open-source software that are worth mentioning? Please let us know in the comments!

Fortunately, video cards are widely available and not difficult to install. Most simply insert in your computer’s PCI Express 16x slot, and it’s usually possible to install the video card without removing other components in your PC. The most difficult part of acquiring a new video card is often finding the right one at the right price. I’ve picked out five of the best video cards, from the fastest to the most affordable.

Super-Ultra-High-End Card: AMD Radeon HD 6990

If you have more money than you know what to do with and you want the fastest video card available today, you really have just two choices. One is the AMD Radeon HD 6990,and the other is the nVidia GeForce GTX 590.

These two cards are similar in many ways. They both have two high-end GPUs on a single card, both of these cards are essentially the same as two individual cards linked together in SLI or CrossFire, and both of these cards are far more expensive than anything else out right now.

Ultimately, however, the AMD Radeon HD 6990 wins, and for the most mundane of reasons; it’s actually available. The GTX 590 is out of stock at most retailers. The AMD Radeon HD 6990, on the other hand, is in stock for just a tad over $700. The 6990 is also slightly faster and offers a gigabyte of additional video memory, making this choice even easier.

High-End Card You Can Actually Afford: AMD Radeon HD 6950

AMD’s Radeon 6900 series is the elite of AMD’s elite, and among the best video cards available today. The Radeon HD 6950 is the least powerful card in that line, but don’t let that fool you into thinking it’s not worth your time.

Inside the 6950 you’ll find AMD’s Cayman GPU with reeled in clock speeds and has disabled two SIMD units, resulting in a shader count of 1408 (the Radeon 6970 has 1536). Although this does cause a performance difference, the key spec to focus on is the GPU architecture. Even when slightly hobbled, Cayman is fast.

It’s the price, however, that really makes the Radeon HD 6950 shine. The basic model with 1GB of memory can be had for about $240, while the 2GB version is around $260. The base Radeon HD 6970 is at least $340. Paying 30% less for a 10% performance decrease seems like deal to me – and the Radeon HD 6950 usually beats the performance of nVidia’s GTX 560 Ti, as well.

Mid-Range Value Leader: AMD Radeon HD 6850

Although the cards above are great, they’re both still over $200. That’s a sticky figure for many people, as it can be hard to justify spending as much money on a PC video card as you would on a new gaming console.

Fortunately, there are great cards below $200. One of the best is the AMD Radeon HD 6850, which offers (arguably) the best value of any card on the market. Selling for as little as $165, this video card is capable of playing  modern games at 1080p resolution with most or all detail settings on. According to the Steam hardware survey, about 65% of gamers are still playing games on monitors with a native resolution below 1080p. If you’re one of them, buying anything more than this would be overkill.

The Radeon HD 6850 is so good, in fact, that it dominates virtually every other cards priced $20 above or below it. The GeForce GTX 560 Ti has trouble competing, and AMD’s own Radeon HD 6970 feels rather pointless, as it is up to 20% slower but just 15 bucks less expensive.

Mid-Range Budget Option: nVidia GeForce GTX 550 Ti

As you’ve no doubt noticed, the green team hasn’t had much of a showing in this list so far. That’s not because nVidia cards are terrible, as they are typically competitive with anything AMD has to offer. When it comes to price-for-performance, however, they’re usually just one step behind.

One card that does manage to beat out the AMD competition, however, is the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. This relatively new card from nVidia hit the market with an MSRP of $149, at which point it fell victim to the Radeon HD 6850′s awesomeness. But since its release the GTX 550 Ti has dropped in price to as little as $135, giving the card the chance to stand on its own.

The GTX 550 Ti’s performance is about 20% less than that of the Radeon HD 6850, but with a price gap of at least $30 separating the cards, that’s tolerable. In addition to this, the GTX 550 Ti clearly stomps similarly priced competition such as the older nVidia GTX 450. If you’d like a new video card but can’t afford – or don’t need – the Radeon HD 6850, this is a good pick.

The Sub-$100 Warrior: AMD Radeon HD 6670

Budgeting only $100 for a video card really limits what you can buy, but it’s understandable. PC gaming is not a cheap hobby, and if you have a very old card that needs to be upgraded so you can play more modern games, picking something under $100 may be your only choice.

Your best bet in this slim section of the market is likely the Radeon HD 6670, a $100 video card that offers usable performance. It will play almost any game at a resolution of 1680×1050 with the detail settings at high, and most games at 1080p with detail settings at more moderate levels.

When it comes to price-for-performance, the Radeon HD 6670 actually is not that attractive compared to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti or Radeon HD 6850. If your budget is absolutely limited to $100, however, this is easily the fastest card you’ll be able to purchase.

Conclusion

Video card recommendations are always a contentious subject, as the battle between the green team (nVidia) and the red team (ATI/AMD) has been on for years. Do you have a favorite card that’s missing here? Let us know in the comments.

Taking advantage of the power can be difficult, however; doing so without spending a lot of money on benchmarks and games is even harder. Fortunately, there are some game demos that have benchmarks built into them, and they’re a great way to benchmark your gaming PC for free.

Crysis

Released in 2007, Crysis was and is among the most graphically demanding games ever made. At the time of its introduction most computers struggled to play the game with more than a few details turned up, and even a modern gaming rig may struggle significantly with this game when the settings are at maximum.

This makes Crysis a great benchmark. Even today, the question “Yeah, but can it run Crysis?” is relevant, as there are very few computers capable of showing everything this game is capable of. If your computer has been bad, load Crysis and crank it up to max. That should show it you’re the boss.

In order to use the free game benchmark you’ll need to download the Crysis singleplayer demo, then download the Crysis Benchmarking Tool. You can run the benchmark without this tool, but it’s substantially more difficult. Do yourself a favor and download the extra file.

Just Cause 2

Although primarily a console game, Just Cause 2 (like the original) has no problem making use of the graphical power available on a modern computer. Scenic vistas, detailed models and massive explosions are all part of this game’s visual spice, and they all look better on the PC.

Just Cause 2 is only available on Steam, so you’ll have to sign up for a Steam account to download the demo. The demo benchmark is not as detailed as what is available in the full game, but it does feature a reasonably long gameplay loop that shows off Just Cause 2’s ability to render a massive landmass with little performance degradation.

Mafia II

Essentially a Grand Theft Auto clone with its own dash of style, Mafia II was released to the PC without much fanfare and to average reviews. Despite that, the game’s graphics were concrete shoes to many PCs, particularly those with older processors.

Mafia II isn’t the most beautiful game, in my opinion, but it does offer some very detailed character models and a few cool graphical effects. I’m particularly enamored by how fire and explosions are rendered in this game. The free game benchmark is simple to use and accessed directly through the game’s main menu.

As with Just Cause 2, Steam is the only way to download this game or its demo, which includes the benchmark.

Tom Clancy’s HAWX2

A relatively recent release, Tom Clancy’s HAWX2 is notable for the game’s ability to render huge amounts of high-detail terrain. After all, HAWX2 is a flying game – whenever you’re not in a dogfight you’ll be staring into the distance, admiring the scenery, which is textured using high-resolution satellite images.

HAWX2 supports DirectX 10 and, with the proper settings, can make heavy use of tessellation. This makes it a great benchmark for testing the features of newer graphics cards. This benchmark seems to run particularly well on Nvidia cards in comparison to those from AMD, so you might be a little disappointed if you’re part of the red team, although the most AMD cards made in the last year have no problem with this title.

The HAWX2 benchmark is extremely easy to use and can be downloaded as a standalone executable. You will need to set up an Ubisoft account to run the benchmark. You can also access the benchmark via the game demo available on Steam.

Conclusion

These four games will push your hardware to the limit, but they’re not the only benchmarks available. If you have a favorite – and free – game benchmark not listed here, let us know in the comments!

One of the ways this is manifesting is the Quick Sync video feature added to Intel’s new line of Core processors. According to Intel, this technology makes it possible for the company’s new processors to transcode video more quickly than a $500 video card. Video transcoding is a common task, although you may not realize you’re doing it. Exporting videos from a video editor, converting video formats and sending video to a mobile device are all examples of common tasks that benefit from accelerated transcoding. But how does Quick Sync work?

The Theory & Reality Behind Quick Sync

Processors are quick, but they were originally built as a very linear device. Information is shipped in, executed, and then shipped out. Changes and improvements have made this simple explanation less accurate over the years, but it largely remains true.

GPUs, on the other hand, are massively parallelized. They’re built to deal with numerous bits of information, which is advantageous when computer hardware needs to output high-definition video or complex 3D graphics. By placing an integrated GPU directly on a new CPU architecture, it’s possible to have the best of both worlds – at least in theory.

But does it really work? Yes, it does – and it actually seems to work as well as Intel suggests, which is rather stunning. According to benchmarks from Anandtech, a new Intel Core processor with Quick Sync enabled can encode video more quickly than a Geforce GTX 460. That’s very impressive, as the Geforce GTX 460 is undoubtedly a more powerful piece of hardware than the integrated graphics processor on Intel’s new processors. This means that Quick Sync will be the quickest way to transcode video for most users.

The Hardware Quagmire

If you like to create videos for YouTube, or you just have to ship videos off to your mobile device frequently, Intel Quick Sync should excite you. It could save you a lot of time. To enable Intel Quick Sync, however, you”ll need to make sure that you purchase the right hardware – and unfortunately, Intel has thrown several hurdles in your path.

The first hurdle is the chipset. Intel’s new Core processors use the LGA1155 socket, which isn’t compatible with older LGA1156 sockets. This means new chipsets for motherboards, which have arrived in the form of the H67 and P67. This is where things get funky. You see, the H67 is the only chipset that supports Quick Sync. If you buy a P67 motherboad, sorry – you can’t use it. However, the H67 chipsets don’t have overclocking features unlocked, while the P67 does. This is a choice no enthusiast wants to be forced to make.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, Quick Sync will also be disabled if you’re using discrete graphics. It should be noted, however, that Quick Sync should work on laptops with switchable graphics as long as the discrete graphics are turned off.

The Fight To Find Compatible Software

If you decide to buy an H67 motherboard and you don’t have a discrete graphics processor, there is still one more thing to consider – the software. Just as with transcoding acceleration on GPUs, Intel’s Quick Sync needs software optimization in order to work. Otherwise the software doesn’t quite understand what the hardware is, or how to use it.

Currently Intel lists seven programs as being optimized for Quick Sync:

• Arcsoft MediaConverter
• Arcsoft MediaImpression
• Corel Digital Studio
• CyberLink MediaEspressor
• CyberLink PowerDirector
• MainConcept
• Roxio Creator

These are all very common software tools, but they’re far from every imaginable video transcoding software. It remains to be seen how quickly Intel’s technology catches on. I think it’s safe to say, due to Intel’s clout and cash, that Intel will have few problems making Quick Sync a commonly supported feature, but any prediction of the future is dubious when we’re talking about computer hardware.

Conclusion

Intel Quick Sync is exciting, but still in its infancy. Its speed is offset by the limited hardware and software support that makes figuring out how to use it confusing. The fact that it can’t be used with the P67 chipset or a discrete card also limits its appeal. Still, if you’re thinking of buying or building a computer and you’re not a PC gamer, Quick Sync is something to consider.

I hope that this guide has helped explain the technology, but if you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment.