ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CS : Creating the Magical Mirror Effect

1.Start with a vision.
first step is to start with a picture, or perhaps more accurately, a vision of your final mirror image. I started with a picture of a sunrise I took on a mountaintop in China. (I actually used a copy of the image because I never work on my original files. A good idea!) 
2. Open the Canvas Size dialog box.
In Photoshop, we can increase the Canvas size (actual working area) of an image by going to Image > Canvas Size. In this screen shot, we see the actual size of my original image. When we first open Canvas Size, the center box in the tick-tac-toe grid is shaded. 
3. Increase Canvas Size.
The next step is to increase the Canvas Size (again, the actual working area). We increase the Canvas Size by moving the shaded box into any of the other boxes—and then typing in a new height and /or width dimensions. Because I wanted to increase the height of my Canvas Size on the bottom side of my picture, I moved the shaded area to the top middle box. Then I typed in the new Canvas size which, for ease of use, was a bit more than double the height of my original photograph. 
4. Create a flipped image of your original.
Creating a flipped image of your original is easy. Start by using the Marquee Tool to select the original image area, the sunrise in this case.Then go to Edit > Copy. Next go to File> New. When the new is created, it will be exactly the same size of your copied image. Now go to Edit > Paste. Your image will be pasted into the new document-on a new layer. To flip the image (vertically in this case), go to Edit > Transform > Flip Vertically. Now the image will be flipped. 
5. Create the Magical Mirror Effect.
To create the Magical Mirror Effect, use the Move tool and drag your flipped image into the blank area of your original image. Now carefully line up both images so they look perfectly mirrored. Next flatten your image by going to Layers > Flatten.
6. Conclusion.
An optional and fun thing to do with some vertical mirror images (you can create horizontal mirror images, too) is to create the effect that your original image is reflected in water. Here is how it's done. Select the mirrored part of your image (lower half) using the Marquee tool. Now go to Filters > Distort > Ocean Ripple. Play around with the Ripple Size and Ripple Magnitude until you are happy with the effect. Click on OK. Now go to Select > Deselect to deselect the area on which you have applied the Ocean Ripple filter.
Finally, use the Crop tool to trim your picture to your liking.

Tips to Find Unauthorized Activity on Your Email Account

Today in this post I’ll teach you how to protect your email account from being hacked. Nowadays I get a lot of emails where most of the people say “My Email account is hacked please help…”. Now one question which arises in our mind is: “Is it so easy to hack an email account? OR Is it so difficult to protect an email account from being hacked?”. The single answer to these two questions is “Absolutely NOT!”. It is neither easy to hack an email nor difficult to protect an email account from bieng hacked.

If this is the case, then what is the reason for many people to lose their accounts?

The answer is very simple. They don’t know how to protect themselves from being hacked! In fact most of the people who lose their email accounts are not the victims of hacking but the victims of Trapping. They lose their passwords not because they are hacked by some expert hackers but they are fooled to such an extent that they themselves give away their password.

Are you confused? If so continue reading and you’ll come to know…

Now I’ll mention some of the most commonly used online scams which fool people and make them lose their passwords. I’ll also mention how to protect your email account from these scams.

1. WEBSITE SPOOFING

Website spoofing is the act of creating a website, with the intention of misleading the readers. The website will be created by a different person or organisation (Other than the original) especially for the purposes of cheating. Normally, the website will adopt the design of the target website and sometimes has a similar URL.

For example a Spoofed Website of Yahoo.com appears exactly same as Yahoo Website. So most of the people believe that it is the original site and lose their passwords. The main intention of spoofed websites is to fool users and take away their passwords. For this,the spoofed sites offer fake login pages. These fake login pages resemble the original login pages of sites like Yahoo,Gmail,Orkut etc. Since it resemble’s the original login page people beleive that it is true and give away their username and passwords by trying to login to their accounts.

Solution:

§  Never try to login/access your email account from the sites other than the original site.

§  Always type the URL of the site in the address bar to get into the site. Never click on the hyperlink to enter the site.

2. BY USING KEYLOGGERS

The other commonly used method to steal password is by using a Keylogger. A Keylogger is nothing but a spyware. The detailed description of keylogger and it’s usage is discussed in the post Hacking an email account. If you read this post you’ll come to know that it is too easy to steal the password using a keylogger program. If you just access your email account from a computer installed with keylogger, you definitely lose your password. This is because the keylogger records each and every keystroke that you type.

Solution:

Protecting yourselves from a keylogger scam is very easy.Just install a good anti-spyware program and update it regularly. This keeps your PC secure from a keylogger. Also there is a program called Anti-keylogger which is specially designed to detect and remove keyloggers. You can use this program to detect some stealth keyloggers which remain undetected by many anti-spyware programs.

3. ACCESSING YOUR EMAIL ACCOUNT FROM CYBER CAFES

Do you access your email from cyber cafes?  Then definitely you are under the risk of loosing your password.In fact many people lose their email account in cyber cafes. For the owner of the cyber cafe it’s just a cakewalk to steal your password. For this he just need’s to install a keylogger on his computers. So when you login to your email account from this PC, you give away your password to the cafe owner. Also there are many Remote Administration Tools (RATs) which can be used to monitor your browsing activities in real time.

This doesn’t mean that you should never use cyber cafes for browsing the internet. I know, not all the cyber cafe owners will be so wicked but it is recommended not to use cafes for accessing confidential information. If it comes to the matter of security never trust anyone, not even your friend. I always use my own PC to login to my accounts to ensure safety.

So with this I conclude my post and assume that I have helped my readers to protect their email accounts from being hacked. 

How to Recover Hacked Email Accounts?

It can be a real nightmare if someone hacks and takes control of your email account as it may contain confidential information like bank logins, credit card details and other sensitive data. If you are one such Internet user whose email account has been compromised, then this post will surely help you out. In this post you will find the possible ways and procedures to get back your hacked email account.

For Gmail

It can be a big disaster if your Gmail account has been compromised as it may be associated with several services like Blogger, Analytics, Adwords, Adsense, Orkut etc. Losing access to your Gmail account means losing access to all the services associated it with too. Here is a list of possible recovery actions that you can try.

Step-1 Try resetting your password since it is the easiest way to get your account back in action. In this process Google may ask you to answer the secret question or may send the password reset details to the secondary email address associated with your compromised account. You can reset you password from the following link

Gmail Password Reset

If you cannot find success from the Step-1 then proceed to Step-2

Step-2 Many times the hacker will change the secret question and secondary email address right after the account is compromised. This is the reason for the Password Reset process to fail. If this is the case then you need to contact the Gmail support team by filling out the account recovery form. This form will ask you to fill out several questions like Email addresses of up to five frequently emailed contacts.

2. Names of any 4 Labels that you may have created in your account

3. List of other services associated with your compromised account  

4. Your last successful login date

5. Account created date

6. Last password that you remember and many more…

You need to fill out this form as much accurately as possible. It is obvious to forget the dates of last login, account creation and similar terms. However you need to figure out the closest possible date/answers and fill out this form. This is your last chance! The more accurate the information filled out in the recovery form, the more the chances of getting your account back. You may reach the account recovery page form the following link

Account Recovery

For Yahoo and Hotmail

Unfortunately for Yahoo/Hotmail there is no second option like filling out the form or contacting the support team. All you need to do is either answer the secret questions that you have setup or reset the password using the secondary email option To initiate the password reset process just click on the Forgot password link in your login page and proceed as per the screen instructions I hope this post will help you recover the lost account. I highly recommend that you also read my post on  How to protect your email account from   being hacked and Tips to find unauthorized activity on your Gmail account  so that you always stay protected!