Ballast Media

Here is a design that I’m thinking of using for Palm Sunday. It’s very simple, uses red to remain true to the vestments of Palm Sunday, and has a hint of palm trees in the design.  Since we will not only be celebrating Palm Sunday, but also Passion Sunday, at some point during the service we will switch to the second background with a cross design on the side.  Feel free to download this design and use it.  As always, all I ask in return is that you post a comment and let me know who you are and where you are using it, what church, etc.

You can also search “free worship backgrounds” on this blog to find all the other media I’ve given away.

	Download here: Palm Sunday #1 (1149)
	Download here: Palm Sunday #2 (1129)

It’s been a while since I’ve posted any free media on my site, so I figured with Easter coming up this would be a good time.  This is a welcome slide and background that I created last year for our Easter services.  I’ll be making a new set of slides for this year’s services, but will probably have those out too late for anyone to use this year.

Again, feel free to download and use these, all I ask in return is that you leave a comment here with your name and where/how you plan to use these.

You can also search “free worship backgrounds” on this blog to find all the other media I’ve given away.

	Download here: Easter Welcome Slide Variation (1434)
	Download here: Easter Welcome Slide (1040)
	Download here: Easter Background Slide (1945)

Since the number one reason people visit my blog is for free worship backgrounds, I thought I’d offer a simple step by step guide to how I made my latest background.  This should show you how you can take a few freely available resources and turn it in to something that can work as a worship background.

This is the background I’m going to create.  You can download it here: Ancient Stone Background (1376)

1. Find Inspiration

The first step is to come up with a concept or idea for your background.   I like to look through stock photography sites like http://www.sxc.hu.  Or you can even take a look at what people have made over at www.worshiphousemedia.com (Be warned, you may just decide to purchase a background for a couple bucks rather then make it yourself if you come across one you really like!)  I also like to visit sites like cgtextures.com to find interesting textures.

I found the following image at cgtextures.com and it became my source of inspiration for this background.

I knew that it wouldn’t suffice on it’s own, so I also found this bare cement texture to go along with it.

2. Create the initial concept.

In Photoshop I put these together two images together and came up with this:

3. Change the color

To make the background the color you want, use Hue and Saturation to color the image.  Don’t make it too dark yet initially as we still have a ways to go.  Leave the final brightness tweaking until the end.

4. Add a little something for interest

I found this image of christmas lights on http://www.sxc.hu

Add it to the original image using a blending mode, in this case Add.  I used hue and saturation in colorize mode on this layer to make the color brownish-orange and a bit de-saturated.

5. Keep the center area clean for words.

Since this is a worship background, its important to keep the center area clear of too many distractions for the words.  Using a faded mask I removed some of the lights from the center.

6. Final color correction

Finally I added a vignette to darken the edges and used a curves adjustment to create the final look of the image.

Thats it!  Just a few simple steps and you have something that could be used as a worship background.

Came across this resource today from Elevation Church.  They are offering some of their graphic designs for free.   They also provide you with the photoshop .psd files, so you can customize the graphics for your needs.  Check it out:  http://resources.elevationchurch.org/

InstalledCodec Interface

Have you ever wanted to know what codecs you have installed on your system?  Have you ever wanted to disable a codec?  I came across a great little utility recently that will let you do this.  It’s called InstalledCodec and you can download it free here.

I’ve been having lots of problems recently in Premiere Pro with the program crashing as soon as I attempt to import or export anything.  As soon as I would select either option from the menu, I would instantly be presented with the desktop.  PP was just gone.  This only happened in projects where I was using HDV mpeg files so I began to suspect a codec issue.  I could reproduce this crash consistantly every time.

Using InstalledCodec I found LOTS of mpeg codecs hanging around on my system from other software, even lots of software that I’ve since un-installed.  For instance, I’d installed a trial version of Avid and subsequently un-installed it, but I still had over 20 codecs that were listed as being from Avid.

Since most software, and your computer decide to use one codec over another based on something called “merit” many of these additional codecs that had been installed more recently then Adobe or even Microsoft’s codecs may be being utilized now instead of the original codecs that PP configured/verified when it was installed.

I used InstalledCodec to disable LOTS of codecs on my system and magically PP no longer crashes.  I completed the project I was working on without any further crashing issues.  In the image at the beginning of this post you can see the user interface with a bunch of the Avid codecs disabled.  Disabling a codec is as simple as selecting any codec you want from the list and selecting disable.

Have you backed up your media lately?  If you haven’t, let this blog post serve as a reminder that you need to go back up your data.  You should be regularly backing up your work and media.  Crashing hard drives and lost data are a fact of life, and you can save yourself a lot of time and potentially money if you spend a little time and money upfront and setup a system to  regularly backup your data.

Cobian is a great free program that is easy to use and takes up little resources.  It creates backups at any interval you want (nightly, weekly, etc) of any source folder you specify to a location you specify.  I set it up to make an incremental back up of my ‘My Documents’ folder every night – any file that is new or modified gets backed up, and a full backup every week – the entire folder copied.  I use an external hard drive as the destination for the backup.

Yesterday I saw a 1TB western digital external hard drive on sale at Sams for $117.  That is cheap peace of mind for all of your hard work and archive of media files.

I’m giving away some more backgrounds.  These are free to use any way you want, but please don’t re-distribute them.

Most of these are in 16:9 aspect ratio.  You should be able to easily cut them down to 4:3 with any photo editor application.

All I ask in return is that you leave a comment below and let us know where you are from and how you are using them.

You can also search “free worship backgrounds” on this blog to find all the other media I’ve given away.

	Download here: Title Slide (1224)
	Download here: Theme Background (2113)
	Download here: Red Swirls (1850)
	Download here: Purple Swirl (1809)
	Download here: Brown Wallpaper (923)
	Download here: Blue Grunge Background (1148)
	Download here: Blue Abstract (1832)

Have you ever been given a ppt file that was created on a 4:3 monitor, but you want to project it on a widescreen projector?  Usually when you project this type of file, there are black bars on the left and right sides of the screens and the content is still 4:3.

Here is how you can make the file widescreen.  Go to File – Page Setup, in the width and height boxes enter 16 for width and 9 for height.  Click ok and now your slides are widescreen.

I’m giving away some of the worship backgrounds that I’ve made and used recently.  Enjoy!  Soon I’ll show you how to make backgrounds like this in a tutorial.

I only ask one thing in return.  If you download and use these backgrounds, leave me a comment below, tell me which ones you’ve used and where you used them, what church, etc.

You can also search this blog for ‘free worship backgrounds’ to find all the other media I’ve given away.

My first screen capture tutorial that teaches you how to create an animated transition in Song Show Plus has been posted!  Hey, it’s taken longer than I wanted, but I’ve finally gotten the process for recording, editing and posting these screen capture tutorials to a point that I’m happy with.  So look forward to more coming soon.