I watch American Idol. I am not ashamed. In fact, I'm enjoying this season more than any previous installment. But the fact that Fox has quietly passed on doing an Idol Gives Back show this year hasn't gone unnoticed, and this blog will not stand for such shenanigans... Starting now, the texture shown below is available (in hi res glory sans my copyright notice) for free download to the first 25 people people who snatch it up by going here and typing in the password "texture". Clock's ticking, so you better get it while supplies last.

And now the fine print: 1) To those of you that aren't photographers, you're probably asking yourself, 'What in the world would I do with this silly texture?' Well, probably not much. Photographer types use textures to overlay on top of other images to create a little more spice in their images, although you could download this as a desktop wall paper or better yet got a nice big print made to go above your cool couch. 2) Once 25 people have downloaded the file, that's all she wrote. Please don't email me asking if you can still get the texture if you click on the link and it says the texture's no longer available... my hands are (sort of) tied. I've set up my yousendit account to have the file expire after 25 downloads. 3) This file may be used in any non-commercial work without needing copyright permission. If you plan on using the texture to create the next greatest art piece of our time and have plans to market and sell said art piece worldwide, you'll have to come see me first, and we'll work something out. Otherwise, have fun and use it however you want, including in images for your portrait photography clients. 4) Although not required, I would certainly be amused if you would mutter under your breath 'everything tastes better with texture' while downloading the file. Good luck!

I'm ridiculously excited to announce the new Firenze Italian Texture Collection is available for purchase. Of the hundreds of textures I photographed in breath-taking Italy, I included in this set the 38 that I use most frequently in creating my fine art images. Now they are available for you to use as your own. Each texture is a 300dpi jpg that can be customized in terms of size, color, contrast, etc and can be layered with other textures to create endless variations of looks that will give any image a rich, intricate fine art feel. I’ve tested the templates with Photoshop CS, CS2 and CS3, and everything works fine. It may work for earlier versions before CS, I just haven’t tested for those. I believe the textures will work flawlessly in Photoshop Elements as well. In addition, when you purchase the textures, you will receive a link to a video tutorial I created to show you how I use the textures and how - in only a couple minutes - you can layer these textures to create stunning works of art. If you are interested, please send payment ($75) via PayPal to mail@mattnicolosi.com, and I will email you a download link for the textures as quickly as possible, and certainly within 24 hours of receiving your payment. Please be sure to include your correct email address with your PayPal payment. Cost: $75 (includes 37 of my most popular Italian textures and a video tutorial showing you how to use them) Sorry, no individual texture purchases at this time, only the set. Due to the nature of the product, exchanges and refunds are not possible. However, if you change your mind before I send out the links - I am happy to offer you credit. Please let me know if you have any questions at all.

Here's a couple samples showing only a handful of the endless possibilities you can create by combining & blending these textures.

If you're like me, I always seem to have bookmark issues. 'Hmm.. where did I put that bookmark for cool new packaging ideas? Was that in Firefox or Safari? And was it on my laptop or desktop machine? And was that my old workstation or new workstation? Great googily moogily... there's gotta be a better way.' Enter del.icio.us. My bookmarking debacle instantly got a whole lot easier... and cooler. I feel compelled to share this little bit o' heaven in hopes that somewhere I can help just one person who suffers from the same plight I used to. Okay, that last part was a little dramatic and so charity cliché speak, but roll with me here - there's a payoff somewhere down the line. I promise. So what is del.icio.us? Quite simply, it's a way for you to tag your favorite sites into categories that you can then access from any browser on any computer at any time. For example, I've got several packaging resource sites that I've tagged, so anytime I want to see one I just go to my del.icio.us page (you'll need to create a free account, and no, you don't get junkmail offers) click on my "packaging" tag, and voila... there's all the sites I've bookmarked in addition to any notes I made about each site as I bookmarked it.

Also, there's an option to add super convenient del.icio.us icons and/or links to your browser of choice (or at least Internet Explorer, Safari & Firefox and possibly a few others) so that you can tag any site for future reference or quickly get to your list of tagged sites. So go ahead, tag anything you want. Tag that "Top 10 Signs You Might Be Addicted to Blogging" site you stumbled upon the other day. You know you want to read it again. Seriously, you need to.

Here's a sample of my collection of tags I've used to group the sites I want to remember. Each tag brings up a list of at least one and most of the time multiple sites I've bookmarked under that category. You can also choose to view your categories in list format and it will show you in parentheses how many sites have been bookmarked in those categories.

One of the coolest things about del.icio.us, too, is the "popular" feature where when you click on this link you see a constantly updated list of - what else - popular sites that people are tagging recently. You'll see a fair amount of techy programming sites here, but you'll also find just as many entertaining if not useful sites. Warning, this may not help your aforementioned addiction. If you're looking for a way to simplify your internet life, give it a try. It might be just what you're looking for. And if not, you'll at least spend 5 minutes of your life trying it out that you would have otherwise spent wasting brain cells mindlessly surfing the web.