Category Archives: Tips & Tricks

Shorter tidbits

Using the Healing Tools in Photoshop CS6

By Chris Dieguez | Published: November 9, 2012

Every photographer has a couple of photos that are almost perfect—all except for a few dust spots, or a smudge on the lens, or perhaps a single object that’s in the wrong place. In Photoshop, there are couple of ways to correct those errors. The easiest way is using the healing tools. These tools use [...]

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Making Mobile Phone Shots More Professional Using Photoshop

By teh13@duke.edu | Published: November 6, 2012
KAtherine car

That Random Moment We’ve all had those random moments in life where we see a great moment at a party or walking down the street and we pull out our phone to a take a quick shot before the chance escapes us. We don’t have time to set up lighting, fix hair or position our [...]

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Introduction to ScreenFlow: Tips, Tricks, Uses.

By Suyash Kumar | Published: November 1, 2012

Hi Everyone! In this post, we’ll be introducing ScreenFlow (newly deployed in all MPS labs) as a tool to capture, edit, and finish beautiful screen captures for use in tutorials or in any other video capacities you may desire. Let’s start with the basics.

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How to Animate Text in After Effects

By Jackie Giusti | Published: October 27, 2012

In this entry, I am going to explain how to animate text in After Effects. This can primarily be done one of three ways: using pre-made Animation Presets, focusing on the position control, or using a camera layer. I hope with this tutorial to give a brief explanation of all three and how they can [...]

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Backing up and Transferring iMovie Projects

By faber | Published: October 12, 2012

Background The following process allows you to safely backup and restore your iMovie projects. iMovie projects must live in a specific folder structure so using the iMovie application to backup and restore your files makes sure that you will not lose any of your content. This is written for iMovie ’11. This process will NOT back up [...]

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How-To: Illustrator Arrangement

By Amanda Peralta | Published: October 11, 2012

In this tutorial you’ll learn how to arrange objects in Adobe Illustrator. I’ll cover aligning objects (to other objects, art boards, or selections), even distribution of objects, how to create and use guides and other adjustments. This tutorial was made with Adobe Illustrator CS6 in mind, available on all MPS computers.

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Transferring Film Projects to a New Computer

By faber | Published: April 11, 2012

Film editing can be complicated, messy business.  In a school setting, where you may be working on multiple different computers over the duration of your project, things can get even messier, and many people run into problems when they try to move projects from one machine to another.  While a project in Word or Photoshop [...]

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Hard Drive Permissions Woes – Ignore Ownership

By faber | Published: December 6, 2011

Recently in the MPS we had an issue where a patron came to use his/her external hard drive, but was unable to read or write from what seemed to be an otherwise perfectly functional hard drive.  The small red minus sign circle appeared over the drive and when trying to access, it appeared as though [...]

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iMovie 11 for iMovie HD users

By faber | Published: September 28, 2011

In this tutorial, I seek to demystify the Event, Project, and file management system of iMovie ’11 for iMovie HD users. With iMovie ’08, Apple baffled iMovie aficionados and the pros alike by totally abandoning a perfectly wonderful and blissfully easy-to-use piece of software.  Believe me, we all felt your pain.  But, with the last [...]

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Using Cyberduck to Connect to your Webspace

By faber | Published: September 9, 2011

If you are looking for an easier way to download and upload files to your personal Duke webspace (http://duke.edu/~yourNetID) or your student group’s webspace (http://duke.edu/web/yourgroupname), the Multimedia Project Studio computers have the program Cyberduck, a free, open source FTP/SFTP program. The software is also available through the OIT Software Downloads page for both Macs and [...]

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  • New MPS West Now Open!

    The new MPS in 006 Bostock is officially open! Come see us in our new location near the Link in the lower level of Bostock.

    The Old Chem branch of the Multimedia Project Studio is now permanently closed.

  • What is the MPS?

    The Multimedia Project Studios are a series of high-end computer labs located at Duke University. We feature cutting edge equipment and industry standard software and are staffed by a corps of student Multimedia Consultants who are available to help you out with your project on a one-on-one basis, but are not able to do production work on your behalf.
    MPS Lab Locations & Hours
    MPS East
    115 Lilly Library
    The MPS in Lilly is open whenever the library is open. Check their site for hours, which can change during holidays and academic breaks.

    MPS West
    006 Bostock
    The MPS in Bostock is open whenever the library is open. Check their site for hours, which can change during holidays and academic breaks.



    Staffed Hours for Both Locations

    Winter, summer, and other break hours will vary, according to student consultant availability. To check consultants' availability, view our Live Schedule.

    Sunday - Thursday: noon to midnight
    Friday: noon to six
    Be sure to check our Live Schedule to see who will be on staff and our staff page to meet our talented consultants.