Peter Bergdahl's Personal Blog

A lesson I learned and would like to convey in this post is to trust your first instinct.

Me and my friend Stefan were in Hoi An in central Vietnam a few days ago and we passed a small ponds with some flowers. The flowers and the pond looked ordinary so I walked past the pond and the flowers. Something nagged me however so I walked back to the pond and quickly snapped a couple of close up images of one of the flowers. At first it looked like the image was over exposed when i looked in the LCD screen but I didn’t care, i just walked up to Stefan who waited for me.

Once i was back home in Hanoi I opened up the image in Photoshop CS and i was amazed by the colors. I’m no flower expert but i think it’s a water lily or a lotus flower.

Water Lily or Lotus Flower

So something that looked ordinary turned out to be so beautiful. I really love the colors that almost look like painted.

Close up of water lily or lotus flower

In this close up the colors are even more amazing and can you see the small fly in the image?

Is it a Water Lily or a Lotus Flower?

I had a pretty dramatic experience a couple of days ago when a cockfight almost went on in my knees. I was sitting in a park, drinking a lemon juice when i noticed a cock coming up close to me. Cool i thought, and grabbed my iPhone to take a picture.

Moments after i took the first picture another cock came from behind me and attacked the first cock. It took only about 10 seconds until the owners separated the cocks but it were some pretty intense seconds.

Here’s the first picture i took before the fight

Before the cockfight started

And here the second cock attacks the first one.

The cockfight has started

Now it’s full war between them.

Full war between the cocks

Both cocks were unharmed and i was OK to

Hanoi is both a beautiful city but can also be perceived as chaotic at times, especially the traffic in Hanoi.

I’ve made this short video that takes you from my home at the beautiful Truc Bach lake which is where John McCain was shot down during the Vietnamese was, passing through the presidential palace and the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and finally arrived to the office in Dong Da district.

Today is a public holiday in Vietnam and there are Vietnamese flags hanging everywhere. Ho Chi Minh declared independence already on September 2nd 1945, 9 years before the French left and 30 years before South Vietnam fell.

Independence day in Vietnam with Vietnamese flags everywhere

If you ever felt yourself lost using Photoshop or want to speed up your image editing using Photoshop, then you definitely want to read on.

The first few times i opened Photoshop i backed off and pretty much gave up without a fight and i’m sure there are many of you that have a similar experience. Photoshop can be a daunting experience for beginners.

Photoshop is however not as complicated as it looks like at first glance so I’ve compiled a list of 5 great free resources a.k.a cheat sheets for Photoshop.

1. Keyboard shortcuts from Photoshop CS4 all the way back to Photoshop 5
2. 17 Photoshop cheat sheets and reference cards
3. Photoshop secret shortcuts – little known shortcuts you’ll want to know
4. Tips for Photoshop beginners
5. Photoshop toolbox reference

You can do it

Let me know what you think about these resources by making a comment below. And please, please please also help me to improve this post by including a comment with references to additional Photoshop cheat sheets you know about.