Research Tools and Services Discovery

Master compositing and masks using the native effects in Adobe Premiere Pro—with no third-party plugins. Adobe Premiere Pro Master Instructor Luisa Winters shows how to make these crucial techniques part of your everyday editing workflow. She covers creating and modifying alpha channels, keying blue and green screen footage with Ultra Key, using track mattes to affect moving parts of clips, changing the look of footage with blend modes, and so much more.

Programming is learned in small bits. You build on basic concepts. You transfer the knowledge you already have to the next language. Lunch Break Lessons teaches R—one of the most popular programming languages for data analysis and reporting—in short lessons that expand on what existing programmers already know.

The five minutes you spend each week will provide you with a building block you can use in the next two hours at work. Review language basics, discover methods to improve existing R code, explore new and interesting features, and learn about useful development tools and libraries that will make your time programming with R that much more productive.

All series code samples can be downloaded at https://github.com/mnr/five-minutes-of-R.

The Raspberry Pi talks to the outside world through the general-purpose input/output device, also known as the GPIO. This course describes these pins and explains how to use the GPIO to control lights and motors, read data from sensors, and interact with the Internet of Things. It combines some hardware basics—identifying pins and working with breadboards and components—with some programming in Python and Scratch. Author Mark Niemann-Ross also shows how to go deep into WiringPi, a GPIO access library, to experiment with pulse width modulation. By learning how to control input and output through GPIO pins, you'll open up a whole new world of electronics.

Help your home keep up with you—and stay connected to what's going on when you're away—with a custom home monitoring system built with a Raspberry Pi. With some inexpensive hardware and simple web services, you can monitor your house remotely via photo or video surveillance, detect motion, turn lights on and off, and send messages to your phone when different alarms are triggered.

This DIY electronics project provides simple directions for getting your home monitoring system up and running. Author David Ross helps you select a power supply, camera, motion detector, enclosure, and other components and accessories, and make your system "smart" by connecting to web services frameworks such as Weaved and WebIOPi. Then he helps you program the logic to make your Pi camera take pictures and stream video, connect to home peripherals, and mount your alarm system. With this training, and a little elbow grease, you can create a fully autonomous system that helps you and your family feel more secure at home and away.

Note: These instructions work with Raspberry Pi B, Raspberry Pi B+, and Raspberry Pi 2 models.

Capturing video in raw or log tells the camera to record more values from a scene—meaning you'll be able to recover more from your highlights and shadows and adjust more colors and tones in post-production. Granted, the files sizes will be bigger, and working with these file types can be a bit intimidating, but the additional adjustment options afforded to you by working in log or raw often makes capturing in any other mode a thing of the past.

In this course, join Rich Harrington as he shows you how to record video in raw and log, process the files, and complete a post-production workflow. First, Rich explains the reasons why raw and log files can be beneficial to use. Then, he shows you how to configure camera settings and start recording, monitoring along the way. Next, he covers the file transfer process so you can get the videos ready for post. Finally, he takes you through post-production editing workflows using Adobe Premiere Pro CC, Final Cut Pro X, and DaVinci Resolve. Additionally, Rich shows you some manipulation tricks.

Once you've learned the basics of virtual reality, you can create immersive, interactive experiences that enable users to play and learn. With React VR, developers can add multimedia, including video, 3D models, and animation, and use the component state to dynamically re-render content. This course teaches you how to go beyond the basics and combine these elements into a single immersive VR project: a space-themed environment for NASA Earth Science. Instructor Emmanuel Henri also teaches you how to structure and test your projects, letting you safely explore more complex possibilities with React VR.

React is rarely used by itself. As a result, working effectively with React—especially when developing in a group—means mastering a set of tools. Some of these tools supplement React, while others establish and maintain workflows for efficient development or help React mesh with another set of web-centric tools. In this course, learn how to make full use of React by exploring its ecosystems, and investigating what React offers as the nucleus of this system. Emmanuel explains what React offers, and dives into topics such as routing and navigation, server-side rendering, animation, and debugging.

Project managers can boost their reputations and increase project participation and success by embracing respectable project ethics. In this course, Bob McGannon covers the four values of project ethics: responsibility, respect, fairness, and honesty. Bob shows how to build your own framework of ethical standards that work with your company's culture, and describes typical ethical situations you might encounter during each project phase.

BONUS: In the bonus chapter, Bob answers seven questions about specific ethical dilemmas: sharing information, resolving conflicts over standards, communicating with stakeholders, reporting project status honestly, and more.

In this course, author and PMP Bob McGannon teaches you how to understand team members, build a strong team from your talent pool, shape their work, and maximize success.

Along the way, discover how to negotiate for key resources, appreciate and maximize individual working styles, use emotional intelligence to add a personal approach to your management style, and resolve conflict.

Lynda.com is a PMI Registered Education Provider. This course qualifies for professional development units (PDUs). To view the activity and PDU details for this course, click here.

The PMI Registered Education Provider logo is a registered mark of the Project Management Institute, Inc.

Healthcare projects have their own unique set of needs and challenges, including privacy concerns and regulatory constraints. Learn how to effectively manage these challenges on healthcare projects large and small in this course with project management expert Bob McGannon. Bob goes over specific approaches to setting project goals, scheduling tasks, managing stakeholders, and mitigating the risks and challenges that are common to the medical field. Then he proposes some specific challenges to bring the concepts to life and offers solutions so you can compare your approach with his recommendations.

Lynda.com is a PMI Registered Education Provider. This course qualifies for professional development units (PDUs). To view the activity and PDU details for this course, click here.

The PMI Registered Education Provider logo is a registered mark of the Project Management Institute, Inc.

Is your project falling apart and you're not sure how to rescue it? In this course, author and PMP Bob McGannon demonstrates time-tested strategies to rescue a failing project before it's too late, including a look at common indicators that trouble is ahead, a methodology for finding the root cause, and proactive strategies to realign your stakeholders, team, vision, and schedule.

Lynda.com is a PMI Registered Education Provider. This course qualifies for professional development units (PDUs). To view the activity and PDU details for this course, click here.

The PMI Registered Education Provider logo is a registered mark of the Project Management Institute, Inc.

"Customer service" can mean many different things, but there are unifying principles across all customer-facing operations. Whether yours is a contact center, face-to-face retail, social media group handling service issues, or other type of organization, this course provides the practical know-how, real-life examples, and the direction you need to get the most out of your quality initiatives.

Watch and learn how to establish quality standards in customer service, and improve loyalty, revenue, customer satisfaction, and employee engagement. Brad Cleveland divides the lessons into three chapters, covering quality and customer service definitions, quality standards for individuals, and quality standards for the overall organization. Along the way, he shows how to implement a process, measure progress, and effectively coach employees.

QuarkXPress is one of the original page layout applications. The most recent version, 2016, is a powerful and compelling alternative to popular competitors like Adobe InDesign. This course will teach you the essential skills you need to use QuarkXPress for professional publishing projects, both print and digital.

Mike Rankin covers the interface and preferences, and the basics of working with documents, master pages, layers, and items (the design elements of a QuarkXPress layout). He then goes over how to import text, format it, and control alignment, leading, and spacing around paragraph and text boxes. There are chapters dedicated to tables, images, and interactivity, as well as the output and publishing options in QuarkXPress, including EPUB and HTML5. Focus on just the topics you need to complete your next layout, or watch the entire course to master the desktop publishing workflow.

Whether it's an individual employee or an entire team that is underperforming, there are often simple solutions that will instantly improve customer service. Unfortunately, many managers don't know where to look. In this short course, expert Jeff Toister provides step-by-step instructions for solving many common customer service problems, including chronic complaints, slow service, or low first contact resolution. The course reveals tools to quickly find and fix these problems before they get out of hand.

You don't need to be an accountant to know how to use QuickBooks. Learn how to manage the finances for your small business yourself with the Mac version of this powerful accounting package. Jess Stratton shows how to create a new company file and back it up on a regular basis, and then set up accounts, taxes, and inventory items. Once your accounts are established, learn how to create estimates and purchase orders, send invoices, receive payments, and print checks—all of the day-to-day tasks that keep your business running. Finally, learn to integrate with online banking, find data and run reports, and close the books with end-of-year preparations.

Learn how to use QuickBooks Pro 2018, the popular accounting software, in this course with instructor Jess Stratton. Learn how to create and back up your company's QuickBooks file and quickly set up shop—adding your banking information, credit cards, and historical data to the chart of accounts. Find out how to set up your customers, vendors, employees, and inventory items. Jess then takes you through the day-to-day operations that keep your business running: creating estimates, purchase orders, invoices, and sales receipts; processing payments; recording deposits; and printing checks. Plus, learn how to run reports; find data about your business; and close the books, with end-of-year preparations.

For web designers and developers, tools like PowerPoint and Keynote lack the power that's available to web browsers. Reveal.js allows you to create presentations that use the full power of the web, providing syntax highlighting for code, mobile pinch and swipe support, CSS theming, and the ability to integrate with other libraries and frameworks like jQuery and EaselJS. Explore reveal.js with Ray Villalobos, as he shows how to build slideshows with a text editor and a browser, and incorporate audio and video, animation, and CSS styling.

Learn the basics of using Revit 2017 for architectural design. This course is designed for students who have no prior Revit experience and want to work in metric units (meters, millimeters, etc.). It is a beginner's course that approaches Revit from the ground up. Fundamentals and good work habits are emphasized every step of the way.

First, get comfortable with the Revit environment, and learn to set up a project and add the grids, levels, and dimensions that will anchor your design. Then author Paul F. Aubin helps you dive into modeling: adding walls, doors, and windows; creating and mirroring groups; linking to external assets and DWG files; and working with floors, roofs, and ceilings.

Paul also shows advanced techniques for modeling stairs, complex walls, and partially obscured building elements, as well as adding rooms and solid geometry. Finally, discover how to annotate your drawings so all the components are clearly understood, and learn how to output sheets to DWF, PDF, or AutoCAD.

Revit 2017 is a great program for structural engineering, offering cutting-edge tools for creating design alternatives, building simulations, and publishing clear, easy-to-share documentation. This training course focuses on the major components of Revit used for structural design and is designed for the user who prefers to work in imperial units (inches and feet).

Starting with referencing an architectural model, you'll learn how to add foundations, rebar, and framing; set up views and drawings; model slabs and trusses; and build a whole lot more. This course is designed for members with no Revit experience, or for more advanced users who want to jump to a topic and start from there. Either way, this comprehensive course will teach you what you need to know to be dangerous in Revit structure.

MEP (mechanical, electrical, and plumbing) design is one of the major components of the BIM chain—and Revit is the design tool of choice for many MEP engineers. This course focuses on the MEP features of Revit 2018, the latest version of the software. It's designed for the novice user who prefers to work in metric units (meters, centimeters, etc.).

You can dive into a specific trade, or take the entire course to learn about all aspects of the vast Revit MEP ecosystem. Upon completion, you'll know how to create basic floor plans, design electric circuits and lighting systems, model air intake and exhaust systems, create plumbing plans, and design fire alarm and sprinkler systems, and document your designs for construction and fabrication.

No matter how smart you are, you can fail to communicate your intelligence to others. In this course, Dr. Todd Dewett explains the specific physical cues that project intelligence and suggests behaviors you can adopt to make a good first impression, such as effectively listening, admitting your imperfections, and speaking modestly but authoritatively. He also helps you understand how appearance and body language impact how other people think about you, and avoid common tactical mistakes.

Lynda.com is a PMI Registered Education Provider. This course qualifies for professional development units (PDUs). To view the activity and PDU details for this course, click here.

The PMI Registered Education Provider logo is a registered mark of the Project Management Institute, Inc.

Be inspired! Our documentaries follow top professionals as they explain the challenges and choices behind their latest projects. In this film, we see how Quixotic, a Kansas City–based design team, tells the story of an institution at the heart of their community, Union Station. To celebrate the depot's centennial, the city decided to go big, hiring Quixotic to tell the story of Union Station on Union Station, using the art of projection mapping. Learn how Quixotic accomplished the technical aspects of the project—breaking down the 10-story building into 9 After Effects compositions projected from 6 angles by 12 different projectors—and the design choices they made to merge history, story, and spectacle.

Learn how to easily author and publish sites the no-code way using SharePoint 2013. In this course you'll receive a high-level overview of the SharePoint publishing workflow and examine the three different publishing templates in action. Next, author Ron Davis reviews SharePoint's authoring capabilities, including video and branding features that allow you to truly customize your sites. Plus, get an introduction to cross-site publishing, which allows product-oriented sites to scale, and explore the benefits of managed navigation and analytics.

By using Python to glean value from your raw data, you can simplify the often complex journey from data to value. In this practical, hands-on course, learn how to use Python for data preparation, data munging, data visualization, and predictive analytics. Instructor Lillian Pierson, P.E. covers the essential Python methods for preparing, cleaning, reformatting, and visualizing your data for use in analytics and data science. She helps to provide you with a working understanding of machine learning, as well as outlier analysis, cluster analysis, and network analysis. Plus, Lillian explains how to create web-based data visualizations with Plot.ly, and how to use Python to scrape the web and capture your own data sets.

Nonlinear editors like Final Cut Pro and Premiere Pro aren't the only solutions for repairing and enhancing video. You can use tools like Adobe Photoshop, After Effects, and even Illustrator to correct problems like lens distortion, camera shake, excessive noise and grain, and overblown exposure. This course covers innovative technical and creative techniques for bringing footage back to life. Learn how to clone and heal video, fix alignment, and recover exposure. Instructor Rich Harrington also introduces advanced techniques for speeding up and slowing down video, rotoscoping footage, and using the numerous creative color and texture effects in Photoshop and After Effects. If your footage has ever needed some extra attention, this course is for you.