Resizing images in Photoshop is a basic yet important technique for every photographer to learn; one that you’ll undoubtedly use over and over again as you share your images in both physical and digital formats. 

Whether you’re downsizing to share images online or upscaling them to make larger prints than is possible at the native resolution of your camera, there are simple processes that need to be followed to ensure that image size and quality are maximized. And we’ve got them covered in this guide showing you how to resize your photos in Photoshop. 

To make sure that you know the process inside out, we’ll show you how to correctly downsize your images and change the color space to one that’s used for sharing images online. 

We’ll then take you through the process of enlarging a high-resolution image to make larger prints possible, including basic sharpening to account for the small loss of sharpness you typically experience when enlarging images. 

To resize an image, go to Image>Image Size or use the shortcut Ctrl+Alt+I to open the Image size dialogue. The first thing you need to make sure of is that the Resample box is checked, otherwise the Resolution will increase as the Width or Height are adjusted, so the image essentially remains the same size.

You can set the dropdown menu next to Resample to ‘Automatic’ or ‘Bicubic Sharper (reduction)’. Next, make sure the desired unit of measurement is set – we used Pixels here – and then set the reduced size of the longest edge of the image. 

For this shot here, the long edge is Width so this was set to 1000px to make it a small size for email or sharing on social media.

Different color spaces work best for different outputs, so if you’re sharing an image online the best color space is sRGB, while for print it’s Adobe RGB 1998. 

SRGB is a smaller space made up of fewer colors than Adobe RGB 1998, so it’s generally best to save camera JPEGs or output processed Raw files in the latter and convert to sRGB when you plan to share images online.

To change the color space, go to Edit>Convert to Profile. When the dialogue opens use all of the default settings but change the Destination Space to sRGB IEC61966-2.1 if you’re sharing an image online. If you’re printing the image and simply reducing the file size, leave the color space as Adobe RGB 1998.

There’s nothing better than enjoying a hot drink from a coffee shop. Whether you prefer a short, intense shot of espresso or a creamy, long latte, getting your daily caffeine fix can be just as important as washing your hair or brushing your teeth. 

However, regular trips to coffee shops are costly, and if the shutters come down, as they did during the global pandemic, you could be left without access to a refreshing cup of Java every day. This is where the best coffee makers can help, letting you create espresso and a range of coffee-based drinks in the comfort of your own home. 

According to UK retailer AO.com, sales of coffee machines soared by 412% in the UK during lockdown. But having one of the best coffee makers is only half of the battle – knowing the tips and tricks baristas in coffee shops use to ensure a perfect brew every time is also key. If you’re not one of the quarter of Americans that learnt how to use an espresso machine properly during lockdown (according to Mr Coffee) then listen up. 

We spoke to Luke Powell, Speciality Coffee Manager at Sage, which produces a wide range of coffee makers including espresso machines and bean to cup coffee makers such as the Bambino Plus and the Barista Touch. 

A former barista and an entrant into the UK Barista Championships, Powell joined Sage in 2019 to help teach consumers how to get the most out of their espresso machines. He filled us in on his top tips for getting the most out of your coffee machine. 

Fancy making coffee at home rather than reading on to find how to make various coffee-based drinks, then check out these great deals for some of the best on the market. 

Espresso machines work by pushing pressurised hot water through ground coffee. The coffee sits in a basket, which depending on the size can either hold enough for a single or a double shot of espresso. The basket is placed in a portafilter, which is essentially a handle that means you can easily remove the hot ground coffee once your drink has been brewed.   

It’s important to clean the portafilter between every use. 

According to Powel, the simplest way to do this is to place the empty basket into the portafilter and run a single shot of water through it.  As well as ensuring the group head (the part of the espresso machine where water from the boiler is dispensed into the portafilter) is clean, Powell points out this will also ensure your portafilter and machine is at the perfect temperature, but don’t forget to give it a wipe with a dry cloth before adding the ground coffee, he added. 

If you’re using a bean to cup machine that’s fully automatic and doesn’t have a removable portafilter, dispense hot water into the cup to warm the machine before you brew your coffee.  You can find out in-depth how to clean a coffee maker in our article. 

Collaborative real-time editing has become an essential component of the hybrid work environments that have become the new normal across all businesses. Just like any other form of real-time collaboration, collaborative document editing will help improve business processes and workflows, irrespective of the location of the collaborators.

In fact, the popularity of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings such as Microsoft 365 and Google Docs is a testament to the prevalence and advantages of collaborative document editing.

However, just like other cloud hosted solutions, the trade-off for using the popular SaaS services is the loss of control over the documents, which will have to be transferred outside the safe confines of your corporate network. There’s also the issue of cost. While they are priced competitively, the mere fact that there’s a price tag associated with the service could be a deal breaker for price-conscious users.

That’s where Collabora Online comes into play. As its name suggests, Collabora Online allows you to edit documents collaboratively. The app is based on LibreOffice and provides a very rich editing experience that works with popular proprietary formats such as .DOC, .DOCX, .XLSX, and more, as well as open formats such as the open document format (ODF). 

Collabora Online works right inside the web browsers, which makes it an apt-replacement for proprietary office suite services, such as Office 365 and Google Docs. Best of all, the office suite is available in several self-hosted versions, which makes it an ideal option for privacy-conscious users to collaborate on confidential documents with your colleagues without uploading them to remote services. 

Collabora Online offers three different editions of its self-hosted on-premise versions of the office suite.

There’s Collabora for SMBs that supports upto 99 users and costs €17 or $18 per user/year. Larger businesses can opt for Collabora for Enterprises.

Then there’s Collabora Online Development Edition (CODE), which is free for small teams. It can handle ten documents, and 20 simultaneous connections, which makes it an ideal for small setups. 

Also note the Collabora itself doesn’t suggest using CODE in a production environment since it is under heavy development, although on the flip side as a user of CODE you’ll be able to experience new features before they end up in the other editions.

CODE offers multiple installation options. You can grab it as a container from Docker Hub, or install it on top of your existing Linux installations, such as Debian, CentOS, Ubuntu, and openSUSE.

Since the start of the pandemic, Microsoft has sunk plenty of energy and resources into turning collaboration platform Teams into a centralized hub for work. But figuring out how to use Microsoft Teams can take a little time, especially for beginners.

Essentially, Teams takes various essential business functions and combines them into a single unified platform. These include instant messaging, calendaring, video conferencing and voice calls. It also benefits from integrations with other Microsoft 365 services, such as OneDrive, SharePoint, PowerPoint and more.

This means you can communicate with individuals or groups, coordinate meetings and activities, and collaborate on documents all within the Teams workflow.

Teams can be used on a computer directly from a browser, on mobile devices (Android and iOS) or via desktop applications for PC and Mac. But for this tutorial, we’ll use the browser version. Since it contains the same functionality and layout as the installable app.

To use Teams head to this web location https://teams.microsoft.com/start

Here it will invite you to ‘Sign up for free’, and the only limitation is that you must either already have, or create at this time, a Microsoft account.

If you already use the business version of Microsoft 365, you should also see Teams as one of the standard apps on the Office workspace.

Once you’ve provided a Microsoft account and password, you are asked to say what environment you will be using Teams, with the possible options being at a School, with Friends and Family or in a Business. Each option slightly customizes Teams to those profiles, but the underlying technology is the same.

For this exercise, we’ve picked ‘For work’ option as our default.

With an account in place and Teams configured for how you will use it, the web version will offer you a desktop app if one is available for the operating system on your computer. There is no necessity to install this, but some users are happier with installable apps that aren’t browser dependent.

If you’re looking to upgrade to Windows 11 without TPM 2.0, then we have good news and bad.

The good news is that it is possible to run Windows 11 on devices that don’t support TPM 2.0, but the bad news is that Microsoft strongly advises against it. For the moment, Microsoft is still allowing PCs without TPM 2.0 to run Windows 11 using several workarounds, but there may come a time when the company puts its foot down and stops this ability all together.

Before we begin, this process is only for people who have a modern PC that doesn’t support TPM 2.0 and therefore can’t easily upgrade to Windows 11.

Check out our how to download and install Windows 11 guide for advice on checking if your PC is able to run Windows 11. If it can’t because of TPM, then this guide is for you.

Make sure you check out our Windows 11 review as well, to find out if it’s worth installing.

Before Windows 11 was announced, not many people really took notice of TPM, which is short for Trusted Platform Module.

It’s a physical chip included in many modern PCs (or built into their processors) which is a “secure crypto-processor” that is designed to make your device more secure by preventing malicious software to be run.

It’s quite a handy feature, and one that you shouldn’t even know you need. However, Microsoft has insisted that Windows 11 can only run on devices with TPM 2.0. This has caused a lot of people with reasonably powerful and recent PCs to find that they cannot upgrade to Windows 11, despite the rest of their hardware meeting Windows 11’s minimum system requirements.

While some people are able to enable TPM support via their BIOS, or even purchase a TPM module to install in their machine, there are ways to run Windows 11 without TPM support.

To install Windows 11 without TPM, head to the Windows 11 download page and click ‘Download Now’ under the ‘Windows 11 Installation Assistant’ section.

The Battlefield 2042 beta is now officially underway, and it’s your best chance to sample EA’s blockbuster title before it releases on November 19, 2021.

The open beta will focus on the series’ renowned Conquest mode, which has undergone a revamp, and players will also get to wage an all-out war on a brand-new map called Orbital. 

But how do you play the Battlefield 2042 beta, what’s the download size and how long is it available for? We’ll answer all those questions and more below.

The Battlefield 2042 beta has begun on all platforms, but only to those who have pre-ordered the game or subscribe to EA Play. If you’re an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscriber, you’ll also have early access to the beta, as EA Play as part of your subscription.

The beta is open to all on October 8 on Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, and PC. Simply head to the PlayStation Store, Microsoft Store, or Origin on PC and search for Battlefield 2042 if you’d like to download it.

Here are the key dates and times you need to know:

In terms of timings, the Battlefield 2042 beta is open to all players at the following times. If you’re eligible to play via early access, you can jump in right now.

The Battlefield 2042 beta ends on Sunday, October 10, at the same times listed above. 

How much storage space do you need for the Battlefield 2042 beta? Thankfully the download size is more than reasonable, so you hopefully won’t have to delete many games to install it.

Here are the Battlefield 2042 download sizes depending on the platform you’re playing on. Interestingly, the PS4 requires the most installation space.

At long last Windows 11 has been released, coming out to rave reviews that praised its fresh new design. However, amid all the excitement, you’ll want to be wary of any bad actors looking to take advantage of the situation and offer you a fake version of the operating system.

This would certainly be nothing new: well over a year ago we reported on a fake Windows 12 Lite that was popping up on Reddit. It had several obvious hallmarks of a fake – including a ‘manual’ that was just a single side of A4 – but others might not be so easy to spot.

Why would someone make a fake Windows 11 download? It could well be a virus or ransomware in disguise, designed to steal data, or limit your computer’s functionality until you’ve paid a ransom – or simply a dud file that you’ve been tricked into paying for.

To try and lend a hand we’re here to offer our tips and tricks for how you can best avoid being caught out by fake Windows 11 upgrades and purchases. You can also check out our guide on how to download and install Windows 11 if you want to start using the real thing. 

While these tricks aren’t guaranteed to keep you safe, following these best practices will help you avoid getting caught out by someone looking to scam you with a fake Windows 11 upgrade or purchase.

Get Windows 11 from Microsoft or a reputable reseller
This one is the most important piece of advice on this list. If the site offering you Windows 11 isn’t Microsoft or a reseller you know to be 100% genuine, you probably aren’t getting what you think you are.

If you’re after the genuine product you should go directly to Microsoft’s Download Windows 11 webpage rather than trusting a dodgy-looking link.

Are the claims too good to be true?
Windows 11 is great, but it isn’t perfect. If the download you are presented with makes bold claims such as guarantees you’ll be 100% safe from viruses and ransomware, or if it’s claiming to be an unreleased Windows 12 or beyond it’s not going to live up to your expectations – and it probably isn’t a legitimate download.

Does it claim to be fake?
You’d be surprised how often fake programs hide their real identity in plain sight. In the case of the Windows 12 Lite upgrade we mentioned earlier, the rather ropey-looking website clearly stated that is in fact a Linux Lite 4.8 LTS made to look like Windows 10.

This can be a little harder to spot, but if your download openly admits to not being the real Windows 11 you’re after you can be sure – at least on this occasion – that it’s telling the truth.

Adding an extra monitor to your computer is one of the best upgrades you can make to help improve productivity, but space (and financial) limitations mean that this is not something that everyone can consider. 

Microsoft introduced virtual desktops as an alternative to multiple monitors back in Windows 10, but with the release of Windows 11 the feature has been improved.

The idea is still the same. Rather than one desktop to house all of your running apps and open windows, you can set up several and switch between them as a required. 

Virtual desktops give you a handy way to keep work and personal things separate, or just reap the benefits of additional space. Here’s how to get started.

There are various ways to access the virtual desktop feature of Window 11, and perhaps the easiest is to make use of the Task View button in the taskbar – this should appear next to the Start button and looks like two overlapping squares.

If you cannot see this button for some reason (you may have disabled it either accidentally or on purpose), you can get it back by right-clicking an empty section of the taskbar and selecting Taskbar settings. Flick the Task view toggle to the ‘On’ position and then close the Settings window.

To start using virtual desktops, hover your mouse over the ‘Task View’ button. Hovering the mouse cursor is sufficient; there is no need to click. 

After a very short pause, a pop-up will appear that shows a preview of virtual desktops. Even if you have not used the feature before, you will find that it is immediately available and ready to use – there is no initial configuration needed. 

To start with, you will see a single preview of the desktop you have been working with up until now, labelled Desktop 1, as well as a large button labelled New desktop.

Although we have just said that there is no need to click the ‘Task View’ button and that simply hovering is enough, you can click the button if you like. 

You almost certainly have a selection of apps installed on your computer, and many of these use notifications to let you know about things. 

A news app can alert you to the latest headlines, an email app will let you know when you have new mail, and your chat app will inform you of new messages that need your attention. All of this, as well as messages from Windows itself, can be taken care of by Notifications in Windows 11. 

Here we show you how to manage, configure and get the most from notifications so you are always up to date with the information you need from your apps and operating system but not overwhelmed.

Windows 11 displays notifications in the lower right-hand corner of the screen, just about the clock in the Taskbar – and there is no configuration you need to do to get things working. 

You’ll know when you receive a new notification as it will simply pop into view to get your attention. The type of notification you receive will depend on the action your take. 

Some notifications contain everything you need to know, while others – such as those informing about a new email – will need to be clicked to take you to the app that generated the message so you can find out more.

When a notification appears, you do not have to deal with it straight away. You can simply ignore it until you have time for it, or you can click the ‘x’ button to the upper right of the popup. 

As new notifications come through, a counter appears to the right of the clock and shows you how many you have to see. If you click the counter or the Taskbar clock, you will see a list of all of the notifications that have come through as well as the calendar.

For anyone who is a fan of keyboard shortcuts, there is another very handy way to access the list of notifications you have received.

Just press the Windows key and N at the same time and the notification panel will slide into view. You can then interact with the notifications in whatever way you need to, or just ignore them after you’ve glanced at them. 

Microsoft has always given Windows users a good deal of control over how their computer uses power, and this is something that continues with Windows 11. 

While managing power consumption may be something that you most readily associate with laptops and a desire to maximize battery life, power options can also play an important role for desktop users.

Desktop user may not have to worry about how long a battery is going to last, but Windows 11’s power option remains important. 

As well as making it possible to reduce your electricity bill by using Sleep mode to reduce power consumption after a period of inactivity, the setting you have in place can also play an important role in security.

What you see when you’re managing power settings will depend on whether you’re using a laptop or a desktop PC. 

Here we take a look at the options that are available in both scenarios. We’ll start by looking at what you’ll see on a desktop computer as there are far fewer options to consider. 

One difference you’ll notice straight away is that on a desktop system, you manage things through the ‘Power’ section of Settings while on a laptop is it called ‘Power & battery’. Let’s take a look and see what options are available.

Open Settings either by right clicking the Start button and selecting ‘Settings’ from the context menu, or using the Win + I keyboard shortcut. 

Click the ‘System’ link to the left of the window and then move to the ‘Power’ section. You may well find that Windows 11 offers you some tips at the top of this section – you are free to click the links contains in these advisory boxes to accept the recommendations, click the X to the right to dismiss them, or you can opt to simply ignore them.

The limited number of options you can configure for a desktop PC can be seen if you expand the ‘Screen and sleep’ section. Here you will find two drop down menus, the first of which is labelled ‘When plugged in, turn off my screen after’.