How to Make Your Apple Watch Vibrate More Prominently | Dramel Notes

Your Apple Watch taps you on your wrist to alert you when you get a notification. This is called haptic feedback. If you have trouble feeling the taps, you can increase the intensity of the haptic alerts.

First, we’ll show you how to adjust the haptic feedback directly on your watch. Press the digital crown to access the Home screen. Tap the “Settings” app icon.

On the “Settings” screen, tap “Sounds & Haptics”.

You’ll see the volume settings on the “Sounds & Haptics” screen. Swipe up to scroll down to the haptic settings.

The first thing you can do to increase the intensity of the haptic alerts is to tap the button to the right of the “Haptic Strength” indicator. Secondly, you can add an additional haptic alert by turning on the “Prominent Haptics” slider button. This plays a prominent haptic to pre-announce some common alerts.

Now, the haptic feedback is at full strength and you will receive a prominent haptic alerts as well.

NOTE: You will feel the watch give you a sample of the adjusted haptics as you change the settings.

These options can also be changed on your iPhone. Tap the “Watch” app icon on the Home screen.

Make sure the “My Watch” screen is active. If not, tap the “My Watch” icon at the bottom of the screen.

Tap “Sounds & Haptics” on the “My Watch” screen.

On the “Sounds & Haptics” screen, tap and drag the “Haptic Strength” slider all the way to the right. Then, tap the “Prominent Haptic” slider button to turn that feature on.

To reduce the strength of the vibration on your watch, simply drag the “Haptic Strength” slider to the middle and turn off “Prominent Haptic”. This will also save a little bit of battery life on your watch.

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8 Places to Get Feedback on Your Photos | Dramel Notes

One of the best ways to improve your photography skills is to gather genuine feedback from people who know what they’re talking about. These eight sites are where you can do just that.

Having the most expensive piece of kit is no guarantee for taking good photographs. For that, you need a photographer’s eye, some technical skill, advice that can up your game, and practice.

It’s finding that all-important critical advice and feedback (some may call it smart feedback) that we’re focusing on here. Without advice from people who understand photography better than yourself, you’re locking yourself under a glass ceiling. You need access to individuals who can look at your photos and tell you honestly what you’re doing right, and what you’re getting wrong.

Luckily, the web has a few amazing places where you can gather critiques from people who truly know what they’re talking about (and some who don’t). What’s better: on the following websites, that feedback is completely free of charge.

r/PhotoCritique

With over 37,000 readers, r/PhotoCritique is one of the most well populated places to gather feedback on your photos. it’s so popular, in fact, that we’ve written a piece explaining exactly how to get the most out of /r/PhotoCritique.

As is always the case with Reddit though, some of the comments can come off as pretty harsh, but that’s all in your interest to grow as a photographer. To get the best feedback here, upload a quality version of your photo, and include EXIF data in your post. As a minimum this should include shutter speed, ISO, and aperture.

1X

Not all photos posted to 1X get much of a critique, but if you have a truly interesting image, you’ll receive a ton of valuable feedback. Take a look at some of their popular photos to see what I mean.

Each photo on the site is of a high standard by default. This is thanks to 1X’s approval process. Once your photo is live, other users — including many professional photographers — will tell you exactly what they like and dislike about your work.

Digital Photography School

Digital Photography School’s main site offers a wealth of knowledge for anyone wanting to improve their photography. Additionally, their forums house almost 300,000 enthusiasts, just waiting to offer you help and guidance.

Within the forum, you’ll find a host of sub-forums tailored specifically for requesting photo critiques. These range from landscape critiques, to macro critiques, and comparison critiques. The feedback you can receive in these forums is often highly in depth, and as technical as you can handle.

StackExchange

If you need more immediate feedback, try posting your photos to the Stack Exchange chat room. If the right users are online at the time you post, you can receive some fantastic tips. As this is a chat room (not a forum), you can instantly follow up with questions to dig deeper, in real time.

By scrolling through the chat history there, you can find some incredible discussions, with professionals sharing their best-kept secrets with amateurs in response to a photo being posted.

Flickr

Flickr’s critique forum has around 15,000 members, with almost 5,000 photos being posted for critique.

The feedback posted tends to be thorough, and well thought out. Photographers are often asked to post modified versions of their photos based on the feedback given, too. There’s definitely a lot to be learned here. Flickr also has a selection of great photography groups that you may find useful to join.

Professional Photo Critique

By submitting your photo to Professional Photo Critique, an experienced critic could cast a discerning eye over your work. This is open to you whether you’re an amateur, student, or professional.

The objective feedback received will incorporate both the positives and negatives of your photo, with the aim being to have a “conversation about your work”. You’ll also learn a ton by reading previous critiques that have been posted to the site. Find out how to submit your photo here.

The Grid

Each month, KelbyTV publishes an episode of The Grid (watch on iTunes) focusing on offering blind critiques to submitted photos. Not all submitted photos have the chance of being featured, but if yours is, the standard of feedback is phenomenal. You’re not even required to submit your name, so there’s no chance of being embarrassed if your photos suck.

There are a few submission guidelines, though that’s all standard stuff.

FredMiranda

The critique section of the FredMiranda forums is a popular place to gather some genuine opinions on your work, and advice on how to improve.

Take this photo of a waterfall. The photographer is given useful advice on improving exposure, where to place the horizon, introducing shadows etc. all in the name of free guidance.

When It’s Your Turn to Critique

Once you’ve grown enough as a photographer due to the advice you’ve received, you’ll be in a position to dish out advice yourself.

When this time comes, there are a few things to bear in mind.

A critique is not an opinion. A critique should focus on the objective qualities of a photograph. If something has objectively not worked out, such as lack of focus, you should be offering definite remedies. If they’ve gone too far with their photo-editing program, be specific. You should also explain why it happened in the first place, keeping in mind the context in which the photo was taken.

That being said, you should offer your advice with the photographer in mind. If they are a seasoned photographer, go ahead with offering the most techy advice you have. If they’re a beginner, however, help them to master the fundamentals of photography first.

Overall, keep your critiques constructive. If it’s too negative, it’ll turn the photographer away from photography. If it’s too positive, it’s not really a critique, and doesn’t help the photographer improve.

Which other sites do you go to for advice on your photos? Do you find having your photos critiqued useful? And which are the most valuable kind of critiques for you?

Image Credits:People in Meeting by Rawpixel.com via Shutterstock

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How to Close the Windows Feedback Notification for Good | Dramel Notes

Microsoft asks you for feedback on your Windows experience via popups every now and then. If you want to get rid of those popups, it’s easy to do that with a one-time tweak.

Head to Settings > Privacy > Feedback & Diagnostics and in the dropdown under Feedback frequency, select Never. That’s it! You won’t see those popups again. Note that you can still open the Windows Feedback app — which comes installed by default since the Fall update —  via Start > All Apps.

If the above tweak does not have the desired effect and you continue to see notifications asking for you feedback, you could try disabling the notifications. To do so, visit System > Notifications & actions and turn off the slider for the Windows Feedback application under Show notifications from these apps.

Windows has plenty of notifications to keep you annoyed. The good news is that you can also find easy hacks to get rid of them.

Which Windows popups do you find the most annoying? Were you able to turn them off? Tell us in the comments!

Image Credit: Dislike concept with hand by Gonzalo Aragon via Shutterstock

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How to Stop Windows 10 From Asking You For Feedback | Dramel Notes

Windows 10 doesn’t just automatically collect information about your computer usage. It does do that, but it may also pop up from time to time and ask for feedback. Here’s how to disable any Windows Feedback pop-up notifications you may see.

This information is used to improve Windows 10 — in theory. As of Windows 10’s “November Update,” the Windows Feedback application is installed by default on all Windows 10 PCs. Previously, it was only installed by default on Insider builds of Windows 10.

Tell Windows 10 to Ask For Feedback Less Often

You can change the frequency of how often Windows 10 requests feedback from the Settings app. To open it, click or tap the Start button and then select “Settings”.

Click or tap the “Privacy” icon in the Settings app.

Select “Feedback & diagnostics” in the sidebar here. If you don’t see the option, you’ll need to scroll down in the sidebar until you do.

The “Windows should ask for my feedback” option under “Feedback frequency” controls how often Windows 10 asks for feedback. By default, it’s set to “Automatically (Recommended)”. You can also set it to “Always”, “Once a day”, or “Once a week”.

Select “Never” and Windows 10 shouldn’t ask you to provide feedback anymore.

Disable the Windows Feedback Notifications

This part shouldn’t be necessary if you’ve told Windows 10 not to ask you for feedback above. But, if you’re still seeing notifications asking you for feedback, you can block them from appearing.

Open the Settings app from the Start menu or Start screen and select the “System” icon.

Select “Notifications & actions” in the sidebar.

Scroll down to the bottom of the Notifications & actions pane. You’ll see the “Windows Feedback” app under “Show notifications from these apps” if it’s showed you notifications.

Set notifications for the Windows Feedback app to “Off” and they won’t appear as pop-ups or in the action center any longer.

This is the same method you can use to disable notifications for other noisy applications, like the frequent “Get Office” notifications that encourage you to subscribe to Office 365 and download the latest version of Microsoft Office.

Launch the Windows Feedback App to Provide Feedback

You can still choose to provide feedback at any time. To open the Windows Feedback app, open your Start menu, select “All Apps”, and launch the “Windows Feedback” app. You can also search for “Windows Feedback” in your Start menu or Start screen to launch the app.

Sign into the app with a Microsoft account and you’ll be able to search for problems reports and feature requests, upvoting them if you have the same feedback. You can also submit a new piece of feedback that other people can vote on.

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This feedback is, in aggregate, used to help Microsoft understand how you feel about Windows 10 and its various features. If you don’t mind the feedback requests, you might want to leave them enabled and respond to Microsoft with your opinion.

After all, Microsoft removed the Start menu and Start button back in Windows 8 because, as it said at the time, few users actually used the Start menu according to the usage data it received. It’s likely that the “power users” who most frequently used the Start menu were also the same users who went out of their way to prevent Windows from reporting usage statistics to Microsoft.

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