Lava360 » Tutorials

14 Adobe Illustrator Video Tutorials to Create Icons

lava360 — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 16:52:54 +0000

We compile some of the best and very useful Adobe Illustrator Video Tutorials to create vector icons. Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Adobe Systems. The queen of vector illustration is an extremely powerful drawing tool not to mention the fact that it works soley with vectors.

Create a Vector Folder Icon

Create iPhone Icons with Illustrator CS4!

Create a Windows Vista Icon all Vector!

Vector Metal Icon Buttons

Web 2.0 Style Box Icon

Create an RSS Icon

Creating a glass button in Illustrator

Illustrator CS4 Create a folder icon

Create a Sun Icon in Illustrator using the Transform Tool

Create e-mail icon in Illustrator

Create a prize icon with Adobe Illustrator

How to Make a Vector Pencil Icon in Adobe Illustrator

How to Create a Twitter Icon Adobe Illustrator

Make a cool logo icon using rotate tool

Tutorials About How to Build Custom WordPress Theme

lava360 — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 14:10:13 +0000

We are going to share with you people some great and useful tutorials about how to build your custom wordpress theme from scratch. These tutorials will show you how to design and slice for wordpress in photoshop and then make pages and components to make your own theme for the wordpress. Lets have a look.

How to Build a Custom WordPress Theme from Scratch

If you’re confident with your CSS and HTML, it’s not hard at all to step up to the challenge of building a custom WordPress theme. This overview shows the process of how my latest custom WordPress theme was built from design concept through to completed theme. See how the static design is split up into the various WordPress theme files, and discover how the simple PHP snippets can add that dynamic functionality of a blog.

How To Create WordPress Themes From Scratch

I’m going to show you how to create a wordpress theme from scratch in these 3 parts of tutorial series. I will cover from Structuring, designing in Photoshop, slicing, coding into fully css based html, and finally wordpress implementation.

Stop Tweaking! Create Your Own WordPress Theme

This tutorial goes out to anybody who has ever found a WordPress theme he thought he liked only to end up tweaking the stylesheet and template files until it looked nothing like the original. We ask you this; why not create a WordPress theme from scratch and learn how things work? Think it’s too much hassle? Get your copy/paste moves ready. We’ll show you how to create a theme in 10 steps.

In this tutorial we will show you how to create a classic WordPress theme. You will learn how to build valid XHTML template files, how to create them in PHP and define their stylesheet design. This is a beginner’s guide that will hopefully result in a theme of your own or the very least help you understand how a theme is built.

Premium WordPress Theme Design Part 1 – The Photoshop Mock Up

Making a premium WordPress theme from scratch is an essential skill for designers to learn and will become increasingly important as WordPress continues to become the web publishing tool of choice. In this two part tutorial will we cover how to make premium WordPress themes happen. Part 1, covered below, shows how the photoshop mock up is created, and in Part 2 we’ll outline how to turn the psd into HTML/CSS and wordpress theme files.

I’m Alvaro Guzman and in part 1 I’ll show you how to design a modern web interface from scratch using Photoshop and stock pictures. You can download the finished psd file at the end of this tutorial. Firstly let’s have a look at the finished psd mock up:

How to Create a WordPress Theme from Scratch

This tutorial will look at taking a HTML/CSS template and turning it into a functioning WordPress theme. There is so much you can do when creating your own theme we couldn’t nearly cover it all. So, we’re going to look at how themes are structured, creation of the core files and splitting up that index.html file.

The structure of a WordPress theme is fairly simple, I like to start with the CSS file. It details everything about the theme for WordPress to use. You then have index.php – it’s simply the template file you’re using with the PHP template
tags included. Included with that is header.php & footer.php, files that are used across the whole site. Now most themes don’t use just four files and that’s because WordPress allows you to use template files to layout different content. There are the defined layout files, such as archives.php and single.php. However you can also create your own, say, if you wanted
to make a page that had a totally different layout to the default.

Because this is such a large topic we’re splitting it into a two part series – this part making a simple but functioning theme from a standard HTML & CSS template, and the second part will look at adding more of the advanced features.

Building Custom WordPress Theme

This is the Chapter II of the Complete WordPress Theme Guide series. This chapter will show you how to build a custom WordPress theme. Although the Codex site provides very good documentations on how to create a theme, but I find it too complicated for a beginner. In this tutorial, I will explain the basics of how WordPress theme works and show you how to convert a static HTML template into a theme. No PHP skill is required, but you need Photoshop and CSS skills to create your own design.

Designing for WordPress

WordPress is a hugely popular CMS for blogging. The blog section of CSS-Tricks is run on WordPress and I am very happy with it. By popular request, we are going to walk through designing for WordPress. In part one, we will be downloading and installing WordPress. Then we will install the “Starkers” theme by Elliot Jay Stocks to start with a completely fresh slate for our new design. No sense starting with the default theme, it’s more trouble than it’s worth! In part two, we will go over the theory behind designing for WordPress and how it’s much like “working modularly” and actually get started designing. In part three, we will finish up the design and start in with some more advanced functionality.

Developing a WordPress Theme

WordPress is one of the most successful blogging platform which we too are currently on. From the past few articles we have been giving out a few cool wordpress themes for download. Instead of coming up with some more themes, we decided to write a tutorial on how to develop a wordpress theme which we are sure will help a lot of you to design as you wish and bring them out into wordpress. We are not too advanced wordpress developers but still we are sure the below tutorial will help you successfully develop a wordpress theme. Below you will learn to convert your xHTML CSS site into a Compact WordPress Theme.

How To Create A Custom WordPress Page Template

Neglecting the site for some time and running out of ambition to post new content, here is another more popular post from the past. Originally posted on July 9, 2007, this post is getting the most views on the site and should still be relevant today. Sorry but I will probably not answer your theme-specific questions so I suggest you read the comments section.

There may be times when you want to create a blog page or that looks different than a normal page. Or Perhaps you want to use WordPress to run your entire website but want the main page of your domain to look completely different than a typical blog. This is an easy way to customize WordPress that can be very easily accomplished by creating a custom WordPress page Template.

How To Create a WordPress Theme: The Ultimate WordPress Theme Tutorial

In only 11 individual lessons this WordPress Theme Tutorial is going to show you how to build a powerful, up-to-date, WordPress Theme from scratch. As we go along I’ll explain what’s happening including (for better or worse) my thinking on certain techniques and why I’m choosing one path over another. Essentially, I’ll be teaching you everything you need to know about WordPress Theme development.

WordPress Theme from Scratch

This tutorial is in the series of “WordPress Theme from Scratch” that help you build a WordPress theme by yourself from nothing. On 1st day, we will start working with Photoshop. In this tutorial, we will learn how to create a cool WordPress layout in Photoshop.

How to create a WordPress Theme or Template

I’m going to tell you how I integrate website designs and WordPress into a happy co-existence. What I do isn’t exactly the same as what they tell you to do in the Codex on the subject, and I also tend to use a bit more “plain English”…but my problem sometimes is that I assume you have some knowledge of things. I’m usually wrong on that point. So, if I go over your head on anything, feel free to leave a comment asking me to clarify.

30 Professional Adobe After Effects Tutorials

lava360 — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 14:39:24 +0000

Adobe After Effects is primarily used for creating motion graphics and visual effects. After Effects allows users to animate, alter, and composite media in 2D and 3D space with various built-in tools and third party plug-ins, as well as individual attention to variables like parallax and user-adjustable angle of observation.

Both After Effects and some non-linear editing systems (NLEs) are layer-oriented, meaning that each individual media object (video clip, audio clip, still image, etc.) occupies its own track. In contrast, other NLEs use a system where individual media objects can occupy the same track as long as they do not overlap in time. This track-oriented system is more suited for editing and can keep project files much more concise. The layer-oriented system that After Effects adopts is suited for extensive effects work and keyframing. Although other compositing packages—especially ones that employ tree or node workflows, such as Apple Shake—are better suited to manage large volumes of objects within a composite, After Effects is able to somewhat counter the clutter by selectively hiding layers (using the Shy switch) or by grouping them into pre-compositions.

If you ever struggled with AfterEffects and need to brush up your skills, than here is the list of highly effective video tutorials to get started with. They will guide you through advanced and challenging aspects of massively popular AfterEffects multimedia application. Plus you’ll be able to master this software to create compelling effects and deliver unmatched creative power for film and broadcast, video productions or animated web graphics.

Get into the multimedia field with truly professional standards. To begin getting the very most out of powerful AfterEffects please review the sections below to view helpful video tutorials. With thorough understanding they provide, you will be able to easily solve some of the trickier design aspects. Feel free to experiment and enjoy the new AfterEffects masterpieces.

3D Ledge

• Integrate 3D with Live Action footage using 2D tracking
• Includes steps for 3D Max & Cinema 4D or use AE only

Shatterize

• Create a progressive shatter effect in After Effects
• Composite with Glows and add subtle camera shake

3D Ball Dispersion

• Create a ball transition effect with CC Ball Action
• Use multiple layers to cascade the effect sequentially

Smoke Trails

• Create realistic smoke trails with Particular particles
• Randomize the look of a cloud texture with 3d turbulence

Glass Orbs

• Use After Effects to create shiny glass orbs in 3D
• Create a spherical and reflection map from images

Dynamic Bar Graphs

• Create a dynamic bar graph with customizable values
• Streamline graph production without sacrificing quality

Reflection Plug-in

• Download and use our free reflection Plug-in
• Customize the look of the reflection in 3D space

Lightning Strike

• Add Rain & Atmosphere then build a Lightning Bolt
• Use Action Essentials 2 and make Sam explode

Submerged

• Animate a camera through one surface to another below
• Combine camera mapping techniques with real texture

Particle Explosion

• Build a complex particle system using CC Particle World
• Synchronize the particle blast to shatter a title

3D Light Casting

• Create an energy-ball that re-lights the road surface
• Use reverse-tracking and build a volumetric point light

Blueprint Reveal

• Create a draw-on blue print title card
• Use the scribble effect and stoke to write

DVD Authoring

• Create a DVD menu and export for DVD authoring
• Use Encore to build buttons and loop menus

Ancient Titles

• Create particles that only appear in the light beams
• Bevel the title and create a realistic soft shadow

Futuristic HUD

• Create 3D interface display as seen in Iron Man’s helmet
• Build self-animating components and artificial lighting

Disintegration

• Build a furious procedural Disintegration effect in AE
• Use displacement, turbulence and particle world

3D City

• Create a stylistic 3D city with 2D images in AE
• Built advanced structures and simulate lighting

Fracture Design

• Fracture layers and manipulate in 3D space with ease
• Use expressions, scripts and create a distressed title

The Ring

• Build a silver ring in After Effects with a particle wipe
• Use valueAtTime expression to automate over time

Energetic Titles

• Use Sure Target preset to achieve advanced 3d moves
• Learn advanced tips and create “3d-looking” titles

3D Falloff

• Control 3D layers so they fade away in the distance
• Create a cool design and manipulate the powerful preset

Energy Wipe

• Create a fluid energy wipe with built-in particles
• Blend title using turbulent displacement

Soul Removal

• Create Energy particle system in After Effects
• Add facial Distortion and handy expressions

Speed Particles

• Use expressions to drive particles based on speed
• Create sandy like particles that fly off of text

Energy

• Create a complex energy scene with CC particle world
• Animate particles in 3D with multiple instances

Advanced Car Hit

• Create a realistic vehicle collision with body damage
• Discover Keying tips, the puppet tool and much more

Stabilize Shaky Footage

• Learn advanced techniques for stabilizing footage in AE
• Composite realistic smoke behind vehicle with paticular

Water Drops

• Create water droplets on the lens with DOF
• Learn about setting for the MR Mercury filter

Frosty Breath

• Create the illusion of cold breath on a warm day
• Use color correction to cool the mood of the scene

Fancy Title Plate

• Create a 3D title plate with growing elements
• Use Evolution to enhance this simple design

Roundup of Best GIMP Tips & Tutorials

lava360 — Thu, 27 May 2010 16:55:55 +0000

GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc.

GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.

Gimp Galaxy By Abduzeedo

Although I really like the Adobe’s main product, I have seen a lot of articles about GIMP, that stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program, and people creating amazing effects using this tool. So I decided to give it a try.

Leopard’s Aurora Borealis wallpaper By Abduzeedo

what I want to show on this tutorial is how to create that Aurora Borealis effect using the new GIMP. Basically I used the Leopard’s wallpaper as my reference. I have to say it was easier than I thought.

Gold Text Effect By Gimpology

Learn how to create a beautiful gold text effect in the GIMP.

Authentic Vintage Effect By Gimpology

A beautiful effect for giving your photos an old vintage feel.

Gimp Sin City Tutorial By Ajit’s Blog

This tutorial has been converted from the original Photoshop tutorial into Gimp. The original Photoshop tutorial can be found here. This tutorial is not recommended for beginners. I also recommend that you save often.

Worn Vintage Popart Design by SGLiders12 Blog

Pop art, vintage, and grunge are some of my favorite types of styles. They’re back and you see them everywhere. Well, today I’m going to teach you how to create a worn vintage pop art design in Gimp based on a tutorial by Alvaro Guzman at PSDTuts. BTW, this is also my 100th post! Yay!

A colored swirl of light By GimpUsers

Some effects are just very simple to do and look still pretty cool. This one here is such an effect, usable vor all kind of graphics things such as flyers, splash-screens, wallpapers etc. I’ll show you how to create such an colored light swirl below!

Create a nice oilpainting from a photo By GimpUsers

In this tutorial our user t0bias shows you how to create a fantastic looking oilpainting from a photo. Enjoy!

Extremely Real Letter by Gimp-Tutorials.net

Hi this is based of a photoshop tutorial i found earlier. And please keep in mind that this is my first tutorial so give me a little credit for trying.

Creative Composition by Gimp-Tutorials.net

Hello and welcome to my Gimp tutorial. My name is Jacob Philpott and I am a graphic designer Today we are going to learn how to make a photo-manipulation using an eye stock, I hope you enjoy my tutorial!.

Super Slick Dusky Lighting Effects By Gimp-Tutorials.net

Super Slick Dusky Lighting Effects in Photoshop now in Gimp. The original tutorial was made by Collis from PSDtuts. This is just that tutorial made with gimp.

Contaminated Effect By Gimp-Tutorials.net

Warning! contamination ahead. suite up and get ready for an awesome effect tutorial
In this tutorial we will use various overlay techniques, the pen tool and how to use stock images to add texture to the design.

MSNBC-Style Effect By Gimp-Tutorials.net

This GIMP tutorial will teach you how to create an effect similar to the one used at MSNBC.com.

Making a pencil drawing from a photo By GimpUsers

Comic artists have it easy – they can scan their pencil drawings and then edit them. But how to make a realistically looking pencil drawing from a photo? In this tutorial you will learn how to convert almost any image into a good-looking pencil drawing, and yon even won’t need edge detection filters. All you need are a few different layer modes.

[AVATAR] Become a real Na’Vi By GimpUsers

Many of you surely know the new film (by James Cameron) which already became the most successful film of all time: AVATAR! I’m a fan of the movie and so finally i had time to write a tutorial on how to make yourself into a real NA’Vi Enjoy

The creepy zombie hand of death! By GimpUsers

In this tutorial I show you how to transform your own hand into a creepy zombie hand of death that is full of blood! I love to think about such cool looking titles Enjoy the tutorial

Create a simple Grunge-Stamp! By GimpUsers

This Tuturial shows you how to make a simple stemp, with a Grunge Effect.

Adding life into a Flat Photograph By Gimp-Tutorials.net

This tutorial was converted from Giackop’s tutorial at psdtuts.com. Its been a while since I’ve done a tutorial that’s because i broke my hand and find it hard to type with only my left.

Cool Typography Design Poster By PA Blog

After a few tests to find the right colors and idea, i’ve created a typography design for this tutorial.The design is inspired by the amazing work of Scott Hansen.

Cool Shapes Effect by PA Blog

A short time ago Abduzeedo publish a tutorial showing us how to create an image inspired by Andy Gilmore’s work. I really liked that technique and decided that it would be cool to do something similiar like that in Gimp as well. So this is my latest tutorial.Before you read the rest of my tutorial let’s see my result!

Colorful Stream of Light By GimpUsers

You all probably know these images that are shown on starting up a certain program: these are so called splash screens. In this tutorial I will show you how to make a special, very beautiful splash. It will be a colorful stream of light with particles!

3D Pixel Stretch Effect By Gimpology

Learn how to stretch lines of pixels into amazing graphics that pop out of the screen!

Painting a Peacock by Kalaalog

There have been many people coming over to KalaaLog.com searching for articles on drawing/painting a peacock – the only tutorial here until now was on illustrating peacock feather. So, here is a walk-through and screen shots of the peacock painting I did.

3D Realistic Rubik’s Cube by Bulbing

Today I’m going to show you how to make a 3-dimensional pretty good looking rubik’s cube. The steps should be easy to understand. I’ve also made a little video which is situated right on the bottom of the article so you can watch it.

Blog design layout By Gimp-Tutorials.net

Finally I have managed to put my self together and create another blog template tutorial!
sorry to all those who were counting on it before,i just didn’t have the time for it but anyway here it is. so enjoy!

Create a cool wax seal with an engraved eagle By GimpUsers

You maybe know this: In the very past important letters have been sealed using a so called wax seal. This is a hot wax drop on the opening of the envelope – then a seal ring containing the unique emblem of the empire was pressed on the wax to harden the wax. So the letter was secured from spys from now on – because any opening would have breached the original letter. This tutorial shows how to create such a wax seal in GIMP! Have fun

Glow FX extreme By GimpUsers

I guess this tutorial will mostly be enjoyed by graphics enthusiasts We’re going to create a special glowing lines effect with saturated colors and good dynamic!

———————————————————————-

Gimp Video Tutorials

Cracked Face Effect
Using Curves to Improve Contrast
Streching shadows by using curves
Create a Graduated Neutral Density Filter to Enhance Photos
Create a Sketch Effect
Improve Night Shots Using Curves
Transform a Photo into Pop Art
Create a 3D Pop-out Effect
Eraser to Transparent Background Removal
How To Change Hair Color
Recolor Hair and Eyes
Transparent Glass Lettering
Create a 3D Web Browser
Realistic Water Droplets
Fire Effects

JQuery : Compilation of Best Tips & Techniques

lava360 — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 20:53:18 +0000

jQuery is a fast and concise JavaScript Library that simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid web development. jQuery is designed to change the way that you write JavaScript. Compilation of some of the best and useful JQuery tips and tricks on the web. From learning the basics to advanced techniques, we are going to put the whole Jquery world on one place for your ease.

25 Tutorials and Resources for Learning jQuery UI

There are many many tutorials and plugins for the jQuery core, but not so many that focus on jQuery UI. jQuery UI has been criticized in the past for its lack of documentation and support, but times have changed. Accompanied by its content rich website, in-depth docs and, especially, support from the jQuery community as a whole, jQuery UI has become huge and has never been easier to use.

25 jQuery Plugins for Navigation

Accordion Menu Script

jQuery (mb)Menu

SuckerFish Style

Simple jQuery Accordion Menu

Coda-Slider

jQuery Multi Level CSS Menu #1

jQuery Multi Level CSS Menu #2

14 jQuery Plugins for Working with Images

s3 Slider

s3 Slider Demonstration page.

jQuery Image Strip

jQuery Image Strip Demonstration page.

jQuery Thumbs

jCrop

jCrop Demonstration page.

Image preview

PsdTuts+. Roundup of Photoshop Tutorials

lava360 — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 15:33:05 +0000

Psdtuts+ is a blog/Photoshop site made to house and showcase some of the best Photoshop tutorials around. We publish tutorials that not only produce great graphics and effects, but explain the techniques behind them in a friendly, approachable manner.

Adobe Photoshop is a fantastically powerful program and there are a million ways to do anything, we hope that reading Psdtuts+ will help our readers learn a few tricks, techniques and tips that they might not have seen before and help them maximize their creative potential!

Creating a Stunning Old-World Look in Photoshop

In this tutorial, we are going to create a sort of old-worldy composition featuring a compass and making use of some awesome vector artwork from Arsenal. As always there is a PSD file at the bottom of the tutorial. In this instance, I would highly recommend downloading it as this is quite a complex composition. Be warned this is a LONG tutorial!

Oh and in case you’re wondering, inspiration comes from a really neat set of books, one of which is called the Golden Compass (actually they are making the book series a movie now!).

Creating an Old-Collage Effect Poster

One of my favorite ‘looks’ is the sort of old-collage feel of old photos and old paper. It’s a favorite because it lets you work images and text together really easily. In this tutorial we’ll put together a poster where there is a main photograph and a lot of text using the old-collage fee.

Creating a Vinyl Record In Photoshop

In this tutorial, I will explain how to make a vinyl graphic. This tutorial will outline techniques to avoid choppy edges and create proper texturing and lighting.

How To Create A Desk Environment In Photoshop From Scratch!

I recently did an artwork where I was creating a desktop feel. It was filled with all sorts of objects you would find strewn across a desk. In this tutorial, I will be recreating them so you can design your very own desks.

Create a Constructivist Inspired Poster

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to create a poster design inspired by an art movement called Russian Constructivism. We will cut up some images and paste them together to create a stylized revolutionary design. We’ll then tie it all together by overlaying some texture to give it a vintage feel.

How to Put Smokin’ Bullet Holes and a Wanted Sign into a Piece of Wood

Creating an Urban-Style Piece of Artwork

While grunge has its origins in the 90s, recently the style has been gaining in popularity once more. In this tutorial, I will show you how to create a dirty, urban-style image using both well-known techniques as well as a few new ones. You will learn to easily extract complex shapes and we will also create our own grunge texture.

Create a Powerful Mental Wave Explosion Effect

In this tutorial, I will show you how to create a crazy explosion, like a mix of Magneto’s ability with Peter Petrelli’s power. We will use images and filters to produce this wave explosion effect. Even though it may look like a difficult tutorial, it’s really not that hard.

Create a Sleek, High-End Web Design from Scratch

In this tutorial, we’ll put together a high-end Web design using a crisp, thin font, gorgeous background images, and clever use of space and layout. You can easily use the technique to create your own unique designs.

Then when you’re finished reading this tutorial, you can cross over to our sister site NETTUTS and follow along as we build the design into clean and simple HTML. OK let’s rock’n’roll!

Create a 60’s Psychedelic Style Concert Poster

precision or quality, whether working in print, web, interactive, or mobile media.

In this tutorial, we will go through the steps to create a retro 1960s psychedelic concert poster. This tutorial relies heavily on the use of the Warp Tool, but includes a few other techniques as well. Let’s get started.

Make an Apple Coldplay Style Ad in Photoshop

In this tutorial, I will show you how to create a very similar effect to that used in the Apple Coldplay Video Ad. If you have done the Sparkling Hot Girl tutorial in Photoshop, you will find it similar in some steps of this tutorial. You can download the image needed for this tutorial here.

Create an Energy Drink Ad Design

Featuring a product in an ad is a common task for any designer. In this tutorial, we’ll look at a flexible design solution that you can use to create one for an energy drink. It relies on a combination of the Difference Blending Mode and the Radial Blur Filter to achieve unique colors, contrast, and lighting.

What is Google PageRank?

lava360 — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:21:47 +0000

PageRank is a link analysis algorithm, named after Larry Page, used by the Google Internet search engine that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of “measuring” its relative importance within the set. The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references.

What is PageRank?

PageRank is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web. Google figures that when one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. The more votes that are cast for a page, the more important the page must be. Also, the importance of the page that is casting the vote determines how important the vote itself is. Google calculates a page’s importance from the votes cast for it. How important each vote is is taken into account when a page’s PageRank is calculated.
PageRank is Google’s way of deciding a page’s importance. It matters because it is one of the factors that determines a page’s ranking in the search results. It isn’t the only factor that Google uses to rank pages, but it is an important one.

From here on in, we’ll occasionally refer to PageRank as “PR”.

How is PageRank Calculated?

To calculate the PageRank for a page, all of its inbound links are taken into account. These are links from within the site and links from outside the site.

PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + … + PR(tn)/C(tn))

That’s the equation that calculates a page’s PageRank. It’s the original one that was published when PageRank was being developed, and it is probable that Google uses a variation of it but they aren’t telling us what it is. It doesn’t matter though, as this equation is good enough.

In the equation ‘t1 – tn’ are pages linking to page A, ‘C’ is the number of outbound links that a page has and ‘d’ is a damping factor, usually set to 0.85.

We can think of it in a simpler way:-

a page’s PageRank = 0.15 + 0.85 * (a “share” of the PageRank of every page that links to it)

“share” = the linking page’s PageRank divided by the number of outbound links on the page.

A page “votes” an amount of PageRank onto each page that it links to. The amount of PageRank that it has to vote with is a little less than its own PageRank value (its own value * 0.85). This value is shared equally between all the pages that it links to.

From this, we could conclude that a link from a page with PR4 and 5 outbound links is worth more than a link from a page with PR8 and 100 outbound links. The PageRank of a page that links to yours is important but the number of links on that page is also important. The more links there are on a page, the less PageRank value your page will receive from it.

If the PageRank value differences between PR1, PR2,…..PR10 were equal then that conclusion would hold up, but many people believe that the values between PR1 and PR10 (the maximum) are set on a logarithmic scale, and there is very good reason for believing it. Nobody outside Google knows for sure one way or the other, but the chances are high that the scale is logarithmic, or similar. If so, it means that it takes a lot more additional PageRank for a page to move up to the next PageRank level that it did to move up from the previous PageRank level. The result is that it reverses the previous conclusion, so that a link from a PR8 page that has lots of outbound links is worth more than a link from a PR4 page that has only a few outbound links.

Whichever scale Google uses, we can be sure of one thing. A link from another site increases our site’s PageRank. Just remember to avoid links from link farms.

Note that when a page votes its PageRank value to other pages, its own PageRank is not reduced by the value that it is voting. The page doing the voting doesn’t give away its PageRank and end up with nothing. It isn’t a transfer of PageRank. It is simply a vote according to the page’s PageRank value. It’s like a shareholders meeting where each shareholder votes according to the number of shares held, but the shares themselves aren’t given away. Even so, pages do lose some PageRank indirectly, as we’ll see later.

Ok so far? Good. Now we’ll look at how the calculations are actually done.

For a page’s calculation, its existing PageRank (if it has any) is abandoned completely and a fresh calculation is done where the page relies solely on the PageRank “voted” for it by its current inbound links, which may have changed since the last time the page’s PageRank was calculated.

The equation shows clearly how a page’s PageRank is arrived at. But what isn’t immediately obvious is that it can’t work if the calculation is done just once. Suppose we have 2 pages, A and B, which link to each other, and neither have any other links of any kind. This is what happens:-

Step 1: Calculate page A’s PageRank from the value of its inbound links

Page A now has a new PageRank value. The calculation used the value of the inbound link from page B. But page B has an inbound link (from page A) and its new PageRank value hasn’t been worked out yet, so page A’s new PageRank value is based on inaccurate data and can’t be accurate.

Step 2: Calculate page B’s PageRank from the value of its inbound links

Page B now has a new PageRank value, but it can’t be accurate because the calculation used the new PageRank value of the inbound link from page A, which is inaccurate.

It’s a Catch 22 situation. We can’t work out A’s PageRank until we know B’s PageRank, and we can’t work out B’s PageRank until we know A’s PageRank.

Now that both pages have newly calculated PageRank values, can’t we just run the calculations again to arrive at accurate values? No. We can run the calculations again using the new values and the results will be more accurate, but we will always be using inaccurate values for the calculations, so the results will always be inaccurate.

The problem is overcome by repeating the calculations many times. Each time produces slightly more accurate values. In fact, total accuracy can never be achieved because the calculations are always based on inaccurate values. 40 to 50 iterations are sufficient to reach a point where any further iterations wouldn’t produce enough of a change to the values to matter. This is precisiely what Google does at each update, and it’s the reason why the updates take so long.

One thing to bear in mind is that the results we get from the calculations are proportions. The figures must then be set against a scale (known only to Google) to arrive at each page’s actual PageRank. Even so, we can use the calculations to channel the PageRank within a site around its pages so that certain pages receive a higher proportion of it than others.

What can we do with this ‘overall’ PageRank?

We are going to look at some example calculations to see how a site’s PageRank can be manipulated, but before doing that, I need to point out that a page will be included in the Google index only if one or more pages on the web link to it. That’s according to Google. If a page is not in the Google index, any links from it can’t be included in the calculations.

For the examples, we are going to ignore that fact, mainly because other ‘Pagerank Explained’ type documents ignore it in the calculations, and it might be confusing when comparing documents. The calculator operates in two modes:- Simple and Real. In Simple mode, the calculations assume that all pages are in the Google index, whether or not any other pages link to them. In Real mode the calculations disregard unlinked-to pages. These examples show the results as calculated in Simple mode.

Read The Full PageRank Explanation

Google’s rel=”nofollow” option

In early 2005, Google implemented a new value, “nofollow” for the rel attribute of HTML link and anchor elements, so that website developers and bloggers can make links that Google will not consider for the purposes of PageRank — they are links that no longer constitute a “vote” in the PageRank system. The nofollow relationship was added in an attempt to help combat spamdexing.

As an example, people could previously create many message-board posts with links to their website to artificially inflate their PageRank. With the nofollow value, message-board administrators can modify their code to automatically insert “rel=’nofollow’” to all hyperlinks in posts, thus preventing PageRank from being affected by those particular posts. This method of avoidance, however, also has various drawbacks, such as reducing the link value of actual comments.

In an effort to manually control the flow of PageRank among pages within a website, many webmasters practice what is known as PageRank Sculpting] – which is the act of strategically placing the nofollow attribute on certain internal links of a website in order to funnel PageRank towards those pages the webmaster deemed most important. This tactic has been used since the inception of the nofollow attribute, but the technique has been thought by many to have lost its effectiveness.

History of PageRank

PageRank was developed at Stanford University by Larry Page (hence the name Page-Rank) and later Sergey Brin as part of a research project about a new kind of search engine. The first paper about the project, describing PageRank and the initial prototype of the Google search engine, was published in 1998, shortly after, Page and Brin founded Google Inc., the company behind the Google search engine. While just one of many factors which determine the ranking of Google search results, PageRank continues to provide the basis for all of Google’s web search tools.

PageRank has been influenced by citation analysis, early developed by Eugene Garfield in the 1950s at the University of Pennsylvania, and by Hyper Search, developed by Massimo Marchiori at the University of Padua (Google’s founders cite Garfield’s and Marchiori’s works in their original paper). In the same year PageRank was introduced (1998), Jon Kleinberg published his important work on HITS.

How “Creative Commons” License Your Work

lava360 — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 13:57:18 +0000

Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons licenses for free to the public.

These licenses allow creators to communicate which rights they reserve, and which rights they waive for the benefit of recipients or other creators. An easy to understand one-page explanation of rights, with associated visual symbols, explains the specifics of each Creative Commons License. This simplicity distinguishes Creative Commons from an all rights reserved copyright. Creative Commons was invented to create a more flexible copyright model, replacing “all rights reserved” with “some rights reserved.” Wikipedia and Flickr are notable web-based projects using one of its licenses.

It allows artists, authors, publishers and musicians the option of creating and defining a flexible copyright for their creative works. Creative Commons was officially launched in 2001 by a group of intellectual property experts, lawyers and web publishers. Creative Commons licenses cover art, music, and writing, but is not designed for software.

How Creative Commons Works

Creators login to the Creative Commons System and select what restrictions, attributes or modifications they wish to assign to their creative works.

The Creative Commons site will then produce a Creative Commons license for the creative works expressed in three ways. Creative Commons will provide: a commons deed clearly stating the licensing rights in plain English, legal code for the license, and a digital license code. The digital code can be embedded into websites and search engines. Yahoo has a new Creative Commons search which identifies works and recognizes any licensing conditions. Searches can be conducted for different types of licenses. The Creative Commons site also provides a website icon that clearly marks the creative work as Some Rights Reserved or No Rights Reserved.

A variety of license options exist for the copyright holder. Assigning a Creative Commons license does not mean that the copyright holder is relinquishing rights to a piece of art, it merely means some conditions could be placed on the use of creative works.

There Are Six Major Licenses of the Creative Commons:

There are four major conditions of the Creative Commons: Attribution (BY), requiring attribution to the original author; Share Alike (SA), allowing derivative works under the same or a similar license (later or jurisdiction version); Non-Commercial (NC), requiring the work is not used for commercial purposes; and No Derivative Works (ND), allowing only the original work, without derivatives.

Creative Commons International

The original non-localized Creative Commons licenses were written with the U.S. legal system in mind, so the wording could be incompatible within different local legislations and render the licenses unenforceable in various jurisdictions. To address this issue, Creative Commons International has started to port the various licenses to accommodate local copyright and private law. As of December 2008, there are 50 jurisdiction-specific licenses, with 8 other jurisdictions in drafting process, and more countries joining the worldwide project.

Works Protected

Work licensed under a Creative Commons License is protected by applicable copyright law. This allows Creative Commons licenses to be applied to all work protected by copyright law, including: books, plays, movies, music, articles, photographs, blogs, and websites.

However, the license may not modify the rights allowed by fair use or fair dealing or exert restrictions which violate copyright exceptions. Furthermore, Creative Commons Licenses are non-exclusive and non-revocable. Any work or copies of the work obtained under a Creative Commons license may continue to be used under that license.

In the case of works protected by multiple Creative Common Licenses, the user may choose either.

Creative Commons from OSSCube on Vimeo.

WordPress ‘HOW-TO’ & Tips. Compilation of Great Articles

lava360 — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:33:43 +0000

Websites and blogs regularly post some great and useful articles to improve your wordpress experience and give you professional tips and tricks for this purpose. We compile some of the best articles, so you can find these articles on one place. lets have a look on these tips and tricks from some of the best blogs. These are old… But Gold

Advanced Power Tips For WordPress Template Developers from Smashing Magazine

WordPress does not try to be an “everything to everyone” CMS right out of the box. Many systems do an average job incorporating 99% of what the potential CMS market might need, even if the last 15-20% is used only by a fraction of the market and adds considerably to the system’s overall “heft” (or bloat). At the other end of the spectrum are completely custom solutions that are finely tailored to exact needs, at the cost of reinventing wheels like polished content editing with media management and version control.

Read The Full Article On Smashing Magazine …

10 WordPress ‘HOW-TO’ to Give Your Blog the Quality it Deserves from Noupe

As a web developer, you can broaden your potential client base and add value for existing clients by listing ‘WordPress’ as an area of expertise. WordPress is incredibly versatile, it can be tweaked to add many non traditional features to run a more effective blog.
Throughout this article, we’ll be focus on 10 WordPress Theme ideas, tips and useful tutorials you need to have ready in hand when developing your WordPress website to enhance your blog and give it the quality it deserves.

Read The Full Article On Noupe …

Latest Article from Noupe

WordPress vs. ExpressionEngine: Apples and Oranges?

This post has been a long time coming. Whether on Twitter or in the blogosphere, the question often arises, and I have been asked numerous times for my opinion on the ExpressionEngine vs. WordPress debate, and why one would choose one content management system (CMS) over the other.

300+ Resources to Help You Become a WordPress Expert from WebDesigner Depot

WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platforms available today. And for good reason.
It’s powerful enough to be a complete CMS, has every feature or function a blogger could dream of (either built in or available via plugins or custom functions), and it’s free and open source.
While WordPress is incredibly powerful and easy to use on its most basic levels, it can also get pretty complicated, pretty quickly. Below are more than 300 resources to help you master WordPress no matter what your skill level is.
Everything from premium and free themes to plugins to WP hacks and everything in between is included. If it’s possible with WordPress, it’s likely you’ll find it below.

Read The Full Article On WebDesigner wall …

30 Excellent WordPress Video Tutorials From Six Revisions

WordPress is one of the most popular publishing platforms currently out on the market. It’s free, highly-customizable, and very easy to install and use. Because of its popularity, you’ll find a wide array of resources that discuss WordPress development, administration, as well as plenty of user guides to help you get started quickly.

In this article, we take advantage of the merits of learning by way of watching video tutorials and screencasts. Video tutorials allow you to learn by following along with the instructor in real-time – a format that’s very effective for many people.

Read The Full Article On Six Revisions …

100+ Resources for WordPress Theme Developers from DesignM

One of the great things about working with WordPress and developing your own themes is the community and all of the resources that are available. If you’re not sure how to do something or looking to see what solutions other theme designers and developers are using, you can find plenty of infomation and tutorials to help.

In this post we’ll feature a wide selection of resources that are extremely useful for theme designers and developers. If you work on custom themes for clients, themes for your own use, distribute free themes or sell premium themes, these resources may prove to be highly useful for you.

Read The Full Article On DesignM …

How to Create Beautiful Minimalist WordPress Theme in Photoshop From Power Users

Today I am going to show you how to easily create a beautiful minimalist WordPress theme in Photoshop. Actually I was working on the re-design of this blog and got an idea to write a tutorial for minimalist WordPress theme.

I am using a noisy texture here a with some letterpress effect which is being used widely nowadays. Following color scheme is used in this tutorial.

Read The Full Article On PowerUsers …

Very Useful 65 WordPress Hacks from Design Your Way

The normal themes for WordPress are dull aren’t they? Customizing them is the only solution in order to make them look really neat but in order to do that you gotta have some knowledge of WordPress hacks. Guess what. You have here in this article a number of 65 interesting WordPress hacks or articles that will teach you in detail how to edit your WP theme like a WordPress rockstar.

Read The Full Article On Design Your Way …

15 Tips And Plugins To Monitor, Speed Up And Optimize Your WordPress Blog from Web Design Booth

As a famous open source and feature-rich blogging platfom, WordPress requires a stable and good hosting environment. There are a few recommended hosting providers listed on the WordPress official website. These hosting providers meet the minimum system requirements of WordPress. However, there are a lot of potential providers that meet the requirements. WPWebHost and Exabytes are among the great WordPress hosting providers.

Read The Full Article On Web Design Booth …

20+ Powerful WordPress Security Plugins and Some Tips and Tricks From Specky Boy

After putting in all of the time, and perhaps money, into your WordPress website or blog, its now time to secure and protect it from outside enemies and general bad guys: hackers, spammers and all round tossers. If your WP development knowledge is limited, your best option is to download and install plugins. They are easy to install and manage and will give you all the power and security you could ever hope for. Of course, no plugin is powerful enough to protect you from everything, we can only minimize the possible intrusions.

Read The Full Article On Specky Boy …

15 Impressive and Beautiful Uses of WordPress From Web Design Ledger

WordPress is no longer just used to power blogs. It has become the CMS of choice for many web designers. It’s always interesting to see how it’s flexibility provides web designers with the freedom to design sites with no limitations. Here are 15 beautiful web sites all powered by WordPress.

Read The Full Article On WDL …

Add Thumbnails to WordPress with Custom Fields From Tutorial9

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how you can easily add thumbnails, lead image, and other extras to individual posts in WordPress. These images can be shown on the front page, archives, search pages, etc – but appear outside of the content, giving you full control of their placement and style.

Read The Full Article On Tutorial9 …

20 Best WordPress Typography Plugins To Enhance Readability from Hongkiat

Whether you just want more control over how the basic text on your site shows up or you want to do something a bit more advanced, there’s surely a plugin available to help. There are plugins to better handle things like hyphens and long URLS, plugins to replace text with images (whether in headlines or to avoid censorship), and plugins to let you add print-centric elements, like drop caps and pull quotes, to your posts.

Read The Full Article On Hongkiat …

HOW TO: Start Selling Downloads from your WordPress Blog in 5 Minutes from Inspired Mag

Selling downloads that are instantly delivered to the customer after they purchase is an easy way to earn some passive income. There’s no inventory to manage, no shipping calculations, and instant, automatic delivery means more happy customers and less support headaches.

This tutorial will show you how to add a shopping cart that gives the ability to sell and automatically deliver download products from your WordPress blog in just a few minutes.

Read The Full Article On Inspired Mag …

Create a Free Email Newsletter Service using WordPress from WP Beginner

In this tutorial, we will be using WordPress and Feedburner with a few plugins to create a simple Email Newsletter Service for your WordPress blog. You can track the performance of your newsletter by checking how many subscribers you have, how many clicks each link gets and much more.

Read The Full Article On WP Beginner …

24 Great Tips & Tutorials To Get The Most Out Of WordPress From Spyre Studios

WordPress can be so much more than just a blogging platform and can be used to run many types of sites from personal sites to online magazines and portfolios.

I guess I could say I’m a hardcore WordPress user. Actually, almost every website I’ve designed/coded runs on WordPress. Throughout the years I’ve learned a lot about WordPress and how it can be used to run almost any type of website. Today I’d like to share some great resources and tutorials that have helped me along the way!

Read The Full Article On Spyre Studios …

Unique Blog Posts and WordPress Tips from Web Designer Wall

Today I would like to talk about blogs that have a unique design for each post. They break the traditional blog layout by designing a different theme for each post based on the topic. Designing a different layout for each topic requires a lot of time and creativity. So, we should appreciate these blogazines who spend their extra time to make your reading more pleasurable. If you would like to join this unique post trend, below are some excellent examples and WordPress tips on how to implement it.

Read The Full Article On Web Designer Wall …

WordPress : 10+ life saving SQL queriesFrom Cats Who Code

Although there’s lots of things that you can do in WordPress, sometimes you may need a quick fix for a specific problem. In those cases, working directly on the database can be a real life-saver. In this article, I’m going to show you 10+ extremely useful SQL queries for WordPress.

Read The Full Article On Cats Who Code …

9 Plugins Your Clients Will Love For Their WordPress Website from Freelance Folder

There are countless blog posts with lists of plugins for WordPress, including some great lists here on Freelance Folder, but this post focuses on plugins that will make your clients’ experience in WordPress more enjoyable, easier to navigate, rich with important statistics and completely branded to match their website. For freelance web designers or WordPress consultants, taking a small amount of extra time to set up these plugins can boost the professional appearance of WordPress installations you provide for your clients, strengthen their confidence in you and score high marks as you impress them with their own personal WordPress experience.

Read The Full Article On Freelance Folder …

20+ Examples of Creative WordPress Sites from Design Shack

Share a little bit about each site and why I think it’s creative and then provide you with the opportunity to do the same.

Read The Full Article On Design Shack …

30 Powerful WordPress Plugins For Blog Administrators from 1st Web Designer

To handle a blog these days can be quite difficult if you are not well-organized and you don’t spend enough time managing it. That’s why there are plugins for WordPress. They literally make your job lot easier and if you work well with them you can put them to work for you.

Read The Full Article On 1st Web Designer …

Custom WordPress blog design checklist and walkthrough from DesignnCubical

While each blog design will vary from project to project, below are the basic areas and elements to consider when designing a custom WordPress blog.

Read The Full Article On Design n Cubical …

Designing for WordPress: Complete Series & Downloads from CSS Tricks

It is a three-part series which covers downloading and installing WordPress on a server all the way to a completed theme.

Read The Full Article On CSS Tricks …

39 PSD to XHTML, CSS Tutorials Creating Web Layouts

lava360 — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 22:47:10 +0000

I haven’t found really good this kind of list article so I created my own. As being designer myself, coding part usually is hardest part in web development process. But there are so many great tutorials teaching how to use simple XHTML and CSS to get amazing layouts and they offer You to see what’s really happening behind the scenes explaining every step. Learn how to use CSS, how to create layouts in the right way, forget about table-layouts and enjoy CSS real power and put these 43 PSD to XHTML and CSS tutorials in good use!

1. From PSD to XHTML Tutorial

In this first-ever video podcast, I start the conversion process of an Adobe Photoshop mockup of a website, into a real live CSS based website. This is pretty rough here folks, I’m sure these will get more focused with time.

2. How To Create a Horizontally Scrolling Site

3. From PSD to HTML, Building a Set of Website Designs Step by Step

4. Subcide: Creating a CSS layout from scratch

5. Build a Sleek Portfolio Site from Scratch – PSD+XHTML Tutorial

6. From PSD to CSS HTML in 4 easy tutorials

7. Create a Killer Band Site with Drupal: A 6-part Tutorial Series

Great tutorial about creating site with Illustrator, coding with Drupal, using standards compliant XHTML and CSS.

The Complete Lesson Index:

Read Part 1 – Design it Illustrator
Read Part 2 – Slicing it Illustrator
Read Part 3 – XHTML
Read Part 4 – Theming in Drupal
Read Part 5 -Drupal Admin
Read Part 6 -Wrap Up and Additional Resources

8. How to make sexy buttons with CSS

9. Horizontal Menus That Grow on You

In this quick tutorial, I’m going to discuss how to create a neat little menu effect. I’m dubbing it the liDock, because elements in the menu resize as the mouse moves over them, similar to the dock on OS-X, and because it’s a list menu.

10. CSS Template Tutorial

11. CSS Gradient Text Effect Tutorial

12. How to: CSS Large Background

13. Converting a Design From PSD to HTML

14. Slice and Dice that PSD

15. Blurry Background Effect

16. Using CSS Sprites Tutorial

17. Hand-Drawn CSS Navigation

18. Creating a table with dynamically highlighted columns like Crazy Egg’s pricing table

19. CSS Menu Tutorial

20. Photoshop tutorial+ slicing part + coding css

This tutorial will show You how to make clean, nice vertical menu using Adobe Photoshop.

21. Slice a Template and Code it Using CSS

22. Coding Your 1st PSD Tutorial

23. Making Simple Work of Complex CSS Layouts

24. Making Your Footer stay put with CSS

25. How to Convert a PSD to XHTML – Video Screencast

26. Advanced CSS navigation

27. Tutorial: Coding A Layout

28. Invasion of the Body Switchers – Learn how to switch styles

29. Float Tutorials – Step by Step

30. CSS Slicing Guide: Picking The Right Layout

31. Create a Simple, Intelligent Accordion Effect Using Prototype and Scriptaculous

32. CSS Sprites + Rounded corners

33. 3 Simple Steps in Coding a Rounded Corners Layout

34. Style master CSS tutorial

35. Converting a Photoshop Mockup: Part Two, Episode One

36. CSS Vertical Navigation with Teaser

37. Fixed Footer Backgrounds with CSS

38. A simple introduction to 3 column layouts

39. Two column CSS layout

Amazing Retouching And Photo Enhancing Tutorials

lava360 — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 13:10:05 +0000

As graphic designer retouching photographies is essential skill You need to master. You could talk about principles, but at least I started with simple photo editing on Photoshop, trying to take off red eyes, lumps and change backgrounds of pictures I was using. In this You’ll find everything You need – facial and portrait, teeth, lips, eye retouching, background remove as well as simple color adjustments in video and image-based tutorials. In fact for color adjustments I would suggest You look for some premade actions available on deviantart, very handy if You’re just starting out. This list is not so big because it is carefully picked, I am starting to think it’s better to get quality than quantity. Enjoy!

1. Facial And Portrait Retouching

Professional Photographic Retouching Tutorial (40Mins, Start-To-Finish)

This is the second tutorial in a series on photographic retouching. The first part was all about evening skin tonal values and removing blemishes. In this part I will take you through everything else. So, as a result it’s a long video (40 Mins).

High Quality Portrait Retouching Part 1

Tutorial will try to demonstrate the level of editing that goes into removing any discrepancies in the skin.

Glamour Model Complete Retouching

In thiis lesson we’ll see how to retouch a face’s photo and make from a simple picture a very original one

Super Fast and Easy Facial Retouching

In this tutorial, I will show you how to repair some image noise from a low-quality shot, and I will show you an extremely quick and easy way to smooth out a person’s face. The woman in this shot is not a model, and she has a lot of character so we don’t want to overdo it with the smoothing. We will make it look real and natural.

Portrait Retouching

This tutorial will cover retouch this girls portraits by enhancing the skin, eyes and lips.

Make Skin Smooth and Beautiful in Photoshop

This tutorial is great for retouching portraits of people who have acne, wrinkles, and other blemishes that you want to smooth out or remove. Once you’ve completed these steps, you’ll be able to use Photoshop to make any portrait subject appear years younger and healthier.

Airbrushing, doing professional make up digitally

2. Teeth

How to Whiten Teeth

Excellent video tutorial showing easy and fast way how to whiten Your teeth in subtle way.

Whiten Your teeth and eyes

Whenever the need arises to make a natural element white or whiter, it’s tempting to set the foreground color to white and reach for the airbrush. This works if applied with care, but it’s easier to achieve a more realistic effect using other Photoshop tools. Here, a small amount of whitening applied to the model’s teeth and eyes will lift the whole image.

3. Eyes

Enchancing Iris color

It is said that the eyes are windows into the soul. In that case some of us must have really boring souls, but help is at hand if you want to your eyes to really stand out in photographs and creative photo manipulations. This tutorial details a simple yet powerful technique for altering eye color using basic Photoshop tools and a decent image of an eye.

Eye enhancing technique

Learn how to make eyes more beautiful in Photoshop in few simple steps.

Eyescapes resources

I stumbled across this great eye scape page, if You want to efficiency change Your eye color, these eye scapes are the best way to do it in very natural way. ( although it’s Photoshop).

4. Color Adjustments

Quick Tip: Color Correction in Photoshop with the Curves Adjustment Tool

Curves Adjustment tool not only helps in creating desired contrast, but at the same time it allows to color correct images. This tutorial will teach you how to use this tool to color correct photos efficiently.

Non-Destructive Photo Editing with Adjustment Layers in Photoshop

This is not so much about retouching as how to edit photos in non-destructive way so You can later go back and play with settings and compare results.

5. Lips

Lips Gloss

This tutorial demonstrates how to use digital painting with a drawing tablet to create the illusion of lip gloss on bare lips. Use this technique frequently for retouching, it’s a great digital painting exercise too!

Retouching Lips to Make Them Luscious

This tutorial will show you how to take normal lips and enhance them using photoshop tools to make them much brighter and fuller.

6. Remove background from images

5 Great Background Masking Techniques in Photoshop

Isolate objects. Extract objects. Cut out an image. Remove a background. Call it what you will, each of these phrases describes the same objective: take a photo and isolate an object in it from the rest of the image, without the background.

5 techniques removing Backgrounds with Photoshop

Photoshop offers a wide variety of tools for removing backgrounds. This tutorial will walk you through a few of my favorite methods for pulling objects out of their backgrounds with Photoshop. Click on a thumbnail below for step-by-step instructions on removing the background with Photoshop 5.5.

Background Eraser Tool

This technique uses the background eraser tool in Photoshop 5.5. Total time to remove the background from this image was under 3 minutes.

Channel Mask

This technique uses channels to create a mask. Total time to remove the background from this image was under 2 minutes.

Magnetic Lasso Tool

This technique uses the magnetic lasso tool and quick mask mode in Photoshop 5. Total time to remove the background from this image was about 10 minutes.

Pen Tool

This technique uses the pen tool to create a path around the image and convert the path to a selection. Total time to remove the background from this image was about 15 minutes.

Combination of Techniques

This technique uses a combination of techniques to remove the background. Total time for this image was about 20 minutes.

7. Hair editing

Change Hair Color in Photoshop in a Few Steps

An easy way to change hair color in Photoshop in just a few easy steps using the quick mask tool and new adjustment layers.

Advanced Hair Editing in Photoshop

This tutorial explains how to adjust all aspects of hair, including the color of the root.

Changing Hair Color

Great tutorial here on how to change the color of hair on a person in a photograph. What’s really nice about this is that it also shows how to apply streaks of color to the person’s hair. Have fun!

< How to do Complex Hair Selection in Photoshop

A simple way to pick out a complex image from a background using selection tools and channels; also includes information on why you would want to do this.

Creating shining hair like shown in shampoo ads

Advanced Hair Selection in Photoshop

This video will cover using channels to cleanly cut out complex hair selections of both brunette and blonde hair on a studio style background and an outdoor scene. You will learn a lot about how to select things in Photoshop using the techniques displayed in this video which will aid you in selecting many different things, not just hair.

Professional Photo-Retouching Video Tutorial: Hair

This tutorial will focus on the hair. Before watching please note that there is a lot of information in this video to absorb, so watch and re-watch areas. Some of the areas covered in this video are:

– Colour Correction

– Removing Unwanted Straps and Hair

– Adjusting tonal values

– Grading the image

– Boosting image vividness

– Removing blemishes

– Working with blending modes

Extracting hair

Extracting images from their source photographs, manipulating them, and then placing them into another document is a widely used function of Photoshop, and a staple of graphic professionals in many different creative positions. As the experts will tell you, however, this task is not as easy as merely using the ‘Extract’ tool, especially when human hair or animal fur is involved. This tutorial details an simple yet devious workaround for times when you need to mask out hair/fur, but don’t want to spend lots of time with your image and/or splash out on expensive dedicated plug-ins.

Tutorial: How to change hair colour in 5 steps with Photoshop

40+ Stunning Examples of a great redesign: Top Picks

lava360 — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:43:38 +0000

A run down of a collection of my favourite redesigns in recent years

A redesign can be worth its weight in gold if you get it right. There is a thin line between freshening up your design, and taking a step backwards with a redesign. Sometimes a redesign can be subtle and simple, and other times it can be a huge re-vamp of a company and it’s goals. Here’s a look at some of my favourite re-designs in no particular order.

01. AT&T Inc.

This is an ideal example of how a subtle upgrade can make a huge difference.

02. BP Garage

A completely different direction and modern feel. A huge improvement!

03. Sprint

Looking at the old sprint logo it’s obvious a re-design was needed.

04. Mindshare

A great find via Brand New. Great use of colours & typography.

05. Mustang 2010

The current 2009 Logo, compared to 2010. Subtle improvements, but wow so much more aggression! Source: AutoBlog.

06. Adobe Photoshop CS4

Adobe has come a long way in a short time, I like the way things are going.

07. Discovery Channel

Probably one of my favourites. Really love the placement of elements.

08. Fanta

The old can really does look dated compared to the new look.

09. Johnsons Baby

Not one of the obvious choices, but I love the softer approach.

10. Fiat Bravo

Yeah that’s right, a car made it into the list. A great example of a successful redesign, and Fiat’s recent sales figures prove it. Plus I drive this car, so a very biased choice!

11. Steinlager

I hate lager, but if you presented me with this… It’d be rude to say no.

12. Applebee’s

Great example of a redesign where the concept stays similar but the execution is on a completely different level.

13. Firefox / Firebird

A name change, and a great leap forward. Time really is a healer.

14. QVC

A huge Brand, and a major revamp. And a much needed one.

15. Vauxhall

A UK car maker with a new, more prominent identity. I like the old one, its clean and not much is wrong with it. But the new logo reflects more on a new company direction and style of their cars.

16. MSNBC

A fresher look, more open and less in your face. Works well I’d say!

17. Ford

Yep, more cars related stuff. But a much deserved mention here.

18. Ford Fiesta

Sticking with Ford, their new style Fiesta really is a beauty.

19. The BBC

One of the most recognizable UK brands, good job it looks great then.

20. Direct TV

The same concept, shape and fonts. Just better.

21. Barack Obama

What a difference a year makes. The 2007 site compared to the ‘08. Probably one of the best website re-designs around right now.

22. Grooveshark

David Pache, this guy knows how to redesign a brand identity.

23. BusinessWeek

Simpler, Bolder, Cleaner. A successful redesign in my book.

24. Viget Labs

It is amazing how far we’ve all come in terms of web design in just a few years, Viget is a great example of this.

25. Toys”R”Us

A much more playful typeface and colour scheme. I found this via a great article on Logo Design Love: 10 Sucessful Logo redesigns.

26. Seat Leon

The old model wasn’t hideous, it’s only after you see the new model you start to believe it is. A truly amazing revamp, hats off to Seat design team!

27. N Design Studio

How to flip your website into an iconic design, courtesy of Nick La.

28. The BBC website

Words cannot describe how much I hated the old design. The new site really is something for the BBC to be proud of.

29. WordPress.org

A much more engaging and approachable design from WordPress.

30. Microsoft

Making something out of nothing, and doing it well. Microsoft.

31. MailChimp

I dare you to find a better looking mascot. A huge improvement, but a much needed one I must say, the new chimp really does have that “cute-factor”

32. CNET

A subtle update, and you know I love subtle. Beautiful end result.

33. Wembley Stadium

When updating something so Iconic, you need to make something just as iconic. I’d say a job well done on this one.

34. Apple iPod

Advanced technologies and production methods sure do look good.

35. The Simpsons

Right? Now you’re including cartoons… This list is crazy! Maybe so, but this has to go down as the redesign I’m most glad of.

36. XBOX

A new direction with the XBOX design, colours shapes etc are a huge leap in the right direction.

37. Design Shard

With a growing blog it’s important to design for the needs of your visitors. Max does a great job here on Design Shard.

38. KFC

Colonel Sanders is looking better in his old age. A cleaner look.

39. Walmart

A more modern feel to a logo which was showing its age.

40. Envato

A sleeker looking logo really can help kick off your re-branding.

41. Best Buy

A logo which is more fitting to the company & its products.

42. Macmillan

A great bold move by MacMillan Cancer care charity, but one that works really well and a very recognizable brand now.

43. Holiday Inn

Quite possibly my favourite, something about this is just so welcoming. Which is good for a Hotel company right!

44. British Telecom

I have no idea what that guy is blowing into, and I don’t want to know. Needless to say the new logo represents a more dynamic company, with more to offer than just horn blowing.

45. Vicks

The old logo very possibly was made in MS Word. You’d struggle to make the new one in Word, so I like it!

46. Fuel Your Creativity

Adelle really has put a lot of thought into her new logo, and it really has paid off. The new logo has a much more lasting impact.

47. Amazon

For an online store like Amazon the old logo didn’t really fit. The updated version looks better in both web and print.

48. Virgin Media

Not really a redesign, more of a buy-out and brand build. Never-the less it was a refreshing moment for customers like myself!

49. Macbook Pro

Top to bottom glass front, one solid aluminium base and you’ve got yourself a pretty Macbook Pro.

50. HP

I’ve not actually seen this used anywhere but adverts. But I really like it!

Sources of Information

Below is some of the sites and blogs I used for research on this post, along the way I found some great resources and inspirations.

Brand New

Without doubt a lot of these have already been covered by Brand New, a wonderful project by UnderConsideration which I urge you all to add to your RSS feed and start to follow. The content really is amazing, and if you love the logo’s I’ve featured above you’ll love it for sure.

Logo Design Love

As I’ve already mentioned there is a fantastic post on Logo Design Love which you might also find interesting “10 Sucessful Logo redesigns“. The logo design Love website is well worth checking out for various posts on Logos and Brands on a regular basis.

Identity Works

Another great resource which documents the process of various redesigns and their goals from 1998 onwards was Identity Works. A really great site to explore and find out about the history of the brand identities.

15 features of Google Wave

lava360 — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:07:10 +0000

Google Wave is “a personal communication and collaboration tool” announced by Google at the Google I/O conference on May 27, 2009. It is a web-based service, computing platform, and communications protocol designed to merge e-mail, instant messaging, wikis, and social networking. It has a strong collaborative and real-time focus supported by extensions that can provide, for example, spelling/grammar checking, automated translation among 40 languages, and numerous other extensions.

List Of Highly Extensible: Photoshop Plugins

lava360 — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:27:52 +0000

Photoshop plugins are very powerful addons to Adobe Photoshop, which many people seem to forget. Plugins are small extensions to make Photoshop even more extensive while retouching photos, adding simple filter effects and more. I selected separate plugins and featured them, however there were also many huge collections of plugins, so it didn’t make sense to copy&paste massive loads of text and images – I just put screenshot and link to them in that case. Hope You’ll enjoy this one and feel free to add Your comment about Your favorites and maybe links I didn’t list here.

Photoshop plug-ins are .8bf files. After downloading a plug-in, simply place it in the presets>plug-ins folder of the Photoshop’s installation folder (creating a folder with a name defining the plug-in & placing the plug-in files inside the folder will make it more organized).

Photo-Plugins

Local Contrast Enhancement

This plugin’s main purpose is to bring out detail.

This is accomplished by increasing the contrast between a pixel’s value and the mean value of the adjacent pixels in a local area of the photo.

You can control the amount of the increase of contrast, the size of the local area and the amount of blending with the original photo.

Soft Focus

This plugins applies a soft focus effect, which is often useful in portraits or fashion photography. There are controls to adjust the focus softness, the overall strength of the effect and the blending mode of the overlayed blurred image.

Lens Corrector

This plugin corrects barrel and pincushion distortions that many zoom camera lenses.produce.

Just move the sliders to the left to correct barrel distortion, and to the right to correct pincushion .

Many thanks to Martin Vicanek who provided the code for this plugin.

Contrast Mask

This plugin uses a contrast mask to reduce the overall contrast of the image, simultaneously bringing out more detail in both highlights and shadows.

A b/w negative of the image is blurred (with a radius controlled by the “Smoothing” slider) to avoid hard edges and then overlayed with the original, darkening the highlights and lightening the shadows.

The opacity of the overlay is controlled by the “Strength” slider.

Gradient Blur

This plugin applies a gradient blur that can help us draw the viewers attention to the photograph’s main subject.

There are sliders to control the position where the blur starts and it’s strength.

A preview mask can be displayed, and there is a selection between horizontal, vertical and radial blurs.

B/W Conversion

Yet another B/W conversion plugin? Yes, but one with powerful features that allow full control over the final result:

* Total control over the tonal response of Red, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue and Magenta, and the intermediate hues. The user can boost each color’s tonal response all the way up to white or limit it down to black, without affecting the other colors at all .

* The plugin offers presets that accurately simulate the tonal response of the most popular b/w films.

* The plugin can introduce a grain effect of controllable intensity and density.

* An option to simulate the effect of color lens filters, with selectable hue and saturation is also available.

* The user can also apply a toning effect of selectable color and intensity.

* A brightness meter is displayed when the cursor is over the preview window

* All settings can be saved in a parameter file to be available for future use.

Sinedots II

Due to the enormous positive feedback about the sinedots filter I decided to release a slightly advanced version. Basically it’s the same effect with a few extensions:

* enhanced anti alias

* color support

* blend modes

* more parameters for enhanced control

* 16Bit support

* enhanced compatibilty

Shear

This is a conversion of the AfterFx Shear Effect to my new Photoshop framework. A new feature is that a possible (feathered) Selection is now used to alter the strength Parameter locally. This results in some interesting distortions. Compatibility issues are the same as for SinedotsII.

Smart Refinment Filter plug-in

Smart Refinement Filter is an Adobe Photoshop® plug-in for photographic images enhancement. This plug-in allows: sharpness and depth-of-field (DOF) enhancement, and noise (dust) reduction.

Cybia

AlphaWorks – Transparency Effects

A single Photoshop-compatible plug-in filter for quickly removing black or white values and making the region transparent. There are 6 different options for you to choose from, depending on the type of image you are working on (colour photo, mono photo, lineart).

ColourWorks – Colour Modification

A single Photoshop-compatible plug-in with 20 effects for modifying image colour values in different ways. You can use them for subtle correction of your digital photos or experiment with the more dramatic transformations that are available.

Although quite basic these filters can be handy for use on a regular basis.

EdgeWorks – Cool Artistic Styles

A single Photoshop-compatible plug-in with 20 effects for creating dramatic edge and colour modifications. They are best used when experimenting with intense photo transformations for a highly stylized look. They are also handy when creating interesting texture effects.

Screenworks – Simple Pattern Generation

A single Photoshop-compatible plug-in with 30 options for creating screen/mesh patterns.

It provides you with a quick way to add small detailed and repetitive texture overlay effects to areas of your image in one easy step. The single slider setting gives you the option to add the chosen pattern on top of your image, or make the layer background white.

EmbossWorks – Classic Variations

A single Photoshop-compatible plug-in with 20 effects for producing various quick and easy embossing styles. They are handy when you need to add a sense of depth or relief to an otherwise flat image.

SwapShop – Colour Exchange

A single Photoshop-compatible plug-in with 15 effects for switching the colour values in your images. Useful for experimenting with interesting combinations and creating surreal results.

MasterBlaster – Maximum Colour Toning

A single Photoshop-compatible plug-in with 20 effects for “blasting” intense colour into your images. Ideal for when you need to add dramatic impact to your photos or work.

Mezzy – Artistic Grain

A single Photoshop-compatible plug-in with 15 effects for creating a selection of simple grain and mezzo styles. Give your photos a new look with these various effects.

Stereogram Lab Filter

Stereogram Lab Filter allows to generate Hidden Image Stereograms right in your Photoshop, which is quite convenient. This filter is free and you can use it both for commercial and non-commercial purposes, however, distributing the filter itself is not allowed.

LittleInkPot Free Plugins

Xpose

Xpose is an exposure adjustment plugin. It was written to offer quick adjustment of highlights and shadows with a rapid preview feedback and a simple, intuitive interface.

Thredgeholder

The Thredgeholder plugin is the little brother to Thredgeholder Pro, providing edge detection that’s simple to use but highly effective.

Chalkaholic

Chalkaholic renders chalk and charcoal type effects with artistic panache and flair. Providing uniquely effective artistic rendering options, Chalkaholic is the essential addition to any digital artist’s effects collection.

Impression MX Paint Engine

With 6 brush types, 3 brush stroke algorithms, and 88 parameters to give each an unprecedented amount of variety, ImpressionFX is the most versatile paint engine ever created. The sheer variety of effects that can be produced with a single pass of the filter is what makes it worthwhile. You can download trial version.

Luce Photoshop Plugin

Flaming Pear

Imagenomic (4 Plugins)

3D Shadow

This handy tool easily creates various types of 3D shadows from objects such as letters, numbers, shapes and so on. All settings are present in a single window – transparency level, perspective, shadow color and position, X/Y/Z angles, and some others. Even the seasoned designers are surprised by the simplicity of the plug-in and excellent results it generates. The text, processed with this tool immediately grabs the attention of the viewers.

Blinternat Filter Plugins

These filters have no adjustable settings, they have been created to be quicker and easier to use, even though they aren’t as flexible as other filters. Each filter is shown with an image which uses a ‘mouseover’, move the mouse over the image to see what it does, click the image to download a zip file with just that filter in it or click the link in the ‘Download’ section to get all 10 filters there.

Power Retouch photo-retouching plugins

Photoshop Filters factory

Gwhite Photoshop Filters (2 plugins)

Blur Threshold -

This is very useful for reducing noise and jpeg artifacts without blurring edge detail. Only pixels within a selected value and contrast range are blurred.

Custom Blur

- This filter requires an image layer in Photoshop. Controls 1-6 select the position of the pixels for blending, plus or minus, relative to the position of the source pixel.

Neology Filter Factory Filters

There are as total of 23 filters for Mac and PC you can download. You may give them to your friends and pals, but they are not allowed to be sold or included in commercial media as in books, CD-ROMs other Internet sites without my personal permission.

Mezzoforce Photoshop Plugins ( 4 Plugins)

You must register in order to download these plugins. There are plugins like PainterTool, Ice, MetalEaser and Snow.

FilterForge

4 packs of plugins:

Metals

- A set of seven photorealistic metal textures and effects. Metallizing effects, alien-looking or industrial metallic surfaces, rust or aluminum foil, and more – all filters are fully adjustable and support seamless tiling.

Photo Effects

- A set of seven photo enhancing effects. Give your photos a sunny style, apply grunge look or color tints, age the image, and more – all filters are fully adjustable and resolution-independent.

Frames

- A set of seven filters that create frames for your photos. Apply a realistic painted wooden frame or a vignette, give your photos a classic elegant feel or a ragged harsh look, and more.

Distortions

- A set of seven filters that can reshape, distort and deform the source image in various creative ways. The filters can break the image into abstract fragments, generate bubbly effects, apply waves or ripples, and more.

Vanderlee Photoshop Plugins

Auto FX Software (10 plugins)

Not all of these plugins are free, but at least You can try them. I reviewed just one of their plugins – Dreamy photo, because it become my favorite.

Dreamy Photo

Dreamy Photo gives images a soft romantic feel. This is a superb effect for enhancing stock photography, digital camera photos and any image you want to add a warm feel to.

Richard Roseman Filters and Plugins

This page features a growing set of (mostly free) Photoshop filters / plugins coded by Richard Roseman himself. They are not necessarily only limited to Adobe Photoshop and they work with many other graphic applications so long as they adhere to Adobe’s plugin specifications. If you are unsure, click to see the compatibility list.

Variable Invertion

This filter will variably invert color channels of an image.

Channel Modifier

This filter will perform various operations on color channels.

Pixel Quantification

This filter calculates the sum of a selected number of pixels above a level threshold. It has been primarily developed for biological protein strand analysis although it is suitable for various other uses. Thanks to David Ng for conceptualization.

Superformula

This filter generates a wide variety of geometric shapes using the Superformula. The Superformula, sometimes referred to as the Supershape, was discovered by Johan Gielis. It is a simple formula that can be used to generate a wide variety of geometric shapes. Special thanks to Paul Bourke for allowing his algorithm to be ported to this plugin. For more information, please visit Mr. Bourke’s site. Special thanks to Johan Gielis for his input and support. For more information, please visit Johan Gielis’ site and here.

Evaluate

This filter performs various image processing operations through rule-based evaluations. ‘Evaluate’ can be an extremely powerful filter when used to its full potential. With it’s sophisticated rule-based evaluations, it can perform more than 50 different image processing operations ranging from color replacement, color inversion, color swapping, greyscale conversion, color clamping, color multiplication and division, color trigonometrical mathematics, pixel blurring, pixel grain, and much, much more. Any of these effects can be applied to specific color ranges, specific luma ranges, specific color channels or any combination of any of these (and more). ‘Evaluate’ makes specific pixel targeting and isolation very easy to accomplish, providing the user with extremely precise image processing controls.

Lens FX

This filter will generate various distortion effects.

Photoshop Support Plugins

The Digital Artshop Plugins

There are 3 free and great plugins available for free: GREYSCALER (This filter will give you total control and flexability to converting RGB images to black and white.), IMAGE ENCODER (Protect your pictures. Our Image Encoder has 16 million encode/decode options) and IRIDESCENT (The Digital Artshop’s Iridescent filter will apply a pearl like effect to your image).

PluginsWorld

Photoshop Filters

Redfield Plugins

GoPog Plugins

Adobe.com Photoshop plugins

ThePlugins Site

Mehdi – Plugins Photoshop

Xero – Photoshop Compatible Plugins

Freeware Photoshop Plugins

Virtual Photographer

courtesy: wparena.com, for more great posts please visit the link

Exceptional Apophysis Tutorials

lava360 — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:20:26 +0000

Apophysis tutorial part separated in 3 parts for beginners, basic and advanced users. At the end of article You’ll find 2 more links, where You can continue Your research if You are serious about this program. It was real fun and interest compiling this article and through research I saw there are really a lot to learn, but everything is based on math so You can create unbelievable fractals as seen in previous Apophysis inspirational article.

Okay, now let the magic happen and good luck in Your own research!

Beginner Tutorials

1.Arcane Fractals

Arcane fractals offers very basic tutorials for beginners, so it’s great place for starting out:

a). Creating The Forms

b) Colouring the Flames

c) Saving And Rendering

d) Some FAQ’s

2.Starting tutorials about writing scripts

Here You should start out if You want to be more efficient with scripts, starting guide.

3. Apophysis Tutorial for Beginners

In this tutorial, you will learn about the many features of Apophysis. In it you’ll find a command cheat sheet, test files for you to experiment with and much more!

In order to get the most out of this tutorial, do not try to do it all at once. This tutorial is meant to be a guide, a walk through to help you get familiar with the program. Apophysis is both complex and simple; that is to say, there is much to learn, but once you get a feel for it, you’ll find it very easy to work with.

4. Basic and detailed Apophysis tutorial

Very well explained and simple guide showing several ways how to create fractals.

5. All About Apophysis

Very large tutorial. This explains a lot of what beginners will want to know about Apophysis. You’ll learn all about gradients, coloring techniques, some post-work, the editor window and variations, scripts, mutations, savings fractals, rendering fractals, and important Apophysis settings.

6. Using Resources Tutorial

A beginners guide to using resources in Apophysis.

7. Apophysis Help File 2.08

Huge apophysis help file with many tutorials and explanations not only for beginners but also for advanced users.

8. Tutorial on Developing a Linear Fractal for Apophysis Beginners

9. Exploring Apophysis 3D

The download includes a 75 page tutorial on how to make four different fractals and help You get Your feet on Apophysis. The download also includes a pack of 100 gradients, and a .flame file of the contents of this tutorial.

10. Basic Flower

A very basic tutorial on how to make a basic flower in Apophysis.

11. Beginner Apophysis 3d Tutorial

Tutorial for Apophysis 3d written for beginners. The 3d Bubbles script it refers to was made by Shortgreenpigg.

12. Beginners Guide to Scripting

This 14-page tutorial on some basic scripting techniques covers creating flames and transforms, modifying the transforms, and adjusting how the flame ends up in your preview window.

13. Simple 3D Julian and DOF Tutorial

In this tutorial we will create the fractal you can see on the front page – not a really striking one, but good enough to explain how the features in Apophysis 2.06c 3D work.

Basic

14. Apophysis Plastic Tutorial

15. 17 page Apophysis tutorial

The download is a zipped, fully illustrated and informative, 17 page PDF tutorial designed for beginners. The first part covers many Apophysis tips, including saving, editing and applying scripts, using hotkeys, mutating and transforming, saving parameters, changing gradients and rendering (using both HQI and Apophysis).

The second part contains information regarding Photoshop manipulation and recovery. Covered topics include basic color correction examples, using filters, layer techniques and a few other tips and hints designed to help beginners.

16. Tutorial how to create Julian fractal

In image below You can see similar outcome inspired from this tutorial by ccdigitalfx.

17. An introduction to basic flame formation

This guide is intended to help the Apophysis user create well formed flames showing and explaining technique founded by tutorial author.

18. Spirograph Tutorial

This tutorial is a general source of information and hopefully inspiration on using the spirograph variation. The first part has information on the variables of spirograph and what can be done by just one spirograph transform. The second part has instructions on two types of spirals that can be done using spirograph as a base. It has many opportunities for you to branch out, and it certainly isn’t a walkthrough to an art piece. It simply provides a few tips and bases you can work on to create your own fractals.

19. Basic Heart Tutorial

This tutorial will show you how to make a basic heart in Apophysis.

20. Secrets of Making Nebulae Tutorial

21. Julian Rings Tutorial

Here is a basic tutorial on Julian Rings for Apophysis 2.08.

22. Apophysis Video Tutorial of making fractals

23. Apophysis installation and basic use tutorial (15 pages)

24. Apophysis Tech Tutorial

This tutorial is meant for apophysis. Basic knowledge of apophysis is required.

With this tutorial you will make a tech, sci-fi, abstract,plastic-like fractal.

Advanced

25. 55 page intermediate PDF guide for Apophysis

26. Apophysis “oily tutorial”

Tutorial showing simple Oily type technique in Apophysis.

27. Apophysis Cube Tutorial

Learn how to create cube style fractals in very easy way.

28. Swirl Tutorial

A tutorial on how I make the swirl effects in Apophysis 2.08.

29. Tips For Texturing With Crackle

An Apophysis tutorial for intermediate and advanced users.

30. Fractal Stiching Tutorial

This tutorial focuses mostly on the Photoshop process of stiching fractals.

31. The How + Why Script Writing

Once you have discovered that particular special fractal style you like to create you soon find that most of the creation of that fractal is repetitive. This is a good place to write a script. Once you have determined what is always the same about each fractal of that style you can then start writing instructions in a script to do all that for you. With the use of variables (changeable values within the script) you can start adding randomness to your script that will allow for different results each time you run the script.

Here for further reading You’ll find other sites with pretty good tutorial lists available:

32. A Fractal Community Tradition

Huge list of DeviantArt Beginner/Intermediate and advanced apophysis tutorials.

33.Wiki Apophysis tutorials

User submitted Apophysis tutorials, You can even add Your favorite there too.

Ajax Downloads Directory Ajax Free Scripts

lava360 — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:18:33 +0000

Ajax, sometimes written as AJAX (shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript + XML), is a group of interrelated web development techniques used to create interactive web applications or rich Internet applications. With Ajax, web applications can retrieve data from the server asynchronously in the background without interfering with the display and behavior of the existing page. The use of Ajax has led to an increase in interactive animation on web pages. Data is retrieved using the XMLHttpRequest object or through the use of Remote Scripting in browsers that do not support it. Despite the name, the use of JavaScript and XML is not actually required, nor do the requests need to be asynchronous.

1. Ajax auto complete

Providing here a list of free Ajax scripts

1.1 dhtmlxCombobox – AJAX Script

Easy configurable DHTML JavaScript combo box with Ajax support, autocomplete functionality and wide cross-browser compatibility. The component features type-ahead, keyboard support and ability to display images in the dropdown list. GPL licensed.

Demo | Download

1.2 Home of AutoSuggest: An AJAX auto-complete text field

The AutoSuggest class adds a pulldown menu of suggested values to a text field. The user can either click directly on a suggestion to enter it into the field, or navigate the list using the up and down arrow keys, selecting a value using the enter key. The values for the suggestion list are to provided as XML, or as JSON (by a PHP script, or similar).

The results of the first request are cached on the client machine and are filtered as the user continues to type, to reduce the number of requests hitting the server.

In the JSON example above a callback function is passed to the autoSuggest instance. It is called when the user selects an entry, and inserts the entry id into a hidden field (visible for this example).

In the XML example below supplementary information is being displayed along with the names, in this case an english county.

Demo | Download

1.3 Autocomplete using MooTools- AjaxScript

A MooTools Autocompleter widget that creates a unobtrusive and customisable suggestion box for input fields from variable data sources. Try it out, it can load the suggestions from a local object or via XHR from a JSON or an XHTML source, parsed with Javascript!
Json and Xhtml Version – Backend (PHP Source) is a flatfile database with 6Mb spanish dictonary. So its maybe too slow sometimes

Demo | Download

2. Ajax Calendar Scripts

2.1 Home of Sliding Date-Picker - AJAX Script

Sliding Date-Picker enables you to pick dates with a simple slider bar. By dragging the bar over the time-line, the dates change instantly. Besides this, when the user decides to manually change the dates, the bar is automatically adjusted to the corresponding dates. Sliding Date-Picker is based on Prototype/Scriptaculous, but now combined with the DateJs library as well. It has been tested it in Firefox 2.x and IE6+ and it is licensed under the GPL license.

Demo | Download

2.2 Home of JS Calendar – AJAX Script

This is a cross browser Javascript calendar. Download the zip-file and open the js_calendar.html file in your browser. You use the displayCalendar() or displayCalendarSelectBox() function to display the calendar(look how it is done in js_calendar.html).

12 languages are currently supported(English, German, Dutch, Norwegian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Russian, Danish, Hungarian, Italian and Swedish). You define which language to use in the dhtmlgoodies_calendar.js file. example: var languageCode = ‘en’;

Demo | Download

2.3 Vista-like Ajax Calendar version 2 – Ajax Script

The Vista-like Ajax Calendar (vlaCalendar) version 2 is a unobtrusive web version of the slick and profound Windows Vista taskbar calendar, by using the mootools javascript framework, AJAX, XHTML, CSS and PHP. Now with datepicker functionality and cleaner and more developer centered CSS, PHP and javascript code!

Demo | Download

2.4 dhtmlxCalendar :: Ajax DatePicker – Ajax Script

dhtmlxCalendar is a lightweight cross-browser JavaScript calendar component which can be configured as a popup datepicker or a flat calendar. The main features include custom date format, any day as the first day of week, year drop down list, various skins and languages. Optionally the calendar can be set graggable.

Demo | Download

3. Ajax Chat Script

Ajax powered chat scripts, will help you comunicate better with your customers.

3.1 Ajax im – AJAX Script

ajax im (”asynchronous javascript and xml instant messenger”) is a browser-based instant messaging client. It uses the XMLHTTPRequest object in JavaScript to send and receive commands to and from the server. No refreshing of the page is ever needed for this “web application” to work, as everything is updated in real-time via JavaScript.

download 3.41: Compressed (224kb) | Uncompressed (327 kb)

3.2 Ajax php chat – Ajax Script

Chatr is a chatroom on your site. It’s a set of php scripts and some javascript to create an AJAX/php chatroom with php as the only server requirement. Installation aims to be simple, limited to dropping the scripts in a folder on your server, visiting install.php and testing it out.

Feel free to develop and expand upon it. I’d love to hear what you do with it. Also, if you’d like to contribute your changes back to the project, please download and use the python patch creation script.

Installation

1. Upload the contents of the zipfile to your server in its own folder.

2. Open install.php in your browser, fill in each of the fields, and click submit.

3. Congratulations, your installation is complete. Login to your new chatroom!

Notes

If it still doesn’t work after submitting the form in install.php, check that the config.php was created. If config.php doesn’t exist, make sure your webserver has write access to chatr’s folder.

This chat is designed to be simple above all else and not to hammer your web server too hard. Therefore don’t expect it to be irc or AIM or something more than what it is.

Demo | Download

3.3 wTag mini chat (shoutbox) – AjaxScript

The script has built in php protection from auto spam submission that works great.
You can ban words and site addresses. Please read the instructions on the wTag web site on how to use the anti spam filter.
A free open source shoutbox script, using Ajax to refresh the chat. Features spam protection, bad word filter, smileys, urls autolinking, valid XHTML and CSS.

Demo | Download

3.4 Ajax Shout box – Ajax Script

This Ajax script is based on jQuery library and Form plugin. It’s very easy to setup it, also an archive is available for download so you can play with the files on your localhost. This jquery shoutbox is file based, but it’s very easy to write a few more lines to keep your messages in a database. It tries to simulate the behaviour of YShout (a donation ware script) you can find online. Data is exchanged in JSON format, pear Json library is being used.

Demo | Download

3.5 Lace – Ajax chat room script – Ajax Script

Lace is not necessarily an Ajax chat room script (though in its current incarnation it is being demoed as one), or a chat server, or anything related to chatting or instant messaging. Lace is the application, or framework, that the demo chat room is built upon — a simple, open communications framework. The idea behind Lace is to allow developers to easily create web applications that consistently and continuously share data between multiple clients over HTTP. Chat rooms, RSS readers, ‘rich client’ web applications, server to server communications and distributed services are just some of the possible uses of Lace.

Demo | Download

3.6 phpFreeChat – Ajax Script

php Free Chat is a free, simple to install, fast, customizable and multi languages chat that uses a simple filesystem for message and nickname storage. It uses AJAX to smoothly refresh (no flicker) and display the chat zone and the nickname zone. It supports multi-rooms (/join), private messages, moderation (/kick, /ban), customized themes based on CSS and plugins systems that allows you to write your own storage routines (ex: Mysql, IRC backends …), and you own chat commands !
Demo | Download

3.7 Google Blogogscoped AJAX “Sunset” chat – Ajax Script

This Ajax chat script doesn’t need any special plug-in (like Java or Flash) but simply runs in your browser. It was tested with Internet Explorer 6, Firefox 1, and to some degree Konqueror. It also doesn’t need any special ports as it’s Ajax-based.

To start the chat, choose any of the many avatars and give your avatar a nick (this can be your name). If the nick is taken, you need to choose another one. However, multiple same avatars may appear in the room.

Once in the room, just type something you want to say in the bottom input box and press Return. Only those in the room will be able to see it (you cannot address someone specifically), and what you say is not permanently logged (it is logged for under 1 hour and will be instantly deleted the second you exit).

Demo | Download

4. Ajax CMS Scripts

A collection of ajax powered CMS software.

4.1 MODx – Ajax Script

The Ajax CMS for today. And tomorrow.

MODx is 100% buzzword compliant, and makes child’s play of building content managed sites with validating, accessible CSS layouts – hence Ajax CMS. It empowers its users to build engaging “Web 2.0″ sites today, with its pre-integrated Scriptaculous and Prototype libraries. If you’re a CSS designer or Ajax aficionado, this is the CMS for you; and if you like what you see today, you’ll love what’s coming.

Techies call MODx a Content Management Framework (”CMF”): equal parts custom web app builder and Content Management System (”CMS”). With a flexible API and a robust event override system, MODx makes building engaging web projects straightforward — or changing core functionality without hacking the core code possible. Custom tweaks won’t leave you pulling out your hair when it’s time to upgrade.

Not only does MODx help you build sites quickly, but it also is both robust and simple. As far as end-users know, MODx is just an easy-to-use online application; for developers there’s freely available resources and a fantastic end-user community.

The SEO CMS

MODx helps you build sites that perform well in search engines – in fact, we think it’s a great SEO
CMS. Human readible URLs that Google loves is part of the reason, and allowing you to build tight, semantic XHTML/CSS also plays a role. Discover more in our features section.

Demo | Download

4.2 Micro CMS – Ajax Script

Micro CMS uses a WYSIWIG that is as search engine optimized as WYSIWYG gets!

AJAX-based page editing makes making changes to your site nearly instantanious.

Edit the content in-line. No need to fish around in some other interface for the right database entry, you can edit the content right where it is.

Amazingly simple interface that anyone can understand. Setting up a site using Micro CMS only takes a few minutes.

Support for CSS styling for extra search engine optimization
.

Easily preview changes before you commit to them.

Supports versioning, so you can roll back changes with the click of a button. You set the number of versions you want to be able to save through the admin area.

Comes with installer for easy database setup and configuration.

Cross-browser compatibility. For real! If you’re an Internet Explorer user, you have the added benefit of spell checking.

Micro CMS Requirements
Micro CMS requires that PHP be installed on your web hosting provider and that you have a single MySQL database.

Demo | Download

4.3 Elixon – Ajax Script

Elixon CMS/AJAX-XUL is the very first of the new generation of modern content management systems written in XUL. We focused on the comfort of the user interface. Elixon Content Management System is user-friendly and very intuitive. This project involves introducing and applying latest web technologies.

Demo | Download

4.4 Skeletonz – AJAX CMS script - Ajax Script

Skeletonz is a new Ajax based content management system (CMS) based on Python. It differs from others by being simple, but yet very powerful and extensible. If you need a simple system that you and your users are going love then Skeletonz might be the solution you are looking for! The system is open source and released under GNU GPL.

Demo | Download

40+ CSS Sprite Generator and CSS Image Sprites Tutorials

lava360 — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:07:43 +0000

Do you really understand CSS Sprite? The name might be a little misleading, because sprites aren’t little images like you might be picturing, a sprite is actually one big image. Have you ever seen the CSS technique where the “on” and “off” states of a button are contained within the same image and are activated by shifting the background-position?

Think of CSS Sprites as an extension of that technique. The difference is that instead of just two or three images being combined into one, you can combine an unlimited number of images into one. The origin of the term “sprites” comes from old school computer graphics and the video game industry. The idea was that the computer could fetch a graphic into memory, and then only display parts of that image at a time, which was faster than having to continually fetch new images. The sprite was the big combined graphic. CSS Sprites is pretty much the exact same theory: get the image once, shift it around and only display parts of it, saves the overhead of having to fetch multiple images

CSS Sprite Generator

1. CSS Sprites Generator v.0.0.2-alfa

This tool allows you to upload multiple files and generate a sprite out of them. It also gives you the CSS code (the background-position value) for each image in the sprite.

2. CSS-Sprit.es

3. Data URI Sprites

DURIS (Data URI [CSS] Sprites) is a new method to manage website’s background images. It’s aimed to replace classical CSS Sprites.

4. Spritr

This simple tool lets you upload multiple images and generates CSS code for the sprite.

5. Sprite Creator 1.0

This tool allows you to upload an image and create the CSS code for selected areas of the sprite.

6. CSS Sprite Generator

A Drupal module for building CSS sprites.

7. Projekt Fondue CSS Sprite Generator

This generator lets you ignore duplicate images, resize source images, define horizontal and vertical offset, define background and transparency color, assign CSS class prefixes and various other things. It also supports many languages. The source code is available for downloading and is covered by a BSD license. Want to run a local copy? Well, you can do that, too.

8. SmartSprites

A Java-based desktop application that parses special directives that you can insert into your original CSS to mark individual images to be turned into sprites. It then builds sprite images from the collected images and automatically inserts the required CSS properties into your style sheet, so that the sprites are used instead of the individual images.

CSS Sprites Tutorials

1. David Walsh Blog

2. e-House Studio: CSS Sprite Navigation Tutorial

3. Web Site Tips: CSS Sprites Tips

4. Peachpit: What are CSS Sprites

5. WebSite Optimization: CSS Sprites

6. A List Apart: CSS Sprites

7. Tutorial9: Building Faster Websites with CSS Sprites

8. Net Tuts: Video Tutorial on Exactly How to Use CSS Sprites

9. Victoria Web School: Video css-sprites-tutorial

10. Webolia: The Mystery Of CSS Sprites: Techniques, Tools And Tutorials

11. Kick Developer: CSS Sprite Tutorial

12. Blogging CSS: CSS Menus With Images – CSS Sprites

13. Line25: How to Create a CSS Menu Using Image Sprites

14. Coding Apple’s Navigation Bar Using CSS Sprites

15. Video How to Use CSS Sprites

Fastest Way To Create Best Blog Post

lava360 — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:38:10 +0000

I’ve tested many different ways and weblog clients to create blog posts more effectively, but know I seem to find the best way and I wanted to share it with You. Maybe technique will seem very simple to experienced bloggers, but at least for me it was something I wasn’t aware at start and found out just by testing.

At first I would suggest to use any desktop editing program, because coding article by hand in my opinion takes too much effort, which is not worth it really. I have been using Windows Live Writer for some time, where I like to get automatic SpellCheker, but now I am sticking to another free weblog client BlogDesk. In my opinion these are the best choices if You’re using Windows ( I don’t know how about Mac).

At first I also enjoyed that images are dynamically uploaded to server, while I didn’t reach some problems:

1. While images are uploading on server dynamically, it takes a lot of CPU and memory and if You’re getting some errors, like images accidentally change address (happened to me twice, though I don’t know real reason, but I got my lesson), You may also get server overload.

2. I am using WordPress, I don’t know what difference may it cause, but when uploading images, Blogdesk and also Windows Live Writer are creating unnecessary images, cropped in different sizes, even if I am using only original size.

So these were my problems. I am using a lot of images in my list articles, so it was pretty important. So I found solution, which maybe will be useful for You too. I am writing all of my articles on BlogDesk, also I add images to get better overview how everything will look like. When I am done, I go to source/code view ( View–>Source on Blogdesk), then select all code and copy it. Ctrl+a, ctrl+c. Yes, yes, I want to use Find and Replace feature. It’s built in on Notepad and several other text editors, but notepad owns every Windows user. I paste all code on Notepad and leave it there for now. I think for MAC users it should be similarly, You just need that built-in replace feature.

All pictures are kept in one folder at first, I always create new folder for each article and build little backup files for emergencies. So now open Your FTP client, go to place where You want to upload Your images, better create new folder for each article and do Your thing. If You are using WordPress, I would suggest to use path –> public_html(Your domain address)/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/Your-article-title-folder/.. and drop images here. It’s handy to separate Your files smart, so You can later easily manage them.

Ok, now let’s return to source code and use handy find/replace feature (I used my site and image path I had).

Idea is to find default image path and replace it with Your online version, so You upload only images You need and manually so Your server don’t get too busy too.

Make sure also Your cursor is active at the start of the post, so You don’t miss any image.

Just copy/paste Your current path and replace it with Your online version and hit “Replace all” button – easy and safe.

Now just paste whole code in new post HTML view and publish article, it’s simple as that.

One more suggestion. I know there are no easy way to convert simple text to headings in weblog clients. At least I have huge list articles and if I use headings, it is a lot more friendlier for SEO than just simple text in bold.

I just put all text I want to convert to headings in tags, simply and then use the same find/replace feature.

First time I replace to

for example, second time I replace with

I am really hoping this helped, though I am not too good giving tips than creating just list articles Let me know if this helped for You and if You have some questions please ask. Also if You know some more advanced way how to do this job, feel free to share.

35+ Useful Web Design Tools

lava360 — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:13:13 +0000

This article will showcase tools which should and could be used by designers daily. If you need some inspiration – you can visit the most popular and recommended design showcase sites to find really good works and examples. Check out design related tools, online generators, free font sites, template sites, great websites helping to test and manage websites – those all have been created to save your time! Remember - not always the best way is to create everything by yourself. Be smart and you will accomplish your tasks much easier and quicker without struggling!

1. Deviantart

Deviantart is one of the largest artist showcases on internet. You can find some great inspiration here.

2. Web design library

Web Design Library is an internationally refereed resource that provides a platform for the dissemination of design thinking and research. It covers all theoretical and practice-oriented aspects of the effective, efficient and attractive presentation of information on-line.

3. Stylevault

Stylevault.net is a design showcase where web designers can show off their talents and get inspiration as well as giving it.

4. Behance

Behance is a very great place for inspiration, because there are more professionals with stunning designs.

5. The design inspiration

The Design Inspiration is created by a group of designers who are seeking various design inspiration every day.

Design tools

6. Colour lovers

COLOURlovers is an international community of designers and artists of all kinds who visit the site to get color inspiration, ideas and feedback for both their professional and personal projects. COLOURlovers’ loyal members create colors, palettes and patterns to nurture their ongoing love affair with color.

7. Adobe kuler

Adobe kuler is a web-based application by Adobe that helps you create and share color themes.

8. Color hunter

Color Hunter is a place to find and make color palettes created from images.

9. Colorotate

With ColoRotate, you can work with colors in 3D, in real time, and in a way that matches how our minds process color.

10. Stripemania

Stripemania is a simple and free web 2.0 tool to create seamless diagonal stripes for your designs. You are able to choose the size of the stripes and the spacing between those. You can even add color gradient effect for all of your stripes.

11. Fontstruct

FontStruct lets you quickly and easily create fonts constructed out of geometrical shapes, which are arranged in a grid pattern, like tiles or bricks.

12. Dafont

A great website which allows you to browse fonts alphabetically, by themes, or by date. Most of the fonts are free to download.

13. Icon finder

Icon search engine with over 100 000 free icons.

14. Whatthefont

Seen a font in use and want to know what it is?

Submit an image to WhatTheFont to find the closest matches in our database. Or, let cloak-draped font enthusiasts lend a hand in the WhatTheFont Forum

15. Lorem Ipsum

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry.

Coding tools

16. Typeteste

The Typetester is an online application for comparison of different typefaces. Its primary role is to make web designer’s life easier.

17. Typeface.js

With typeface.js you can embed custom fonts in your web pages so you don’t have to render text to images.

18. Firebug

Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of web development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.

19. Smush.it

Smush.it uses optimization techniques specific to image format to remove unnecessary bytes from image files. It is a “lossless” tool, which means it optimizes the images without changing their look or visual quality

20. pForm

HTML form creator.

21. Zend Studio

Zend Studio 7.0 is the next generation of our professional-grade PHP application development environment. It has been designed to maximize developer productivity by enabling you to develop and maintain code faster, solve application problems quickly and improve team collaboration.

22. Fire FTP for Firefox

FireFTP is a free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox which provides easy and intuitive access to FTP servers.

23. Expandrive

ExpanDrive acts just like a USB drive plugged into your Mac or PC. It lets you open, edit, and save files on remote computers from within your favorite programs. ExpanDrive enhances every single application on your computer by transparently connecting it to remote data.

24. W3C Validator

The W3C validator is a free service by W3C that helps check the validity of Web documents. Also available CSS validator.

25. jQuery UI

jQuery UI is an open source library of interface components — interactions, full-featured widgets, and animation effects — based on the stellar jQuery javascript library . Each component is built according to jQuery’s event-driven architecture (find something, manipulate it) and is themeable, making it easy for developers of any skill level to integrate and extend into their own code.

26. Clean AJAX

Clean is an open source engine for AJAX, that provides a high level interface to work with the AJAX technology.

27. Refelction.js

Reflection.js allows you to add reflections to images on your web pages. It uses unobtrusive javascript to keep your code clean.

28. Blueprint CSS

Blueprint is a CSS framework, which aims to cut down on your development time. It gives you a solid foundation to build your project on top of, with an easy-to-use grid, sensible typography, useful plugins, and even a stylesheet for printing.

29. CleanCSS

CleanCSS is a powerful CSS optimizer and formatter. Basically, it takes your CSS code and makes it cleaner and more concise.

30. XHTML Character Entity Reference

This page contains the 252 allowed entities in HTML 4 and XHTML 1.0, as outlined in section 24 of the official HTML 4 specifications, published by the W3C.

31. Pingdom

Pingdom offers cost-effective and reliable server, network and website monitoring. We use a global network of servers to monitor our customers’ sites 24/7, all year long. The service includes statistics for uptime and response time, and can send out alerts via SMS and email.

32. Lightbox 2

Lightbox is a simple, unobtrusive script used to overlay images on the current page. It’s a snap to setup and works on all modern browsers.

33. WIX

Free flash page builder.

34. Best free templates

BestFreeTemplates.info offers exclusive CSS templates of various categories, available for free downloading. Our free templates can be easily called one of the best free templates in the Internet. Qualitative CSS layout, absolutely unique professional web design – all this being an incontestable advantage of our free webtemplates. That’s what allows us to characterize our website templates as the best free templates.

Testing and managing site

35. Browsershots

BrowserShots is a web-based browser compatibility check tool that lets you easily preview how your website looks in all popular browsers. No email or registration required, submit your web URL and wait 3-5 min for BrowserShots to generate screenshots for each browser.

36. Browsercam

See your web design on any browser on any operating system. Check javascripts, DHTML, forms and other dynamic functionality on any platform. Not just yours. Use our bank of testing machines remotely to test your website.

37. Are my sites up?

Are my sites up is a simple service that notifies you when your sites goes down.

38. Google analytics

Google Analytics is the enterprise-class web analytics solution that gives you rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. Powerful, flexible and easy-to-use features now let you see and analyze your traffic data in an entirely new way. With Google Analytics, you’re more prepared to write better-targeted ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives and create higher converting websites.

39. W3Counter

W3Counter is your free, hosted website analytics solution for answering the key questions about your website: who’s your audience, how they find your site, and what interests them.

Create Apple iPod Nano In Photoshop

lava360 — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:17:05 +0000

Learn how to paint / recreate an object in Photoshop from an existing photo. This is a great exercise for working on your layer structure and pen tool skills. Breaking down the object and being able to separate and place in the correct order is what will take your artwork to a whole new level

iPod Tutorial

The image below is what we will be making which is entirely done in Photoshop (minus the Emperor Pope image) and will hopefully give you a better understanding of how to recreate an object in PS.

Step 1 – Find Reference Image

Before we get started let’s find a reference photo so we know what we are working toward. I went to Apple site and grabbed one there.

Step 2 – Cutout iPod

In order to get the basic shape easily and accurately I cut the image out and place it on my document.

Step 3 – Create Selection

To select the iPod hold down control and click on the iPod layer.

Step 4 – Fill Selection

Once it is selected, create a new layer and name it base. Now fill (Shift + Backspace) the selection with a neutral gray on the newly created base layer.

Step 5 – Use Pen To Trace Outer Edge Of The Top Of iPod

Now that we have our basic outline we can start getting into the fun stuff. Create a new layer above the base layer and name it top. Now hide (click eye in layers palette) the base layer and zoom in at the top part of the iPod. Make sure the top layer is still selected and grab the pen tool and go around the outer portion of the top. Convert the path to a selection and fill with red. If you hide the original layer and turn the base back on you should have something that looks like this.

Step 6 – Trace Inner Portion Of The Top Of iPod

Ok, now let’s do the inner portion of the top the same way. Hide all layers except original ipod, make new layer at the very top called top-inner, use pen tool, go around the edges, change to selection and fill with a light gray.

Step 7 – Create Left Highlight Layer

Go ahead and make a new folder and place both of the top layers in the new folder and call it top. Much easier to work when we keep things organized.
Let’s create the two highlight bars that run down the sides of the iPod. Create a new layer above the base layer (below the top folder) and call it left highlight. Hide all other layers so the original iPod can be seen. Control click on the base layer so that the shape of the base is now selected. Grab the rectangular marquee tool, hold down alt (option on mac) and you should see the cross hairs with a minus sign beside it. Anything you highlight with alt held down will remove part of a selection. Simply drag around the right
half of the base and stop right on the highlight line. If done correctly you should now have you selection made. Just fill with a light gray and that’s it.

Step 8 – Create Right Highlight Leaving The Left Side To Overhang

Getting the right highlight is almost the same except the line is not a 90 degree angle so we will have to add an extra step.

Create a new layer above the left highlight and name it right highlight. Hide all layers except the original iPod layer and load the base layer selection again. Grab the rectangular marquee tool and hold down the alt (option for mac) and coral from left to right stopping before reaching the highlight edge. Now fill the selection with gray.

Step 9 – Use Pen Tool To Remove The Excess & Get The Correct Angle Of The Left Side Of Right Highlight

We have all sides perfect except for the left edge. Lower the opacity on the right highlight layer enough so you can see the actual highlight edge on the original iPod. Now grab the pen tool or magnetic lasso and click just above the highlight edge and then click just below the edge giving you the exact edge degree for this side. Complete the path making sure to go around all of the unneeded right highlight fill and delete it. That’s it for the right highlight.

Step 10 – Use Elliptical Marquee To Trace Menu Interface & Fill Selection

In the spirit of tidiness let’s take the left and right highlight layers along with the base and place in a new folder called base. Make sure this folder is under the top folder in the layers palette.

Alright, make a new layer above all the others and name it menu. Hide the two folders revealing the original iPod layer and select your elliptical marquee tool. Make sure you are on your newly created menu layer and draw a circle around the the main menu on the original and fill with a dark gray.

Step 11 – Hide Menu Layer & Trace The Button With Marquee & Fill

Make a new layer above the menu layer and name it menu button. Hide all layers below except original and use the elliptical marquee tool again to draw a circle around the menu button and fill with a slightly lighter gray. Colors are completely irrelevant right now for everything. Our only concern is that they differ enough so we can tell what is what.

Ok let’s see what we have now when it’s all put together.

Step 12 – Use Rounded Rectangle Tool To Draw Outer Edge Of Screen While Adjusting Radius

Place the menu and menu button layers in a new folder called menu which should be at the very top. Create a new layer above the others and name it screen. Since the corners of the screen are rounded we are gonna
choose the rounded rectangle tool. Once the tool is selected, adjust your corner radius to match the screen corners on the iPod. For me, 5px worked perfect. It may be different for you depending on the resolution you
are working in.

Step 13 – Fill Selection and Use Warp to Shape Rectangle To Match Image

As you can see in the pic above, draw around the outer edge of the screen once you have adjusted the radius settings to your liking. It will not be a perfect match and that’s ok. Just get it as close as possible.
Convert the path to a selection (right click choose make selection) and fill with red. Now go to edit transform and warp. Now just pull in the corners to align them with the original. The sides of the screen should also be pulled in just a touch since those are not 90 degrees angles.

Step 14 – Repeat Same Steps To Create Inner Portion Of Screen

Make a new layer above the screen layer and name it screen inner. Follow the exact steps as above but this time draw around the inner part of the screen. The radius used on the inner section was 2px. Once completed move both of those layers in to a new folder called screen and you should now have something that looks like this.

Step 15 – Time To Style

Well that’s it for most of the drawing. Time to start styling and bringing the drawing to life. Make a copy of the original iPod layer and move it above the other layers. Now Slide the layer up just enough to see the bottom of your iPod. Now go to your base layer and double click it to open the layer styles
window. Check the gradient overlay button and follow the steps below.

Step 1 – Change the angle from 90 to zero degrees. This will force the gradient to go on a
horizontal path (left to right) instead of the default vertical axis which is top to bottom.
Step 2 – Click on the gradient color bar to open the gradient editor
Step 3 – To change the color of the gradient we need to select the color stops we wish to alter.
By default there will be two. One on the far left and one on the right.
Step 4 – For each stop you can select a color which will gradually blend into the color of the next stop. Once you have selected the stop you wish to change the color of (see step 3), click on the color swatch to open the color picker menu.
Step 5 – Once the color picker window is open, hover over the original iPod layer (you should see an eyedropper tool) and click on the darkest part of the middle section, just to the right of the left highlight.

By clicking on the iPod layer, we are selecting the exact color from the image and making it the color of our left color stop. Click ok to close the window.

Step 16 – Complete The Gradient For The Base Layer

Now that we know how to adjust the gradient, all we need to do now is finish picking the colors. For the left color stop my color is #787879 and then I grab the far right stop which is #e8e8e9. Now even though you selected colors straight from the iPod image they may not look quite. That’s because
your base layer spans the entire width of the iPod but what you are actually styling is just the middle section of the base layer. The left and right sides are covered by the highlight layers. So to adjust for this, once you have the left and right color stops color selected, hit ok to close the gradient editor and start sliding the scale bar down until you get your left and right colors matching the image. For me it was 57. Once that is fixed, go back in the gradient editor and make the tweaks needed to get your gradient to match. For me, I added a third stop in the middle which is #adadae and I
moved the middle and right stops down just a bit until I got what I was looking for. This is where you just play around for a while until you get the result you want.

Step 17 – Setup Left Highlight Gradient

For the left highlight layer, I used 4 color stops and the colors used are (from left to right):

1. #4b4b4c
2. #737374
3. #555556
4. #929293

I adjusted the scale to 95% and moved the far right color down a bit.

Step 18 – Setup Right Highlight Layer

To get started on the right highlight I copy the layer style from the left layer and paste on the right. Then open the layer styles and reverse the gradient. I unchecked the align with layer so that I have a little more control over the angle and the change it to -2. The scale has also been changed to 37. The colors used are:

1. #191919
2. #b8b8b8
3. #fefefe

Once that is completed I created two more layers, one called black and the other white. I loaded the right highlight selection and just gave it a little more of a darker edge on the bottom using a soft black brush and lowering the opacity of the layer just a touch. For the white layer I loaded the right
highlight layer again (control click to load selection) and used a soft white brush to bring out the left edge a little and also lighten the bottom part of the gradient.

Step 19 – Style The Top Layers

Styling the top is pretty simple. Just fill the top-inner layer with a solid black. For the top layer I just do a gradient overlay going from a dark gray to a light in the front. I also added two extra highlight layers. I gave the right side of the top a little black shading with a soft brush. On the other layer I added a little white soft brush hightlight on the front left portion of the top layer.

Step 20 – The Outer Menu

Not a lot going on here. The layer styles settings used are posted below. Note that I used a gradient overlay but as you can see with the color settings that a color overlay would have worked as well.

Step 21 – The Menu Button

The layer styles settings for the menu button are:

Step 22 – The Menu Text

I used Verdana Bold 9pt for the menu text. I’m not sure what is used on the iPod and to be honest it is not a major concern. As long as it’s close then that’s all I need for text that is so small. The triangles are wingdings3 8pt letter “t”. You can also use a pen tool to create you own triangle and fill with white. The pause button was created by drawing a rectangle and filling with white. For all of my characters I dropped the opacity down just a touch for a slight off white look. I also used the free transform tool on all of the pieces and gave them a slight rotation.

Step 23 – The Outer Screen

Ok time to style the outer screen so you have something that will look like the image below. Copy the styles settings to achieve this look.

Step 24 – The Inner Screen

Again, I’m just using layer styles for the inner portion of the screen.

Step 25 – Draw & Style The Top Button

Use the pen tool to draw the shape of the bottom part of the button, convert path to selection and fill with any color on a new layer. Now follow the style settings below.

For the top part I used the elliptical marquee to draw the top of the button, made a new layer, and filled with any color. Now use the style setting below.

Step 26 – Create Screen Highlights

Since the screen highlight is the same as the one for the base, there is no need to draw it. Simply load the selection of the right highlight in the base folder. Once it is selected, create a new layer in the screen folder making sure it is sitting above the layers in the folder and fill with #b8b8b9. Now load (ctrl click layer) the outer screen layer, select inverse, and delete. Now we have a copy of our base highlight except it only sits on top of the screen portion of our iPod.

Make sure your layer mask is selected and not the actual layer and drag the gradient line from just outside the right edge to about halfway through the highlight bar. Using black on the layer mask will hide anything that is painted on. By using the gradient tool, we can achieve a nice & slow gradual fade. Once I’m happy, I lower the opacity to 28 and yours should now look like this:

Follow the same steps to create you left highlight bar. I did not use a layer mask on this one and simply filled with the same color as right and lowered the opacity to 6.

Step 27 – Final Image

Now simply find an image to place on the screen, size it correctly, and place under the two screen highlight layers and we are done. I hope this was a helpful tut and if you have questions please post in the comment. Oh and good luck finding a cooler image than my Emperor Pope pic.