Featured Posts

Getting into Java... I'm starting to make my first Java applications with the aim of being able to program cell phone API and other handheld technologies. I see this as a huge market in years to come and can wait to get my...

Read more

Teaching Intro to Flash at Tunxis Again Looks like I'll be teaching at Tunxis again this semester. Can't wait to get started again as I have a lot of fun the last time we did this. The class is going to be restructured slightly to showcase the...

Read more

The difference between classic and motion tweens in... Here it is: If you're used to doing things "the cs3 way" then you can continue to do so with the classic tween tool. It works the same way as you remember, using key frames as normal, but you cannot...

Read more

PHP: If (equal to AND not equal) - eliminate form spam... Just learned a great function of PHP thats already made my forms a lot better. A while back I wrote an article about eliminating form spam without captchas by using css to hide a text input box for bots...

Read more

Drop Downs, Fly Outs, and Accordion Site Navigation: This last week I was in a meeting discussing a client site. It was a typical business meeting that was going into overtime on a Friday afternoon, and then things turned for the worst... someone suggested...

Read more

twitter

Breaking News

  •  

Photoshop Makeovers – Before and After – Videos worth watching

Category : Photoshop, Technology

Below are a few really good videos I saw over the weekend of the a photo being fully retouched. The main thing that people don’t realize about photo retouching is that you change everything… being incredibly through and idealizing everything to the point that the picture is almost no longer of the subject anymore. The trick is to not over do it or it becomes too noticeable and that breaks the illusion.

I see people in life looking at magazines and ogling at the “people” on the cover. I use the term “people” loosely because as previously stated and as the video examples below will show: no one looks this good ever – let alone all the time. To believe that these cover shots are real is akin to believing that Grim’s Fairy Tales is a historical text!

Reading a fictional book is fun, as is staring at a retouched photo of Hillary Duff. The difference is that we all know that the book is fiction, yet because our eyes can see it we decided at some point that the photograph is real.

As people view more produced events, whether it be an ad, a movie, or the Music Awards their attitude towards reality shifts so that the perfected reality as the norm, and anyone who is having a “normal day” is ugly by comparison. Such is the case when you see a person “untouched”. By comparison anyone without an army of stylists and photoshop artists is a second rate beauty at best.

Watch and learn.

I’ll post some tutorials soon. These guys all fly through their work.

Smashing Magazine takes the time to explain typography while showing great text photoshop tutorials. Thank goodness.

Category : Great Tutorials, Photoshop, Typography

In what is sure to be a hugely trafficked and bookmarked post, 50 Stunning Photoshop Text Effect Tutorials. I’m delighted that Smashing Magazine took the time to explain basic typography FIRST. While not a complete history or explanation of everything type this might be the most complete, yet concise, summary of what you need to know before you go gallivanting off with an army of text effects.

This post is not just a heaping pile of knowledge. This is SEM success on an SEO goldmine. Better yet, Smashing Magazine will shine for this and in the process we can only hope that their younger readers this will pause and learn something from the first half (the typography section) before stampeding towards the tutorials.

Yes, the effects are cool, but using an interesting effect on poorly is still an utter failure while good type can stand on its own without any effects what so ever. I also hope that readers understand that you should never use an effect gratuitously. Use the right effect to further your message; not to use an effect.

Find A Web Color Palette – Quick, Easy, and Free

Category : Cool Web Programs, Photoshop

I found a wicked easy to use color palette generator at http://www.colorcombos.com. Besides being free it also has a few features that I like that set it apart from the plethora of other color generator sites I found before getting to this one.

  1. You can type almost any color you want into the box to search their archive or palettes. If that’s not easy enough you can click any of the colors on the right to get a pretty diverse list of related colors. That’s pretty simple.
  2. You can enter a website url and scrape the color palette from another site. This includes the colors designated in the css files.
  3. Once you have selected the color palette you can click the color to be brought a new page to tweak the hex colors and adjust the position inside the palette.
  4. After selecting a color palette you can sue a drop down to find complementary colors, and create those handy little color palette images, like this one:
    Free Web Color Palettes

And did I mention this site is free? Love it…