Viewing Archive for: March 2008

8 Fantastic jQuery Tutorials for Designers

Slide out and drawer effect The effect is commonly known as an “accordion” and it’s usually used to slide up, or down blocks of content to expose new blocks. The Apple web site is a great demonstration of this effect in action, where the mouse settles on the title of the “section” and the associated links are exposed. What makes this effect particularly cool, is that the drawers maintain a fixed height and slide between restricted area. VISIT TUTORIAL VIEW DEMO  Read More →

About

Tutorialblog was started in 2005 to provide Photoshop Tutorials on various techniques and effects. It was acquired in 2008 by Hecta Media with aims of broadening the scope of the site and becoming a useful resource for beginner and intermediates alike. Tutorialblog is published using Wordpress and a custom theme by Kooc Media. We also use a number of useful plugins: wp notable, digg this, Akismet, Post Ratings and Translator pro. The logo typeface and navigation bar are set in the brilliant FS Clerkenwell... 

How To Use Layer Comps in Photoshop

Ever since CS, Photoshop has had a feature called “Layer Comps”, which is largely underutilized by designers. The concept of the Layer Comps is very simple, it’s just a quick way to take a “snapshot” of which layers are turned on and which layers are turned off in your document. Think “compositions”. Some Adobe Photoshop files get to be VERY complicated in terms of number of layers, and it can be useful and efficient to be able to jump back and forth between... 

Make Repeating Seamless Tile Backgrounds with Photoshop

This tutorial is a guest post by Pixblix.com Not every image will lend itself well to a repeating background. I like to select a portion of an image that already has a bit of a pattern to it and also has similar colors, say for example a group of flowers. For this tutorial, I’ve chosen an 800×600 portion from a picture of spring fruit tree blossoms. For now it is much easier to work with a larger image than a tiny one; you can resize the tile when it is finished. The objective... 

6 Creative Reasons for Applying Blur to Photos

Blurring, at it’s most fundamental level is the softening of an image. It is standard procedure to use a very slight blur on photos straight off your digital camera as often they are overly sharp. Sharpness, of course, isn’t a bad thing but it is more beneficially applied at the end of your retouching sessions than at the beginning. There are many other (more creative) uses for blur though. Here are some examples. To Imply Depth Depth of field looks best when done in the camera, but when... 

Color Inspiration: The Vibrant Earthtoned Homes of North Portland

Sometimes you don’t need to go any further than your own neighborhood to find color inspiration. Surely not every neighborhood is as eclectically colored as Portland, but I’m sure many are! Check out these very nicely painted earth toned homes:  Read More →

Designer’s Toolbox: Blank CSS Template

If you design a fair number of websites from scratch, you’ll find yourself doing a lot of the same setup work over and over and over. Create directory with images folder. Create index file, write content type declaration, write basic page structure. Create CSS file, write CSS reset, write basic CSS structure. Just that setup can take you a decent chunk of time and wither your enthusiasm for getting into the meat of your design. In this next installment of Designer’s Toolbox, we are offering... 

Creative Custom Die Cuts on Business Cards

A small custom built die might only cost you between $40-$80 from a reasonable die cutter. Even with your printer marking that up and the extra bindery time, a set of 1000 4-color custom die cut business cards will only run you about $400. If you have the budget for it, a die cut business card can be an extremely nice touch and the “little something” that sets yours apart.  Read More →

Designer’s Toolbox: Blank Business Card Templates

One of the many ways to save time as a designer is to have a toolbox. That is, a collection of design files to help you get started or to reference when designing. These files might be templates, layer styles, swatch pallets, code snippets, anything that keeps you from having to do something tedious from scratch when you’ve done it many times before. Designer’s Toolbox will be a series here on Tutorial Blog. Each post will bring you new tools for your (hopefully) ever-growing toolbox.  Read More →