Author Archive
CS4 - To upgrade or not upgrade, that is the question
Creative Suite 4 is about to be released. But from what I’m reading of it, I think I’ll stick to CS3 for a while yet. Those lucky enough to have received early BETA releases (alas, not me) have reported a few minor improvements, as you’d expect. But with Adobe’s hefty upgrade bill, it hardly seems worth it. Which brings a whole new angle to the upgrade/not upgrade argument. When is it advisable to upgrade, and how long is too long to wait.
One of the biggest expenses for any lone designer is software. Creative Suite, although there’s a great saving by buying the bundle, is still not cheap. But unlike spending money on plant or equipment, which can pay for itself over the years, there seems to be a major software upgrade almost annually.
Photoshop, Piracy and Popularity
Open source aficionados are going to love this one – Adobe’s Photoshop does have a whole lot of users, but that’s no reason for the company to break out the champagne. Why? Because more than half of these users have not purchased their copy through legitimate means; in plain English, this means that most users of Photoshop have pirated their software, and that Adobe has lost out on tons of revenue.
I guess it’s easier to justify piracy when the original comes at a whopping $600. But the question still remains – why do people still pirate Photoshop when there are numerous open source alternatives? Some of them like the Gimp (GNU Image Manipulation Program) are almost equivalent to Adobe’s image editor, and the best part is, they’re free. Ok, so the Gimp and other free online photo editing tools don’t offer support for CMYK (except the one from KOffice named Krita) and the RAW digital camera format or license PANTONE, but besides that, they should suffice for all your image editing needs, unless you’re going to use an editing tool for commercial purposes.
zaBox - Share and Promote your Design News, Resources and Tutorials
zaBox is a design related social bookmarking website, focused on offering its users design news, tutorials and resources in a spam-free environment.
zaBox is a great way to :
- DISCOVER the best articles in the design industry
- SHARE and find design resources
- LEARN new design skills by following the best tutorials
- PROMOTE your blog and / or design related articles
Using zaBox is really simple. All you need to do is register and start submitting content. You can also view and rate what other users have submitted, engage in discussions regarding the submitted content, make friends, get your favorite news (each category has its own RSS feed) directly to your RSS and much more. We’ll let you discover all the features for yourself.
Being a design social media website we think there are some really important aspects each website of this niche should have.
The drop-down menu is very comprehensive, organized in 5 main categories : Graphic Design, Web Design, Resources, General Design and Tutorials. Each category has its own subcategories (32 in total).
As a design related social media website each news must have its own preview image. For example for a tutorial its important to see exactly what the tutorial does before visiting the source website. Same thing goes for brush sets, icons, textures, themes etc.
AJAX is used on a large scale these days. That’s why we incorporated AJAX in zaBox’s Top 10 Published News. One news fades into the next and the whole paragraph is fully clickable. The Top 10 Published News Widget appears one very page of the website so it’s easily accessible.
Adding a direct story submission button to your website or blog is really easy. It’s a matter of copy and paste a HTML code. There are a lot of buttons for this in different sizes.
Wordpress Theme Design - An exceptional guide on how to create and customize professional Wordpress themes
We’ve been given the opportunity by Packt Publishing to read a great book on creating and / or customizing professional Wordpress themes. The book is called Wordpress Theme Design - A complete guide to creating professional Wordpress Themes written by Tessa Blakeley Silver.
Tessa Blakeley Silver started out as a print designer and illustrator and evolved over the years into a web and multimedia developer, focusing on usability and interface design. Prior to establishing her own consulting and development company hyper3media (hyper-cube media) , she also worked as a VP of Interactive Technologies at eHigherEducation.
The focus of “Wordpress Theme Design” is to provide a comprehensive guide on how to create a professional Wordpress theme from the design process to search engine optimization (SEO) and after reading the book I can say it does more than that. It’s basically a compressed version of the Wordpress Codex .
The book has 207 pages and it’s organized in 9 chapters : Getting Started as a Wordpress Theme Designer, Theme Design and Approach, Coding it Up, Debugging and Validation, Your Theme in Action, Wordpress Reference, Dynamic Menus and Interactive Elements, AJAX / Dynamic Content and Interactive Forms, Design Tips for Working with Wordpress.
Free Photoshop E-Book : 25 Essential Photoshop Moves
25 Essential Photoshop Moves is a substantial (175 pages) full color ebook, packed with loads of useful information for beginners and advanced Photoshop users. The book containing tools, tips, techniques and tutorials is totally free for download.
The author has picked out 25 key tasks or tools that he would expect an experienced Photoshop user to know. These include selection techniques, shortcuts, time-saving tools, montage skills and practical applications of Photoshop that he himself uses daily in real life jobs. Large illustrations, step-by-step explanations and simple instructions will have you creating Photoshop art like a professional in no time.
What’s the catch ? How come it’s free ?
The book is free. All you have to do is subscribe to the author’s (Gary Crilley: The Electric Artist) newsletter and you will get the download link in your email in max 2 minutes.
You can also check out the author’s website for some interesting video tutorials.
